Boko Haram

Baroness Afshar Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I will happily join in that. Boko Haram has almost certainly killed more Muslims than it has Christians. It is very much a radical Muslim movement, which is as opposed to the Sultanate of Sokoto and the moderate Muslims in the north as it is to others.

[Baroness Afshar (CB)]

My Lords, in their negotiations, are the Government aware that everything Boko Haram is doing is contrary to the teaching of Islam, to the textual teaching of the Koran, which demands the education of women, and to the practice of the Prophet, who favoured his wives and daughters to be educated?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am well aware of that. But, as the noble Baroness well knows, radical movements of this sort, made up of the young, discontented and jobless, tend to latch on to whatever ideologies they can find.