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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite tales on this weekly e-newsletter.
The author is deputy majority chief in Gambia’s Nationwide Meeting
It has been a lethal begin to the 12 months in Nigeria, the place jihadist organisation Boko Haram and different militias murdered over 220 folks in January alone. Their atrocities proceed greater than a decade after the Chibok ladies have been kidnapped, exposing management and coverage failures in components of western Africa. Boko Haram’s ideology — rooted in a grotesque distortion of Islam — declares training forbidden. The group targets girls’s empowerment by means of violence, understanding that training is vital to a simply society.
Elsewhere within the wider Muslim world, comparable errors are being made — 1.4mn girls are at present barred from lecture rooms in Afghanistan, and comparable restrictions are unfolding in Libya and Syria, the place morality police and curriculum purges are erasing girls’s entry to training.
As a proud African and Muslim chief, I do know what’s at stake. Boko Haram, in addition to being chargeable for tens of hundreds of deaths, has pressured ladies into marriages, and even groomed them into committing suicide attacks.
African governments like mine have promised to guard residents from such violence. Solely final summer time, the African Union and the Multinational Joint Task Force labored to oust Boko Haram from the Lake Chad Basin. But inside corruption and fragmented responses allowed the militants to regroup and broaden into Cameroon, Niger and elsewhere in western Africa. They’re bolstered by world jihadist networks like al-Qaeda and Isis.
If Muslim-majority nations falter now, the results could possibly be catastrophic. Africa’s battle underscores a tough fact: power alone fails. Army motion can disrupt terrorist operations, however victory calls for a broader technique — peacebuilding, financial stability and theological dialogue. We should have interaction with these which have been radicalised: difficult extremist narratives and providing pathways again into society. Research present that education and faith-based support might help fighters abandon radical ideologies, chopping terrorism off at its supply. Solely by addressing the grievances that gas extremism can Africa and the broader Muslim world forge a sustainable path to peace.
An instance of that broader imaginative and prescient got here to life final month in Islamabad, the place Islamic students, political leaders and activists convened for the Worldwide Convention on Women’ Training in Muslim Communities. Organised by the Muslim World League below secretary-general Sheikh Mohammad Al-Issa, the occasion included voices like Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai and culminated within the historic Islamabad Declaration, which reclaims Islam’s core ideas by declaring ladies’ training not only a spiritual obligation however a cornerstone of societal progress. Greater than rhetoric, it envisions unprecedented collaboration between Muslim nations, worldwide organisations, and academic establishments to counter jihadist ideologies.
Nonetheless, the Muslim world can’t struggle this battle alone. Africa’s expertise illustrates the price of disunity. In Nigeria, some religion leaders preached forgiveness and reintegration, however with out broad help, these efforts faltered, resulting in a decade of terror and misplaced potential for tens of millions of women. Co-ordinated resolve might help stem the tide of extremism.
The battle for women’ training is a battle for dignity, alternative and justice. An informed woman strengthens her neighborhood and contributes to her nation’s progress. Denying that violates her rights and stalls societal progress.
From Nigeria to Afghanistan, the message is evident: no woman’s potential ought to be extinguished within the shadows. The Muslim world has an opportunity to steer and make training a common proper somewhat than a privilege. However it calls for greater than phrases; it requires decided engagement from governments, religion leaders and civil society.
