 Good afternoon. And my thanks to the organizers of this conference for inviting me to be here. I am indeed going to talk about Boko Haram. I'm going to talk about Boko Haram because as we face the potential for greater US engagement in northern Nigeria, Boko Haram is going to be, I think, a prime case where a high degree of religious literacy by American policymakers is going to be absolutely necessary if we don't make a mess of things. There is nobody more intoxicated by the sound of their own voice than me. Nevertheless, I'm going to try to watch the time so that I can leave time for comments and questions. I realize that some of what I'm going to say may be perfectly self-evident. Other things I may say may seem to be contentious. And indeed, other things I say might strike you as just simply absolutely weird. So I hope that I will be giving you some grist for some things for us to talk about. For Boko Haram, Boko Haram is the Housa and Arabic words for Western education is forbidden. For Boko Haram, violence is not a perversion of Islam. It is at the heart of their faith. The core of their faith is the impetus to create God's kingdom on Earth through justice for the poor, achieved by rigid application of Islamic law or sharia. Anything that gets in the way must be destroyed. That includes schoolboys, 55 of whom were murdered in their dormitory beds about two months ago. Their dormitory beds of the secular school and Western education is secular and forbidden. Or the kidnapping of up to two, some 300 schoolgirls that occurred now three weeks ago and which a major Boko Haram warlord, Abu Bakr Shaqqal, has claimed credit or I would say discredit for before. In both cases, the atrocities occurred because the victims were participating in Western education, which by Boko Haram's definition is non-Islamic. The end justifies any means. And in the case of Boko Haram, most of its victims are fellow Muslims, whom it regards as not Islamic enough, or as having sold out to the secular government in Abu Bakr Shaqqal. According to Boko Haram rhetoric, the modern secular state promotes idolatry, state worship. A pledge of allegiance to the flag and a national anthem are aspects of state worship. And the worship of anything other than Allah is idolatry. The state is also a nest of corruption that depends on the exploitation of the poor. The state is formed and sustained by Western values and education, which promote secularism, which is contrary to the will of Allah. The Boko Haram insurgency challenges Nigerian unity, the country's political economy, and the government of Good Luck, Jonathan. More than any other African state, a Nigeria under siege has implications for the development of democracy and the promotion of human rights on the continent as a whole. Because Nigeria has been, perhaps, our most important strategic partner in Africa, Boko Haram has profound security implications for the United States. To respond effectively to it will require religious literacy and sensitivity by U.S. policymakers in Washington and among our diplomats in Nigeria. Boko Haram and Nigeria, I submit, are a case study for the importance of religious literacy in world affairs. Realities in Nigeria, when it comes to religion, are different from those in the United States. Throughout Nigeria, the spiritual saturates all aspects of public and private life. Material protests are framed in a spiritual and moral rhetoric, and religious tenants are the foundation for the ideal society. Moreover, the cooperating and competing elites who have run Nigeria since independence usurp these deeply embedded religious sentiments for their own purposes. Individuals and groups protesting against those elites equally draw on religious language and sentiments to frame their own rejections of the status quo and to promote their own vision of Nigeria's future. Hence, in a highly significant way, religion shapes the way Nigerians define the good life and it shapes the protests against the current system that by and large denies it to them. It also provides justification for the use of violence against adversaries who are also defined in religious terms. Hence, Muslims and Christians will kill each other and Muslims will kill other Muslims and radical Muslims will murder representatives of the secular government in Abuja, all in the name of God. Boko Haram very much draws on this tradition. Religious conflict in Nigeria is only one element in a polity divided by ethnicity, but its importance is becoming ever more salient as the kidnapping of the 300 schoolgirls by Boko Haram illustrates. The nation is increasingly characterized by a weak government which has little regard to the rule of law and in a culture saturated with religiosity. Religious conflict is both a symptom and a driver of the current Nigerian national crisis. National identity is underdeveloped and probably declining to some extent by religion or religiosity takes its place. Modern Nigeria was cobbled together into a single political unit by the British only in 1914 and only for matters of administrative convenience. There was no uniform colonial administration across all territories and ethnic groups, no unifying struggle for independence and there are no national heroes such as Nelson Mandela in South Africa. Since independence in 1960, political life has been based on geographic regions and ethnic loyalties rather than the nation as a whole. Family, ethnicity, religious and regional identities all supersede loyalty to the nation. Since independence, competing and cooperating elites of both military and civilian governments have run the country for their own benefit. There is little political reference to the Nigerian people. In style, content and in the isolation of the government from its people, there has been remarkable continuity between military and civilian governments. But in