A Letter to Boko Haram: What Would Dan Fodio Do? By Malcolm Fabiyi, PhD

Recently, your group declared that it would no longer dialogue with the Federal Government. You have publicly stated that Boko Haram has two fundamental objectives. The first is to Islamize Nigeria, expel Christians from Northern Nigeria and re-establish the legacy of Shehu Dan Fodio. The second is to bring an end to the practice and propagation of western education in Nigeria. With such hardline positions, it is difficult to see what the basis for any negotiations would be. Dialogue presumes there is the capacity to find middle ground, and the possibility that the two sides to a conflict have certain common positions on which they can agree.

My best part of the article.....

"What exactly do you even mean by western education? Do you not realize that you belittle the contributions that Africa and Arabia made to science by using such a term? Do you not see that by calling a body of knowledge to which all races, peoples and civilizations have made a contribution by the name “western education” belittles the role of Africa and Islam in the development of modern science? Mathematics is the language of science. Are you aware that Algebra, the most fundamental of the branches of mathematics is derived from the Arabic word Al-Jabr, coined by the Persian Mathematician Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī who published the earliest known comprehensive treatise on the subject in 820 AD. Are you aware of the Rhind Papyrus, an ancient Egyptian (African) mathematical text containing groundbreaking mathematical concepts dated to about 2000 BC, clearly demonstrating the African origins of modern mathematics? Do you know that Euclid, the father of modern geometry actually lived and studied in Egypt?  Do you know that the number system that underlies all of modern science is called the Arabic numeral system – not the German, French, or English numeral system? "

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