Bombs, ‘sects’ and questions in Nigeria

December 25, 2011 By

Tragically, the top news story on this Christmas Day is another outbreak of violence against Christian believers, this time a wave of bombings and terrorism in the highly divided nation of Nigeria.

The New York Times now has its own story online and the top is typical of other mainstream offerings. At this point, I only want to question one key word:

BENIN CITY, Nigeria – A series of apparently coordinated bombings struck three churches during Christmas services across Nigeria on Sunday, killing more than a dozen people and solidifying a recent escalation in violence by a radical Muslim sect.

At least five bombings were reported, including three at churches and one at a state security building. The worst appeared to be at a packed Catholic church just outside the capital, Abuja, where a bomb tore through the building and killed at least 16 people as they left a morning mass.

Charred bodies littered the street and twisted cars burned in front of the church. Rescue workers struggling to cope with the chaos faced a shortage of ambulances for the dozens of wounded and an enraged crowd that initially blocked them from entering the church until soldiers arrived to restore order.

The militant sect Boko Haram, which seeks to impose Islamic law across the country, claimed responsibility for several of the bombings and was suspected in others.

Before I get to the word “sect,” I am curious about the theme — present in other stories, as well — that an “enraged crowd” prevented rescue workers from entering the church. This raises several questions, for me. This bombing took place in the predominantly Christian South. Why would an enraged crowd of Christians prevent rescue workers from coming to their aid? The enraged mourners waited for troops to arrive before allowing rescue workers to begin their work?

Most strange. I am not blaming reporters for struggling to clarify these strange reports. I am saying that it is clear that, early on, it’s hard to tell precisely what happened at this scene. We can only hope for additional information in the hours ahead.

Now, on to the controversial word “sect.”

This is another word that reporters tend to toss around without much thought. The top definition in online dictionaries is close to the one that I learned in history courses about religious movements around the world:

sect

noun/sekt/…

A group of people with somewhat different religious beliefs (typically regarded as heretical) from those of a larger group to which they belong

As is often the case, this strict definition has faded a bit by the time one reaches the third definition:

A philosophical or political group, esp. one regarded as extreme or dangerous

So is Boko Haram (which means “Non-Islamic or Western education is a sin”) a splinter “sect” that has — in terms of its religious doctrines — split away from mainstream Islam in Nigeria? Is it an heretical sect, as in definition No. 1?

Well, it certainly is dangerous (see definition No. 3) and not normal, at least in terms of its use of violence.

So what are the journalists at the Times (and other news organizations that have embraced this term) trying to say when they say that Boko Haram is a “splinter” “sect”?

We have this reference to go by:

The militant sect Boko Haram, which seeks to impose Islamic law across the country, claimed responsibility for several of the bombings and was suspected in others.

The problem, of course, is that the conflict tearing at the heart of Nigeria centers on attempts to move Sharia law out of the Muslim Northeast and into the center of the nation, especially the conflict-torn city of Jos. In other words, it is simply inaccurate to imply that Boko Haram is heretical because it wants Sharia law in more sections of Nigeria.

So is the key the word “impose,” with its hint of doing this through violence? If so, it would be easier just to say so — without implying that there is a division in mainstream Islamic belief over the need for Sharia throughout Nigeria.

If violence is the key, it would be wise for journalists to simply ditch “sect” and move to the wording that Reuters is using in its early coverage. Yes, there are also conflicting reports about the casualties:

LAGOS (Reuters) – Christmas Day bomb attacks against churches in Nigeria by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram targeted the country’s religious and ethnic faultlines in an apparently escalating campaign to fracture the nation’s stability.

The shadowy group from Nigeria’s Muslim north, blamed for dozens of bombings and shootings in recent years, said it was responsible for a string of blasts, three of them in churches, including one that killed at least 27 people at a packed Christmas service on the outskirts of the capital Abuja.

At this point, I see no reason to say that Boko Haram is a “sect,” in terms being a heretical group that has broken off from Islam. The key seems to be that this politicized Islamist group is “radical” or “militant” and is using deadly violence in its attempts to produce a rather mainstream Islamic goal in the context of Nigeria — the spread of Sharia.

Is the word “sect” being used elsewhere in mainstream news reports? Is there any sign that this is a splinter group that has split away from Islam?

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Filed Under: Catholicism, Islam, Journalism, World, World Religions
About TMatt

Terry Mattingly directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. He writes a weekly column for the Scripps Howard News Service.

  • Dave

    I agree with your skepticism about the word “sect” because nothing in the report suggests Boko Haram practices Islam in a unique way. Its name and program are both political, albeit politics rooted in religion.

