Boko Haram Slaughters 2,000 but Where Is the March?

On Jan. 3, four days prior to the attack on the Paris publication Charlie Hebdo, the Islamic terror group Boko Haram slaughtered over 2,000 people and leveled an entire village in Nigeria. On Sunday, the very same day as the march in Paris in support of the Jan. 7 killings there, Boko Haram used a ten year old girl as a suicide bomber and murdered an additional 20 people.

While the attack in Paris immediately garnered worldwide attention-and rightly so, today many are asking about the lack of response to the murders of many more people in Nigeria. Where is the march for the 2,000 people, mostly children, women and senior citizens, who lost their lives in the most horrific manner possible?

Nigerians are coming forward today asking why they see no outrage on a global scale; no comments from a huge list of prominent world leaders; little press coverage; no millions marching in any city.

In the wake of events here in the U.S. in which the chant has become “black lives matter,” it should give everyone pause to realize the enormity of the international silence on Boko Haram and the people who died in Nigeria last week. Black lives matter, so where is the march?

This is not to disparage the horror of the Charlie Hebdo murders, but let us begin to shine a light on the inequality here. The 2,000 people slaughtered in Nigeria matter just as much as the journalists and market bystanders in Paris. Each life lost is a waste. Each life lost devastates the surviving loved ones. Each life lost symbolizes the growing threat of radical Islam around the world. Each person dead was a brilliant force, unique in all the world. Where is the march for them?

If there is to be no march, then how about at the very least, a comment from important world leaders, such as Barack Obama? He was quick to speak up about the events in Paris, although he chickened out of attending the protest, leaving his braver colleagues to comprise the front line of the gathering. Yet, his silence on the Boko Haram slaughter has been deafening.

In all of this discussion about black lives and the disparity between the outcry over white and black deaths, another element has emerged that cannot be ignored: radical Islam is a war on women, and women remain the most oppressed group around the world, garnering little attention and never any military action. Remember the 2014 campaign #bringbackourgirls? It amounted to nothing. The war on women fought by Muslims will never be countered, because women’s lives seem to matter even less on the global spectrum than black lives when it comes to the attention and outcry over their suffering.

Because Boko Haram targets women, they almost guarantee no international action will be taken against them. For the same reason, Islam will never be acknowledged as the inherently violent religion it is, and no attempts will be made to raise awareness about the fact that one of its primary goals is to oppress women.

Black lives matter. Women’s lives matter. But not, apparently, enough for world leaders to take real action against Islam, to march for blacks’ and womens’ lives, or even to speak out against the actions of Boko Haram in any kind of substantive way. Where is the march? It exists only in the minds of those brave enough to speak the truth on Islam and to care about the worth of every individual regardless of skin color or gender. The powerful should follow suit.

Photo credit: postnewsline.com