Some Toronto school girls are standing up for Boko Haram abductees, reports the Toronto Star:
Manal Ahmed has experienced her own share of social injustice, but it doesn’t stop her from campaigning for the rescue of the 200 Nigerian girls snapped from their school by insurgents in April.
On Wednesday, the 13-year-old joined 900 students from across the GTA at a social justice conference to condemn the ruthless act of Boko Haram, an Islamic extremist group, whose name in the local Hausa language translates into “Western education is a sin.” Its leader has threatened to sell the girls into slavery.
The Grade 6 to 12 students attending the And Social Justice for All event all pledged to take part in the international “#BringBackOurGirls” social media campaign for the return of the abducted girls...
And the take-away from all that, of course, is this:
Ahmed, whose parents are Muslims from northern Africa, said injustice has no borders, citing a recent incident at a grocery store where a man told her mother “to go somewhere else to speak your own language” while she was speaking in Arabic on her cellphone.
“This (abduction) has nothing to do with religion. Islam doesn’t say, ‘kill people.’ It teaches us to respect and treat everyone equally. These abductors are just rebels,” said Ahmed, adding that she felt empowered, being surrounded by like-minded peers at the conference.
Actually, what Islam says (in one of the Koran's most famous lines) is:
"Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Messenger have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection."
Sorry, sweetie, but that doesn't sound terribly respectful and equitable to me. It does, however, sound like something which Boko Haram may well have taken to heart.
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