    On the PBS News Hour some experts can be found, called in to comment about the MidEast, who use “confessional” where other talking heads on the same topic use “sectarian.” The former term would make no sense in this context so it’s probably good to avoid the latter or its lingusitic root.

  • Jerry

    Is the word “sect” being used elsewhere in mainstream news reports? Is there any sign that this is a splinter group that has split away from Islam?

    For what it’s worth, the LA Times blog report also used the word sect: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2011/12/christmas-mass-bomb-nigeria.html Searching finds a lot of news stories where sect is used.

    Your second question asking if this is a splinter group that has split away from Islam seems to portray a Christian frame-of-reference rather than a Muslim one. I do agree that sect is one of those words that should be avoided in stories like this perhaps because to western ears it calls up Christian associations.

    But for what it’s worth, a google search for Muslim sect found the Wikipedia page with a long list of different Muslim groups and a frequent use of the word sect used to indicate branches: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_schools_and_branches as well as a whole page listing Islamic sects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Islamic_sects There are other web sites that list what are called Muslim sects but this group is not listed in the ones I found.

  • Deacon John M. Bresnahan

    I would like to see a mainstream media, well-researched survey of violence directed against other religions in Moslem majority countries (or areas of countries) around the world.
    Looking at news stories from around the world there is violence directed against other religions by hundreds of groups or organizations that self-identify as Moslem. And they seem to get little, if any, major or serious opposition from Moslem religious leaders. In fact, far more often–when you can find a news story on the topic-it seems Moslem religious leaders approve of such actions forthrightly or indirectly by their silence (which may be the media’s fault for not covering vigorous, strong opposition by Moslem religious leaders to violence in the name of Allah or the Koran–in fact, the presence of such opposition–or it’s lack thereof– would make a good mainstream media survey.)
    Considering there is so much violence against other religions (or secular people) by Moslems in such widely disparate countries and cultures as the Phillipines, Holland, Pakistan, Nigeria, Iraq, Egypt, Ethiopia, etc.—at some point shouldn’t the real possibility of there being a “violence flaw” in Islam at least be openly discussed in the media and not brushed under the rug as some sort of irrational prejudice or fairly looking into the issue as somehow being unAmerican.

  • Dave

    Deacon, I agree this would make an interesting story, a kind of wrapup of this sort of sectarian community violence (my favorite oxymoron) around the world.

    But it would have to be handled with care, almost diplomatically. It hasn’t been too many centuries since Christians burned one another at the stake for heresy. Talking about a “violence flaw” in Islam would open journalists up to a hypocrisy charge unless the same thing in Christianity were mentioned from the age of sectarian warfare in Europe.

  • Julia

    AP is also using “sect”.

    Outside St. Theresa Catholic Church, crowds gathered among the burned-out cars in the dirt parking lot, angry over the attack claimed by a radical Muslim sect and fearful that the group will target more churches.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501710_162-57348370/nigerians-fear-more-church-attacks-after-39-killed/

    This AP story also has some other strange locutions:

    Rev. Father Christopher Jataudarde told The Associated Press that Sunday’s blast happened as church officials gave parishioners white powder as part of a tradition celebrating the birth of Christ.

    A local Catholic parish has “church officials”?
    Would that be the parish priest and parish volunteers?

    What kind of “white powder” is given out?
    Flour or cocaine or bicarb or arrowroot?

  • R.S.Newark

    Actually, the city of Jos is located in northen Nigeria, a heavily Muslim area… where the prevention of ambulance access to the dying and wounded would make unhappy sense

  • http://www.getreligion.org Mollie

    Note how Reuters use the old “poor people are morally unfit” narrative in its story.

    The latest attacks dramatically increase the challenge facing the government of President Goodluck Jonathan.

    He is a Christian southerner. Critics have accused him of trying to deal with Boko Haram purely as a security question, instead of doing more to tackle issues of poverty, youth unemployment, corruption and perceived alienation and resentment among Muslim northerners.

  • MJBubba

    The place where the crowd held up ambulances is near Abuja, the capitol. It is further south than Jos. Both cities are north of the rivers (Niger and Benue), so both are in the area where Muslims are dominant. Perhaps the people had seen news reports from last Thursday when a suicide bomber in Iraq was driving an ambulance.