contrast, Nigeria's religious landscape has changed dramatically in the 20th century. In 1900, it is estimated that the territory that at present makes up Nigeria was 27% Muslim and 2% Christian. The rest of the nation adhered to traditional religions. Islam has been practiced in what is now Nigeria for more than a thousand years and Muslims regard the Sahel of which northern Nigeria is a part as a core component of the Islamic world. However, during the 20th century and especially after independence, Christianity grew explosively in the south and in the middle belt. And due to internal migration, there are now Christian minorities in the predominantly Muslim north. Nigerian Christians commonly believe that they are now the majority religion and many Muslims fear that they are right. Some Christian leaders resort to triumphalist rhetoric that unsettles Muslims who, by almost all social and economic indices, are much poorer and less developed than their Christian compatriots. The geographic fault line between the two religions runs from east to west across the middle of the country. In all of its forms, faith in Nigeria matters profoundly. Nigerians like to say that they live in the world's most religious country. Yet, this religiosity does not accept religious institutions from being corrupt any more than it does other secular or political institutions. And some Nigerian religious leaders are extremely rich. Both religions are also in the midst of revivals that are very literalist with respect to sacred texts. Both tend to set fixed boundaries between believers and nonbelievers. Their respective clergy are, at least sometimes, authoritarian and judgmental. We can say in general that there is much greater emphasis placed on divine judgment than there is on divine love. Religious conflict has been notably less intense during military than civilian administrations in post-independence Nigeria. This is due, in part, to the tendency of military leaders to eschew religious and ethnic identities. While civilian politicians often involve appeals to ethnic and religious identities to build political coalitions and electoral support, to serve as a break on ethnic, regional and religious divisions at the end of military rule in 1998, the competing and cooperating elites working within the ruling people's democratic party established a pattern of presidential power alternation between the predominantly Muslim North and the mostly Christian South. This system was essentially dismantled in 2011 when the Southern Christian incumbent president, Goodluck Jonathan, successfully won the presidential campaign for reelection with the support or acquiescence of much of the Northern Islamic establishment, and that support was grieved with money. Jonathan's failure to replace the alternation system with a new balancing structure during a period of accelerating political appeals to ethnic and religious identities has been an important driver of Northern marginalization and was a catalyst for the current wave of ostensibly religious conflicts in the northern half of the country. And on the street, the traditional Islamic establishment is seen as having sold out to secularism. These trends are manifested most dramatically in Boko Haram, the diffuse radical Islamist revolt in the north. This insurrection is a direct threat to the traditional Islamic establishment, which is led by the Sultan of Sokoton and the Shaku of Borno, and also to the credibility and authority of the Jonathanite. Boko Haram has tried to murder the Sultan and the Shaku, and it has claimed responsibility for killing the Shaku's brother and bodyguards of the Shaku. Boko Haram is a symptom of a civil war within Nigerian Islam. Radical reformers in what is now Nigeria have long claimed that Muslim leaders are non-Muslims if they are unjust, even when the rulers themselves claim to be Muslims. Hence, so-called Salafi reformers pipped themselves against so-called Sufis who dominate the traditional Nigerian Muslim elites. By the way, let me know parenthetically that words like Salafi and Sufi in common use in the Islamic world tend to have a specific and particular meaning in a Nigerian context, which is not necessarily the same as elsewhere. Some, again, so-called Salafi reformers wish to establish a pure Islamic state characterized by the strict application of Sharia. This has potent appeal in a period of increasing personal and communal poverty at the grassroots level while the traditional elites prosper from connections with the federal government and its oil revenue. An aspect of the Islamist revival has been a rejection of working within the established structures of the secular state. Often charismatic imams or mamams organize communities that withdraw as much as possible from secular life. Usually, such groups are quietists or even pacifist. However, at times they can turn violent, usually in response to the secular state's heavy handedness. This is the case of Boko Haram. Mohammed Yusuf, a charismatic malam, organized his community in the city of Maiduguri around 2003. It sought to establish God's kingdom on Earth in microcosm through the rigid application of Sharia and by isolating itself from the secular world. From its inception, the group was hostile to the Nigerian state and rejected Western education as non-Islamic. The name they apply to themselves in English means the congregation of the people of tradition and jihad. The more widely known name, Boko Haram, is a label first used by the government and the media, and it comes from the group's rejection of Western education. However, the group was generally non-violent, if not pacifist until 2009. That year, there were a series of altercations over local issues, likely manipulated by local politicians that resulted in Yusuf instigating a direct attack on the state, to which the security forces responded