Boko Haram The history of an African jihadist movement

Alexander Thurston

Book - 2018

"Drawing on sources in Arabic and Hausa, rare documents, propaganda videos, press reports, and interviews with experts in Nigeria, Cameroon, and Niger, Alexander Thurston sheds new light on Boko Haram's development. He shows that the group, far from being a simple or static terrorist organization, has evolved in its worldview and ideology in reaction to events. Chief among these has been Boko Haram's escalating war with the Nigerian state and civilian vigilantes. The book closely examines both the behavior and beliefs that are the keys to understanding Boko Haram. Putting the group's violence in the context of the complex religious and political environment of Nigeria and the Lake Chad region, the book examines how Boko ...Haram relates to states, politicians, Salafis, Sufis, Muslim civilians, and Christians. It also probes Boko Haram's international connections, including its loose former ties to al-Qaida and its 2015 pledge of allegiance to ISIS." -- Publisher's description

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Subjects
Published
Princeton : Princeton University Press 2018.
Language
English
Main Author
Alexander Thurston (author)
Physical Description
viii, 333 pages : maps ; 23 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9780691172248
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • 1. The Lifeworld of Muhammad Yusuf
  • 2. Preaching Exclusivism, Playing Politics
  • 3. "Chaos Is Worse Than Killing"
  • 4. Total War in Northeastern Nigeria
  • 5. Same War, New Actors
  • Conclusion
  • Selected Bibliography
  • Index
Review by Choice Review

Thurston (Georgetown) explores the full story of Boko Haram's historical development and sustainability since the early 2000s. The book shows the group is more than a static terrorist organization. Thurston closely examines the behavior and beliefs key to understanding Boko Haram in the context of the complex religious and political environment. The group represents the outcome of dynamic, locally grounded interactions between religion and politics, and it reacts and adapts by shifting core doctrines in response to external events. Only by closely examining Boko Haram's history in northeastern Nigeria does it become possible to identify critical junctures in the movement's trajectory. The book reveals the dynamism of Boko Haram's doctrines and illuminates the political and social foundations of the localized niche that the movement came to occupy. Though unequivocally condemning Boko Haram, Thurston also contends that just as politics is part of the cause of the violence, so must politics be part of the solution. Nigeria's contentious politics, economic inequality, endemic corruption, political dysfunction, and counterproductive conflict management strategies are part of the environment that contributed to Boko Haram's rise. Only by understanding the complexity of Nigeria's recent past can the country meet the challenges of its equally complex future. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Khodr M. Zaarour, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Thurston (Salafism in Nigeria), visiting assistant professor of African history at Georgetown University, combines narrative and analysis to make a balanced and persuasive case that the causes of Boko Harams rise in Nigeria have been oversimplified. The group is best understood, he argues, not as a project of global jihadists or a response to economic inequality but asthe outcome of dynamic, locally grounded interactions between religion and politics. Boko Harams policies and decisions are flexible and adapt to external events: religious impulse, economic malaise, political dysfunction. These interactions began in the 1970s with a religious question: what did it mean to be Muslim in a Nigeria shaken to its foundations by civil war? A popular answer was provided by Salafist preachers, whose vision of Islam as providing a comprehensive, official, legal framework for public life was shared to some degree by almost three-fourths of Nigerias Muslims. The resulting confrontation with a secular state was exacerbated by the Muslim Norths growing sense of exclusion from the countrys economic development. An abortive uprising in 2009 led toclandestine regrouping, and then... terrorism and guerilla warfare; by 2011 anti-Christian and antisecular rhetoric had sharpened intohardline religious exclusivism, and by 2013 northern Nigeria was in an enduring state of war. Thurston ends by consideringsoft measures best suited to resolve the crisis. This is a superb, comprehensively researched study of a complex and challenging movement. (Dec.)