Religion is a Mental Illness

Just because you don’t hear about something, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

Because tragically, too often, boys and men suffer in darkness.

There is perhaps no better example of this than the horrific actions of Boko Haram, and the countless boys and men they have taken, without trace, and to very little outrage.

For it is not just the education of women and girls that the group are implacably against, Boko Haram are against all Western education, for all people, including men and boys.

For years they demonstrated this through enacting unspeakable war crimes onto innocent Nigerian men and boys, often releasing women and girls, and for years they were ignored by a disinterested world.

Boys disappeared. Men were killed. Nobody said anything.

And certainly nobody especially important.

Then things changed in April 2014, when nearly 300 Nigerian girls were taken, and the world woke up to what was going on.

Celebrities marched the red carpets, political leaders spoke up, Michelle Obama fought for justice, god damn, we had China and America working together for once.

#bringbackourgirls rang out, as it should, and the much awaited outrage and long overdue horror finally took flight.

Most of the girls were saved, and the world went about its business as usual…

The following three years saw not 300 boys taken, or 500… but 10,000, and as before, silence reined supreme.

So who will speak for these forgotten boys?

Who will bring back all Nigeria’s children?

Patterns in Making Victims’ Gender Visible or Invisible in News Media Reporting of Boko Haram’s Massacres and Kidnappings

Boko Haram, a terrorist group based in Nigeria, has systematically conducted gender- based mass kidnappings and killings throughout its history, and these gendered crimes have included both male and female victims. This research examined newspaper articles on Boko Haram’s gendered crimes reported from July 2013 to February 2021, with a focus on the relative visibility of the gender of the victims. The genders of male and female abductees were clearly identified; however, the gender of male massacre victims was relatively invisible irrespective of whether they were men or boys. A failure to report the gendered nature of the massacres may contribute to lower awareness and, thus, reduced security resourcing needed to address such severe human rights violations.

The name Boko Haram can be loosely translated as “Western education is sin” (Sergie & Johnson, 2014, para. 4). The group has strongly advocated radical social and educational reforms throughout Nigeria (Bello, 2021), aiming at eliminating all Western influences and replacing Western education and standards with “undiluted” Islamic laws and procedures that are identical to Sharia. Boko Haram might have deemed offensive any consideration of improving women’s empowerment through education instead of seeing it as a key issue of human rights and development. Thus, in April 2014, the group gained international notice and notoriety for the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls and the subsequent #BringBackOurGirls campaign promoted by the then First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama. The crime garnered international outrage and support to seek the return of the girls, of which at the time of publishing, 90 were still missing (Lewis, 2023). Boko Haram also used female kidnapping and suicide bombers as part of its strategy to increase its media coverage (Zenn & Pearson, 2014).

The gendered nature of Boko Haram’s tactics was used before and after the Chibok kidnapping. Boko Haram has committed gender-selective kidnappings and executions against adults and children throughout much of its history. This insurgent group is believed to have kidnapped up to an estimated 10,000 boys and men to be forcibly conscripted or enslaved (Hinshaw & Parkinson, 2016; Topol, 2017) and kidnapped hundreds of women and girls for pressured conversions to Islam, to marry Boko Haram combatants, to be used for sexual and domestic enslavement, or to be used for tactical strategy (Amnesty International, 2015; Omilusi, 2015; Zenn & Pearson, 2014). While Boko Haram has also engaged in bombings where the killing has been more indiscriminate or done based on religion or engagement in secular education, a significant portion of the abductions and killings were gender based.

Academic literature to date has addressed Boko Haram’s gendered crimes with an almost exclusive focus on women, girls, and children. Barkindo, Gudaku, and Wesley (2013) report on Boko Haram’s violence against Christian women and girls, defining gender-based violence as that conducted by males or male institutions against women and girls, thus definitionally excluding recognition of boys and men as victims. Pereira (2018) and Zenn and Pearson (2014) directed their attention to female victims of Boko Haram’s violence and briefly mentioned that insurgent violence is also directed toward men and boys. Pogoson and Saleh (2019) focused on female vulnerability to violence in Nigeria and argued that Nigeria’s security forces needed to prioritize the protection of women from violence. When discussing Boko Haram’s and al Shabaab’s1 tactics, Matfess (2020) omitted any mention of men and boy victims and compared the violence toward women with violence against civilians, thus comparing female gender identity with noncombatant identities. A report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (2015) on Boko Haram mostly excluded recognizing men and boys as victims of this gender-based violence while also acknowledging in other parts that men and boys were specifically targeted to be murdered or kidnapped. Likewise, Boukhars (2020) identified Boko Haram’s gendered crimes as being solely about the kidnappings of women and girls. In an edited book titled Boko Haram and International Law (Iyi & Strydom, 2018), a section containing three chapters focused on the welfare of girls and women in the conflict while the entire book mentioned the word “boys” a total of three times in reference to incidents of their victimization. The Boko Haram academic gendered victim discourse and analysis relates almost exclusively to females and tends to exclude males. To date, there appears little attention and acknowledgment of the civilian male victims in the literature or discourse.