Mapping the contours of Jihadist groups in the Sahel

Folahanmi Aina, King’s College London The Sahel region, an area covering 3 million sq km, has been a hotbed of Islamic Jihadi groups in recent years. Today, the region has no fewer than seven insurgent groups scattered in six countries. The area stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean and encompasses a dozen countries. These include Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, The Gambia, Guinea, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal. Jihadi groups have taken advantage of a number of underlying conditions, which fuel local grievances across the Sahel. These include endemic poverty, inequality, high unemployment levels, … Continue reading Mapping the contours of Jihadist groups in the Sahel

A donkey loaded with books is still a donkey.

Loads of books? The rot of distorted religious beliefs has contaminated Pakistani society. Just one example of this was a wedding I attended in June last year. A mullah from an important mosque was asked to perform the ceremonies at the bride’s house. He grasped the opportunity to inflict a lengthy homily about the sanctity of marriage on the unfortunate guests. Marital harmony, he insisted, was founded on the subservience of woman to man because Eve was created from the rib of Adam. The cleric had obviously read, or had been told about, the story of creation as it appears in the … Continue reading A donkey loaded with books is still a donkey.