Cameroon mosque's solution to Boko Haram: free education for girls

Alessandra Kelley · Dec 24, 2016

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ucation-girls-fight-radicalisation-boko-haram

As a military campaign against Boko Haram continues in northern Cameroon, leaders of the country’s biggest mosques in the south are deploying another weapon to ensure that the Islamist insurgency doesn’t spread: education for girls.

Mohaman Saminou, director of the Grande Mosque in Briqueterie – one of the city’s poorest and predominately Muslim districts, is providing free education for girls every weekend because he believes they are most at risk of being radicalised.

At Saminou’s mosque, the girls are taught computer science, alongside the Qur’an and sewing. As the Guardian is shown around, a young girl runs in to the room and declares that her favourite subject is the Qur’an. “She’s lying – it’s actually computers,” laughs her teacher, Dsaratou Oumarou.

There is also a modernist attitude in the school attached to the Yaoundé Central Mosque, the capital’s largest. Here students are taught in French, English and Arabic, with posters around the building promoting “bilingualism as a gateway to quality education and sustainable development”.

Chris P · Dec 24, 2016

Although my experiences are in East and Southern Africa, I believe people join things like Boko Haram because they have no access to legitimate opportunities. Development works, but with local ownership like described here.

MaeZe · Dec 24, 2016

Cameroon mosque's solution to Boko Haram: free education for girls

What an uplifting story.

Thank you for sharing it.

frimble3 · Dec 24, 2016

Seconding MaeZe! A wonderful story! And, because it's run by prominent mosques, Boko Haram can't really claim that it's an anti-Muslim idea, or that it's some sort of foreign (or Christian) trick.
(Boko Haram could make the claim, but they'd be hard pressed to prove it. Especially if the leaders of the mosques are well-liked and respected.)

Friendly Frog · Dec 26, 2016

I like the idea. My idea of mentally coping with all the crappy news about those BH-losers in the past has been to donate each time to a charity that promotes education for girls. (As they ramped up the nastiness, I can tell you it became at times a costly affair! But worth it.) It's nice to see others think the same way.

Cameroon mosque's solution to Boko Haram: free education for girls

Alessandra Kelley

Sophipygian

Chris P

Likes metaphors mixed, not stirred

MaeZe

frimble3

Heckuva good sport

Friendly Frog

Snarkenfaugister