brutally. At least 800 were killed. During the suppression, the police murdered Yusuf. The crime was captured on film and went viral on various media platforms. In the aftermath of his death, several hundred of his followers were also extrajudicially killed and the movement went underground, only to re-emerge in 2010 under a new leader, Yusuf's deputy, Abu Bakar, Shaka'a. No longer peaceful, Boko Haram looked to overthrow through violence, the Nigerian state government, and its compromised Islamic establishment. Shaka'a has called for the replacement of the Sultan of Sokoto, the premier Islamic political and religious leader, by a council dominated by Boko Haram and situated not in Sokoto's state, but in Yobe's state, illustrating the interplay between religion and ethnicity. Sokoto is House of Hulani in population, while Yobe is Kanuri, as is Abu Bakar Shaka'a. He also seeks the expulsion of Christians from the north. However, while it has killed Christians, most of its several thousand victims have been Muslims. The government's response to Boko Haram is to see it as a terrorist movement, an isolation of any environment that may have fostered it, and has reacted with violent repression. The government's seemingly indiscriminate killing of Boko Haram members and many others who were simply in the wrong place at the long time appears to be a driver of popular support for or acquiescence to Boko Haram. In fact, during some periods of particularly brutal security forced repression, they may be responsible for as many Nigerian deaths as Boko Haram. The size of Boko Haram is unknown. However, it has mounted operations involving at least 500 operatives, employing several thousand members and affiliates. In addition, much larger numbers appear to acquiesce to what Boko Haram is doing, even if they do not support its violent methods. A credible hypothesis is that it draws many of its activists from the ranks of former students in the Al-Majiri schools. These are decentralized institutions, usually without government support, where Malams instruct their students to memorize the Quran, but in Nigeria virtually nothing else. The pool of such students is estimated to number between 10 and 12 million. Very similar to Boko Haram is the group Ansaru, a smaller radical group with a base in Kano and Kaduna, rather than in Horna or Yubei. Its full name in English means vanguards the protection of Muslims in black Africa. Its leadership is obscure. Abu Ansari is frequently identified as its leader, but little other than his name is known. Its spokesman claimed the group split from Boko Haram because the latter was killing too many Muslims. Ansaru avoids Muslim casualties and actively attacks Christian churches. It appears to be trying to provoke a Christian backlash against Muslim minorities in the south, presumably to promote the breakup of the Nigerian state. Thus far that effort has been unsuccessful. Ansaru has introduced into northern Nigeria tactics more commonly associated with the Sahel and Al-Qaeda, especially kidnapping for ransom and possibly the use of suicide bombers, which were previously unknown in West Africa. It is also involved with Trans-Saharan smuggling. The group has links with radical Islamist groups in Algeria and Mali, but it is unlikely that it takes its direction from them. However, its fighters include some from outside Nigeria, especially Chad and Niger. There is some evidence of tactical cooperation between Ansaru and Boko Haram, and it is certainly possible that they will reunite. Boko Haram and Ansaru both glorify violence. In one of his videos, Shekau says, quote, I enjoy killing anyone that God commands me to kill. Both are bitterly opposed to democracy. Shekau has said, quote, I swear by Allah there will be no democracy in Nigeria. We are going to rise up against it, and we shall soon defeat it. The concept of government of the people, by the people, for the people, cannot continue to exist. It shall soon, very soon, be replaced by government of Allah by Allah for Allah. Elsewhere in the north are other groups about which outsiders, including the Nigerian government, appear to know little. Their grievances and the focus of their violence are usually local, though they will use Islamist rhetoric associated with Shekau. Presumably, many of them have a criminal or a political dimension, or both, as opposed to a purely or largely religious motivation. The American and British governments designated Boko Haram and Ansaru as terrorist organizations in 2013. The U.S. Treasury placed a reward for information on the location of Shekau and a few other radical leaders. The Abuja government seeks to involve Washington and London in its anti-terrorist campaign against Boko Haram. Boko Haram, in turn, is using increasingly hostile rhetoric towards the West, especially the United States. There are now some Nigerian calls for international assistance, especially by the U.S. and the UK. However, credible reasons of human rights abuses by the security forces under the control of the Nigerian government creates difficulties, that is to say, the lately amendment, for outside involvement. Under such circumstances, I would suggest we foreign friends of Nigeria should adhere to the principle of first, do no harm. Assistance to the Uluja government should be undertaken only following wide consultation with Nigerians in and out of government. We should avoid the temptation to just do something, especially in the aftermath of specific, horrific Boko Haram atrocities, such as the recent kidnapping of some Nigerian schoolgirls. Any action we take should be informed by knowledge of and sensitivity to the religious dimension of the current Nigerian crisis. We should understand any external intervention in Nigeria's North will be understood by the Muslim majority in religious terms. Second, it would be safe were we