  • MJBubba

    A few months ago a couple with Lutheran Bible Translators spoke at my church. (They have lived in southern Nigeria for 30 years.) They were sticking to the party line that the violence is all about nomadic northern tribal people fighting for grazing lands in the face of advancing desertification. This is a story that is as old as the desert itself. What is different in just the past 15 years is the increased violence, triggered by Muslim jihadis. Boko Haram started stepping up the violence just two years ago. They are using the pre-existing tensions to ramp up their influence in the Muslim communities. The Wikipedia entry for Boko Haram has a catalog of their violence. A longer history of the jihad in Nigeria is at: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/nigeria-1.htm

  • Deacon John M. Bresnahan

    Dave–I agree that such stories as I would like to see in the media should be written with delicacy and factual care. However, I don’t think that gross sins perpetrated by some Christians 4 or 5 centuries ago in a very different time and cultural era, should be an excuse for the mass media to abandon Christians to wholesale slaughter over huge swaths of the planet in our modern era.
    In fact, it has been the realization at how badly some Christians have misused the Bible and its teachings that helped turn the Christian religion away from violence as a solution to religious problems.
    So why shouldn’t Moslems be expected–even by our media- to look more critically at their Koran if that is what is needed to halt their religion from being steeped in so much violence directed at members of other religions as well as at their co-religionists they disagree with.It is one thing to mind our business when it comes to some cultural issues –it is another when our brother and sister Christians are being terrorized, murdered,blown up, incinerated, and being driven out of their native homelands.

  • Bern

    For decades the media referred to the troubles in Ireland as “sectarian violence”. Justified?

  • Dave

    Bern — Yes, justified because Protestants and Catholics observe Christianity in different ways.

    Deacon — I have no disageement with your second post per se but it suggests a narrative of Christianity the advanced, Islam the retarded; Christianity the teacher, Islam the student. No prudent editor wants to put anything like that out in the present world.

  • http://!)! Passing By

    The principal antagonists in Northern Ireland were closely associated with the Catholic and Protestant faiths, so “sectarian” is, arguably accurate, if somewhat simplistic.

    The NYT article has some information that hints at Boko Haram being a “sect”, but other information hints that it is a political movement, or, as one article put it, an “insurgency”. I’ve read 4 articles now, and the Times was best at providing information the others left me wanting, which was who had been previous targets of the group. As iy turns out, the attacks on Christians are an expansion of their previous interests in government and Muslim targets.

  • Bern

    Dave, in other words, Catholic and Protestant are each others heretics?

  • Dave

    Bern, my original comment was in a journalistic context. You are asking here about what is in their hearts. That is no longer about the journalism, so I decline with thanks.

  • poverello

    I’m with Deacon John. Christians are currently being murdered by muslim jihadi nutbags in Nigeria and elsewhere because the Christians dare to worship God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Unless Christians become accept the muslim god and the muslim “prophet”, they’re dead. This has nothing to do with what a Christian king or Christian alliance did 300 years ago. This is happening now. The jihadi mentality is in ascendance throughout islam, and it despises the modern Christian concepts captured in the Sermon on the Mount and the Golden Rule. Accommodation and appeasement are only seen as weakness by those people.

  • Julia

    Re: Northern Ireland

    Bern — Yes, justified because Protestants and Catholics observe Christianity in different ways.

    Actually the two groups’ religious affiliation is just a marker -one group was indigenous and the other was brought in from Scotland to settle land taken from the indigenous.

    Something similar happened in what is now the Republic of Ireland – only it was the English who were given the indigenous Irish farms instead of the Scot Protestants.

  • http://!)! Passing By

    Dave’s point about cultural and inter-religious sensitivities is a fair one, but I don’t think that comparing contemporary behavior (of any group) to acts committed (by any group) 500 ago is very helpful.

    Before the current era, a culture’s identity and self-definition included a common religion. Society today, even if a state church exists (as in England), can understand itself without reference to a single religion, which makes a lot more room for minority faith. Christianity, with some notable exceptions, made the transition to the modern church/state interaction. Has Islam? Where and how? A minority of Christians (a tiny minority) would impose Old Testament law in a culture. Are Muslims in favor of Sharia a minority? If so, how much of one? As to whether Christianity comes out looking more advanced and superior, I suppose that would depend on whether you think a secular state is more advanced and superior.

    That’s just an example, and the question is not whether Christianity or Islam is good or bad. The question is how the story of religion in today’s society should be told with reference to the modern world.

  • R. Howell

    For what it’s worth, Al-Jazeera also calls the group a “sect” and quotes a local police commisioner as using the term:
    http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2011/12/20111224124241652788.html
    Doesn’t mean they’re correct, but it does suggest the idea isn’t an invention of western journalists.

    (HT: wikipedia)

  • Dave

    Deacon, no prudent editor would want to put that frame on such a story because it would inflame relations with Moslems.

    I realize this is a departure from what we have known as journalism, but look at just the inflammatory releases you mentioned. That’s journalism dealing with touchy stories as though the journalist were not another actor in the drama. We’re used to thinking of journalism as reporting news from above the drama, but clearly that’s not the world we live in. I’m definitely not saying I like it, but I didn’t invent the world; I only inhabit it.

