Since it erupted onto the world stage in 2009, people have asked, what is Boko Haram, and what does it stand for? Is there a coherent vision or set of beliefs behind it? Despite the growing literature about the group, few if any attempts have been made to answer these questions, even though Boko Haram is but the latest in a long line of millenarian Muslim reform groups to emerge in Northern Nigeria over the last two centuries. The Boko Haram Reader offers an unprecedented collection of essential texts, documents, videos, audio, and nashids (martial hymns), translated into English from Hausa, Arabic and Kanuri, tracing the group's origins, history, and evolution. Its editors, two Nigerian scholars, reveal how Boko Haram's leaders manipulate Islamic theology for the legitimisation, radicalization, indoctrination and dissemination of their ideas across West Africa. Mandatory reading for anyone wishing to grasp the underpinnings of Boko Haram's insurgency, particularly how the group strives to delegitimize its rivals and establish its beliefs as a dominant strand of Islamic thought in West Africa's religious marketplace.

Since it erupted onto the world stage in 2009, people have asked, what is Boko Haram, and what does it stand for? Is there a coherent vision or set of beliefs behind it? Despite the growing literature about the group, few if any attempts have been made to answer these questions, even though Boko Haram is but the latest in a long line of millenarian Muslim reform groups to emerge in Northern Nigeria over the last two centuries. 'The Boko Haram Reader' offers an unprecedented collection of essential texts, documents, videos, audio, and nashids (martial hymns), translated into English from Hausa, Arabic and Kanuri, tracing the group's origins, history, and evolution.

"Thurston has written the definitive history of Boko Haram. By weaving a complex tapestry of politics and religion, he explains the peculiarity and potency of one of the world's most lethal jihadist insurgencies. A violent and secretive sect that was impenetrable even to experts is now laid bare."--William McCants, author of The ISIS Apocalypse.e.

This book places the insurgent group Boko Haram, which has terrorised northeastern Nigeria through the last six years, in an historical and cultural context. It examines cultural changes in the lands south of Lake Chad through deep time, showing how these ancient processes can help us thinkabout Boko Haram's activities in the present. The archaeological and documentary record for this area is unusually rich for sub-Saharan Africa, and allows us to understand Boko Haram within an historical narrative that stretches back directly five centuries, with cultural origins that stretch evendeeper into the past.One important way to understand Boko Haram is as a frontier phenomenon, the most recent manifestation of processes of horrific violence, identity production and wealth creation that have been part of political relationships in this area of Central Africa through the last millennium. In strikingways, Boko Haram resembles the slave-raiders and warlords who figure in precolonial and colonial writings about the southern Lake Chad Basin. In modern times, these accounts are paralleled by the activities of smugglers, bandits (coupeurs de route, "road cutters") and tax evaders, illegal actors whostand in complex relationships to the governments of modern African nation-states. The borderlands of these states are often places where the state refuses to exercise its full authority, because of the profits and opportunities that illegal and semi-legal activities afford, among others to stateofficials and bureaucrats. For local people, Boko Haram's actions are thus to a great extent understood in terms of slave-raids and borderlands. Those actions are not some mysterious, unprecedented eruption of violence and savagery: they can be understood within local contexts of politics andhistory. This book is written to counter exoticised portrayals of Boko Haram's activities, and of the region as a whole.

This book analyzes the factors that drive Boko Haram’s violence, arguing that the movement is rooted in the historical and religious context of west Africa. The data presented is based on extensive research, including fieldwork in Nigeria, primary source analysis, archival work, and large-scale survey analyses. Each chapter deals with a different case-study that showcases a driver of Boko Haram’s violence, including how the jihad of Usman dan Fodio is used as a source of contemporary inspiration to Boko Haram; how the extrajudicial killing of its then leader Mohammad Yusuf spurred the group to violence; why the kidnapping of the Chibok schoolgirls was motivated by both ideology and strategy; how the formation of a caliphate and pledging of allegiance to ISIS gave Boko Haram an amplified presence; and how the issue of takfir led to the fracturing of the movement. To succeed in the fight against Boko Haram, this book argues, the Nigerian state needs to couple military advances with deep social changes, such as combatting corruption, reforming the police, and investing equitably across the country. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism and political violence, African politics, war and conflict studies, and security studies in general.

For over a decade, Boko Haram has waged a campaign of terror across northeastern Nigeria. In 2014, the kidnapping of 276 girls in Chibok shocked the world, giving rise to the #BringBackOurGirls movement. Yet Boko Haram’s campaign of violence against women and girls goes far beyond the Chibok abductions. From its inception, the group has systematically exploited women to advance its aims. Perhaps more disturbing still, some Nigerian women have chosen to become active supporters of the group, even sacrificing their lives as suicide bombers. These events cannot be understood without first acknowledging the long-running marginalisation of women in Nigerian society. Having conducted extensive fieldwork throughout the region, Hilary Matfess provides a vivid and thought-provoking account of Boko Haram’s impact on the lives of Nigerian women, as well as the wider social and political context that fuels the group’s violence.

An insurgency in Nigeria by the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram has left thousands dead, shaken Africa's biggest country and worried the world. Yet it remains a mysterious – almost unknowable – organisation. ̃ rough exhaustive on-the-ground reporting, Mike Smith takes readers inside the con° ict and provides the ÿ rst in-depth account of the violence and unrest. He traces Boko Haram from its beginnings as a small Islamist sect in Nigeria's remote north-east, led by a baby-faced but charismatic preacher, to its transformation into a hydra-headed entity, deploying suicide bombers and abducting schoolgirls.Much of the book is told through the eyes of Nigerians who have found themselves caught between frightening insurgents and security forces accused of horrifying brutality. It includes the voices of a forgotten police o? cer left paralysed by an attack, women whose husbands have been murdered and a sword-wielding vigilante using charms to fend o? insurgent bullets. It journeys through the sleaze and corruption that has robbed Africa's biggest oil producer of its potential, making it such fertile ground for extremism. Along the way it questions whether there can be any end to the violence and the ways in which this might be achieved. Interspersed with history, this book delves into the roots of this unholy war being waged by a virtually unknown organisation, which is set to shape the destiny of Africa's biggest economy and most populous state – and perhaps aff ect the future of Africa.