to focus on humanitarian assistance. That humanitarian assistance might initially be directed towards locating the kidnapped schoolgirls. Subsequently, it might be meeting the basic human needs of the millions of persons internally displaced by the struggle between Boko Haram and the state. Here, it is a question of meeting basic needs, food, shelter, medical care. Such assistance should also be made available to Nigeria's neighbors that are hosting thousands of refugees. Such humanitarian assistance might help counter the radical Jihadi narrative in Northern Nigeria that Americans are at war with Islam. Third, the Obama Administration should increase its support for those individuals in and out of government working to advance human rights and genuine democracy. It should never be silent in the face of security service human rights violations. Silence only undercuts the efforts of Nigerian human rights activists, and they are numerous and growing. The White House and the State Department should publicly call for the thorough investigation of any credible charges of security service abuse. The principle must be that sovereign states that aspire to be democratic are always held to a higher standard than terrorist groups. I have mentioned that it is already assumed in West Africa that we are at war with Islam. The U.S. drum base in Niger is widely seen as targeting Islamic radicals. The U.S. response to Boko Haram and the wider Nigerian crisis will put a particular premium on our sensitivity and understanding of the religious dimension to West Africa in general and Boko Haram in particular. What specifically can we do? Let me draw on a few examples of the kind of outreach that we can be involved with in northern Nigeria that occurred during the time I was ambassador to Nigeria. Do not claim credit for any of these. Most of these initiatives were spontaneously generated from within the embassy. First, a highly effective approach was to bring American Imams and Nigerian Imams together. 15 or 20 American Imams naturally practically all of them from Orange County, California came and met with 15 or 20 Nigerian Imams. They spent a day hashing through an entire series of essentially theological issues. By the end of the day a couple of the Nigerian Imams said to me that they were astonished to find a vibrant Islamic community in the United States that felt in no way persecuted. In conjunction with that the public affairs office within the embassy mounted a photographic exhibit of mosques that had been built in the United States. Not just the mosque in Washington or the mosque in New York but mosques scattered across the country. This Nigerian audience found astonishing. You mean they haven't been burned down yet. That worked pretty well. Certain embassy junior officers took it upon themselves to serve the meal that breaks the fast each day during Ramadan. Add a mosque in a working class part of illusion. What made an impression was not the provision of the food but the fact that the American junior officers cooked the food and then served it to the people who came. The notion that Americans would actually serve poor Nigerians was regarded as altogether extraordinary and some of my elite Nigerian contacts were not terribly pleased with the precedent that had seemed to be establishing. A final example each year at any embassy I've ever been involved with there is a commemoration of 9-11. At Abuja that commemoration was held at the Jarajua center which is among other things a center of Islamic scholarship and the person who gave the prayer was a young Imam who had visited the United States and was quite prepared to be publicly associated with the Americans and that particular anniversary. These specific episodes are examples that I am citing are small scale they cost in the grand scheme of things practically nothing and they can have a huge impact. Thank you very much. Now for the best part questions. Yes sir. I'm afraid I'm going to ask you three inside baseball questions that I've had since I got through the book and I thought I had a picture of my two old grandson learning to read it in his car scene but I don't have it. Upside down. Two questions that came out after reading your book. One was what would have happened had President Yarada lived and that succession rotation been able to be maintained. Let's take it one at a time. That's a very important question. I thought it was a very important question. No, it's a very important question. Because President Yarada was a Muslim and in terms of the normal rotation it was the north's turn a Muslim's turn turn to hold the presidency. Under the Nigerian system if the president was Muslim the vice president was Christian Muslim. President Yarada's vice president was Good Luck Jonathan. President Yarada died essentially of kidney disease after he had been in office for a little more than two years but while he was still healthy enough to operate he was already advancing a kind of reformist agenda. You're asking a counterfactual question. My own view is that if Yorajua had lived and if the power alternation between the north and the south had been maintained Boko Haram would not have gone away because it was on very deep streams in northern Nigeria but it may well not have turned violent and it certainly would not have assumed the importance that it has now. So the death of Yorajua was a tragedy. You got a second question? So it's part of the same in a way and you and others who write about Nigeria today talk about the corruption and weakness of the state and you didn't talk about that much now how important is the weakness of institutions and if that isn't how do NGO peace builders like people who work at Iwerka how can they get around that or if there is or what do we do under this circumstance? I'm not trying to back out of the question part of the problem is that