  • Will

    For decades the media referred to the troubles in Ireland as “sectarian violence”. Justified?

    No, because “Protestant” and “Catholic” were being used as surrogates for Loyalists and Nationalists. Leaving the impression that there would never have been an “Irish Question” if only Henry VIII had remained loyal to Rome.

    People who tried to get out of harassment by saying they were Jews actually reported being demanded if they were Catholic Jews or Protestant Jews.

    Then there is my repeated complaint about juxtaposing “Muslims” with “ethnic Serbs”.

  • expat

    Unfortunately, for the vast majority of Muslims, the Quran must be taken literally; any suggestion of applying historical-critical exegesis is considered anathema. I have spoken to a number of imams who have confirmed this. Those who think differently are a tiny minority, and for most Muslims religion trumps the laws of their countries of residence. Many even in Europe would like to see sharia established either in whole or in part. Some countries like Britain, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands are already moving in that direction with their laws against “hate speech”, which effectively silence even legitimate criticism. Why does Dutch politician Geert Wilders have to move to a different place every day and have 24-hour police protection, or Danish cartoonish Kurt Westergaard live in constant danger of his life? Because of literal reading of the Quran.

  • http://www.post-gazette.com Ann Rodgers

    I will start by saying that “sect” is a word I avoid because it’s pejorative (no one uses it for their own group) and because it is subject to multiple interpretations. It doesn’t mean only a group that has broken away from a faith, but a group that has developed distinctive beliefs and practices within that faith. In that respect “sect” could be accurate here, in that you’re dealing with a group that has decided that violence is the preferred way to spread Islam. However, because there is no evidence that the worship practices of the terrorist group are distinctive from those of other Muslims, I don’t think it’s the best word to use. “Militant Islamist group” says it much better.

  • John Pack Lambert

    I have seen people compare the use of sect in Europe to that of cult in the United States.

  • http://!)! Passing By

    My favorite so far is “shadowy Islamic insurgency”.

    Someone was criticizing The New York Times on this thread or another. Heavens knows I’ve issued my share of criticism. But I read three of their stories on Nigeria and thought they handled the religion angle well. They mostly avoided the moral equivalence so many are desperate to make. And they presented enough information on previous attacks (the BBC and AP did not do so) to convince me of the primarily political nature of the organization, but without beating me with it. Of course, additional information might lead me to change my understanding.

    So mark the calendar: I just praised the NYT for religion coverage. :-)

  • Bern

    I’m still trying to get past the issue with the use of the word “sect” The primary definition cited in the post was that a sect was “often heretical” Therefore I brought up the use of “sectarian” to describe the Troubles in Ireland. I was probably not clear in that the issue for me is that the primary definition of sect as quoted is apparently not at play in this coverage, nor was it at play in the coverage of violence in Ireland. In fact, the use of “sect” or “sectarian” often simply obfuscates the iesues at hand. On the other hand it seemed that the objectio to tuse of “sect” here had the effect of implying, as others comments seem to support, that the bombers could not be or represent at sect as they are Muslims who believe what all Muslims do in dealing death to nonbelievers.

  • Dave

    Bern, definitions come out of backgrounds, and I would say the one cited for “sect” comes out of a Christian background, hence the mention of heresy. We have the resources we have.

    I agree with you that the Troubles were a political battle fought under sectarian banners but, because the use of such labels successfully rallied populations, the term still applies.

    Whether Boko Haram reflects the beliefs of all Moslems is not a journalism question. What it doesn’t do is practice the religion of Islam in its own way, and thus the term does not apply.

  • John Pack Lambert

    Possibly a better term would be Denomination. I am not sure if that works in the Muslim context, but I see no reason why it would not.

  • John Pack Lambert

    Bern I think is getting at the debate about whether Boko Haram differs in political methods or in beliefs from other Muslims.

    I do not think that is really a material question. I think the main point should be that they couch their goals in religious language. They are an organization that uses religious rhetoric, even if its goals are what some consider “political”. To some extent this distinction is inmaterial in the view of many (note I say “Many” not another adjective) Muslims.

    The Amadiyah Muslims clearly and unequivocably reject the tactics of groups like Boko Haram. There are a few American Muslim groups (not including CAIR) which have rejected any physical or governmental punishment anywhere for apostasy. There are other groups and individuals with other beliefs along a spectrum about religion and violence, and Boko Haram generally would be counted as one of the most radical groups, along with Al-Queda, Abu Sayef, Hamas and Hezbollah.