Nigerian Violence: AP, Reuters Won’t Label Boko Haram a Muslim Terrorist Group – – They can't handle the truth?

It
would appear that the establishment press is determined to portray a
“both sides are at fault” equivalency as much as possible in Nigeria
where almost none exists.

Earlier today, Patrick Poole at the PJ Tatler pointed out that a brief initial Associated Press item from
Lagos would cause a person, in Poole’s words, to “come away mystified
as to why these churches were subject to apparently random ‘violence.’”
He specifically objected to the vagueness of a sentence claiming that
“Churches have been increasingly targeted by violence in Nigeria.” Later
more detailed dispatches from Reuters and the AP
aren’t much more helpful, especially as they both fail to tag the
principal perpetrators of the violence, the Boko Haram, as the
terrorists that they are.

For those who don’t know, Boko Haram
is “is a Muslim sect that seeks to abolish the secular system of
government and establish sharia law in the country,” and “is also known
for attacking Christian churches.”

The Reuters report
by Isaac Abrak is the more risible of the two in that it only
specifically identifies those who are carrying out reprisals as
Christians while failing to tie Boko Haram to the latest attacks (bolds
are mine throughout this post):

Nigeria church bombings kill seven, spark reprisals

Bombings at three churches in Nigeria’s northern Kaduna state
killed at least seven people and wounded others on Sunday, triggering
retaliatory attacks by Christian youths who dragged Muslims from cars
and killed them, officials and witnesses said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombings but
the Islamist Boko Haram group has often attacked church services in
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and split roughly evenly between
Christians and Muslims.

… Two blasts rocked churches in the town of Zaria within minutes of each other. First, a suicide bomber drove a blue Honda civic car into a church, its pastor told a Reuters cameraman at the scene.

“Three people are confirmed killed. Others have been taken to hospital for treatment,” said Reverend Nathan Waziri.

Then, attackers threw bombs at another church,
killing four children who were playing on the streets outside, said
Deborah Osagie, who lives opposite the church. She said the attackers were later caught by a crowd and killed.

A blast hit a third church, called the Shalom Church, in the state’s main city of Kaduna, witnesses said.

… After the bombings, Christian youths blocked the highway leading
south out of Kaduna to the Nigerian capital Abuja, pulling Muslims out
of cars and killing them, witnesses said.

“We had to return home when we saw (the Christian youths) attacking. I
saw many bodies on the ground, but I don’t know how many were dead or
just injured,” said Kaduna resident Rafael Gwaza.

Witness Haruna Isah said up to 20 people might have been killed in
reprisals at the road-block. “There were bodies everywhere on the
ground,” he said.

A few paragraphs later, Reuters does note that Islamic
“militants” were responsible for church attacks which took place a week
ago. It’s almost as if there’s a required cooling-off period before its
reporters will accurately describe an attack attack Christians as Muslim
terror-related.

At the Associated Press
(note: report was revised as this post was prepared), it took Inka
Ibukun and Godwin Attah until the seventh paragraph to identify any
religious sect involved in any way:

Churches have been
increasingly targeted by violence in Nigeria. The situation has led
churches in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north to boost their security
in a nation of more than 160 million people almost equally divided
between Muslims and Christians.

Police arrested one of the bombers who survived. (Kaduna State police
chief Mohammed Abubakar) Jinjiri declined to say who police suspected
might be responsible, though a radical Islamist sect known as Boko Haram
has claimed similar church attacks in the past.

Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is sacrilege”
in the Hausa language of Nigeria’s north, is waging an increasingly
bloody fight with security agencies and the public. More than 560 people have been killed in violence blamed on the sect this year alone, according to an Associated Press count.

The Nigerian Red Cross said young people had started protesting in
Kaduna, leading the state government to impose a 24-hour curfew in a
state deeply divided along religious lines. An Associated Press reporter also saw billows of smoke over a mosque in a predominantly Christian part of the city.
People had mounted illegal roadblocks and were seen harassing
motorists. A motorcycle rider in that same neighborhood lay seriously
hurt and bleeding by the road side. Motorbike riders there are often presumed to be Muslim and become easy targets during reprisal attacks by Christians.

The truly annoying aspect of such coverage is that there
is no aspect of Christianity’s expressed beliefs which sanctions
“reprisals” and no Biblically-based defense for random “reprisal”
attacks (or for the far less frequent attacks on mosques, which
unfortunately are occurring). Meanwhile, Boko Haram jihadists publicly
justify their terrorist actions as carrying out Islam’s fundamental
tenets.

The primary message which should be coming out of Nigeria
is that things would probably be much more peaceful in that country if
Boko Haram weren’t engaging in serial terrorism. But AP and Reuters, as
seen here, seem to be doing everything they can to avoid relaying it.