what is corruption is culturally determined corruption is not something which is absolute. We Americans have to determine that it is I mean we say corruption is corruption as we define it and therefore a piece of legislation like Foreign Practices Act makes it extraordinarily difficult for American companies or I suspect American NGOs to operate on it in Nigeria let's like that reality aside for Nigerians they have their own particular definition of corruption and they know it when they see it and they will argue that real corruption in Nigerian terms has gone through the roof over the past four or five or six years there was an extremely embarrassing episode in which the governor of the central bank in late winter said either 50 million dollars or 10 million dollars or 20 million dollars pick a figure had been withheld by the National Petroleum Corporation from the treasure the National Petroleum Corporation is headed by the Minister for Petroleum the Minister for Petroleum is, how shall we put it a close personal friend of President John Actually it is for far the issue of the major concern in Nigeria and every Nigeria is living in fear and the western education how do we give a whole strategy policy for the government because we need assistance and we need to do society which I'm already handling to give the U.S. government a plan to vote without trading people to not vote once The question of U.S. assistance to Nigeria and what form it would take has to be driven essentially by the Nigerian government because Nigeria is a sovereign state over the past week or so particularly since the kidnapping of the 300 school girls has really energized both people within Nigeria but also in the international community during that time frame the Nigerian government has said it would welcome outside assistance and make specific reference to the United States the United Kingdom of France and China The Obama administration's response has been to offer assistance but no terms have been defined by anybody The Nigerian press says that an American team is going to Nigeria next week for consultation with the Nigerian authorities there has been talk that we could provide things like a certain amount of intelligence sharing training and so forth Historically the Nigerian government has been extremely reluctant to either ask for or accept foreign assistance So for me right now I'm not sure how real the request for assistance is or whether in fact any US assistance will have a transformative effect I think there it's a case that we have to watch that space Very good, appreciate it Wow Question dealing with the top people in Nigeria the Muslim leftists the Orbeez, the Fulani Kanuri and the idea of your ethnic identity is tied to religion to be a Fulani is to be a Muslim How is that impacting and I'm probably quite religious in Nigeria and I see this all over the world where our identity and ethnicity is tied to our religion How is that impacting the work that is currently going on to reconcile sides and how can that be overcome that missing tied to religion and all the rest of it? It depends on the part of the country that we're talking about amongst the Fulani the people in the North being Muslim is part of being Fulani but amongst the Euro people the people who live around Lagos and the part of the country that in many respects is most developed and most advanced religion is essentially affiliated in other words amongst the Euro you can decide to be an Anglican or a Presbyterian or Muslim and there's lots of intermarriage between Muslims and Christians in that part of the country and they even keep each other's holidays So there in the most developed part of the country it essentially really isn't an issue but in the North it's of absolutely crucial importance and in one part of the country in the middle boundaries between ethnicity religion and land use all correspond so you have Muslim House of Fulani Kurdsman colliding with Christian Barone farmers now is a person being killed because he's a Christian of Barone or a farmer it's extremely unclear and what has happened in that particular area I'm referring to Plateau State for those of you that are as obsessed with Nigeria as I am in that particular part of the country there has been an effect ethnic cleansing Thank you very much I appreciate your thought imagine our share I'm a researcher at Plain Hospital in Boston and basically one of the things you mentioned is about the role of Muslims in America in international affairs not just internally and I think that's a very good point that you brought up so if you would like to tell us more about what would be some of the roles of Muslims American Muslims that they can play internationally especially by the way that many people don't know there are no Muslims in America then in many Muslim countries so basically maybe they can play a bigger role in that Let me give you a specific example when I was ambassador we had in the political section a young political officer A1 from New York City whose father was Pakistani her mother was Egyptian and she was a practicing Muslim she was not failed but she was always covered she traveled all over the world absolutely by herself and was able to develop contacts and relations between the embassy and parts of the North that we had never had before in other words perhaps we should more self-consciously draw on the incredibly rich matrix we have of different groups in this country for our own diplomatic service we've done that before there were special recruitment efforts amongst the Japanese American community because they knew Japanese and Japanese is a initially difficult language for Americans to learn perhaps we should do a little bit more thinking about that and perhaps we should go focus our diplomatic recruitment efforts on places like suburban Detroit that have big out-of-population