There have been global protests across the world in response to a global social media campaign, fot the Nigerian government to do more to rescue more than 200 schoolgirls forcibly taken from a Northern boarding school in Nigeria, on April 14th by Islamic militants. The girls that wee abducted live in a region that has the lowest girl child enrolment in Nigeria. They were taken and abducted by Boko Haran, simply because they wanted an education.
The #BringBackOurGirls hashtag is keeping the story in the media lens. If it stays in the media hopefully the Nigerian government will be forced to act. These girls are children of the poor, in Nigeria's deeply inegalitarian society and must be saved. This tragedy touches the hearts of everyone, evoking a feeling of revulsion, at their loss of freedom, their right to education. and the mistaken assumption that for these young girls their destination must be forced marriage and servitude.
Whatever mantra this militant group is following it is not following the words of the Koran. The prophet Muhammed categorically stated during his lifetime that women or children were never to be harmed under any situation that "oppression is worse than murder (2:191)) and that nobody "shall force girls to commit prostitution." (24:33)
We must though stand in solidarity with these missing school children and any other woman around the world who continues to fight for their basic human rights ,we however must be careful of western intervention, we should remember that it is the Wests interests in Africa that has helped foster and spread this dangerous misinterpretation and corruption of Islam.
We must continue to listen to what the families and thinkers, the professionals on the frontlines of this crisis have to say.
At the end of the day it is the people of Nigeria that has to find the answers, a troubled area already, with their own backdrop of corruption and inequality. we do not want to add to their problems and hasten a scenario that could result in a African Afghanistan.
We can continue to express our anger and frustration, and hope that the Nigerian government finds these girls, and they are taken from harms way and back into safety.
We should not forget many other innocent people who dissapear every day as well, migrants who drown seeking a better life, innocents killed by remote control drones, injustices daily incurring across the globe, in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, in all corners of the globe that sadly do not warrant the same headlines, all innocence is worth protecting.
