The Obama administration undermined Nigeria’s Christian president while cheering the rise of its former Islamic dictator.
Now some human rights groups are belatedly noticing that parts of the country run under Islamic law look a whole like ISIS.
U.N. rights experts asked Nigeria on Monday to release a 22-year-old singer who was condemned to death over an allegedly blasphemous song, and said the sentence broke international law.
Yahaya Aminu Sharif was sentenced last month by a sharia court in Kano, in Nigeria’s mostly Muslim north, after he performed the song and shared it on WhatsApp.
“Music is not a crime,” read a joint statement from the group of U.N. rapporteurs.
It is under Islam. And 13-year-olds are criminals.
Child rights agency UNICEF has condemned the sentencing of a 13-year-old boy to 10 years in prison for blasphemy in northern Nigeria.
Omar Farouq was convicted in a Sharia court in Kano State in northwest Nigeria after he was accused of using foul language toward Allah in an argument with a friend.
He was sentenced on August 10 by the same court that recently sentenced a studio assistant Yahaya Sharif-Aminu to death for blaspheming Prophet Mohammed, according to lawyers.The lawyer said Farouq’s mother had fled to a neighboring town after mobs descended on their home following his arrest.
I’m sure Nigeria will get right on that now that the UN has spoken.
This is part of a larger pattern.
A prominent Nigerian humanist accused of blasphemy has been arrested and taken to the northern city of Kano, according to figures close to him.
Mubarak Bala, the president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, was taken from his home on 28 April in neighbouring Kaduna state and taken to Kano, where a warrant for his arrest was issued, Leo Igwe, a fellow Nigerian humanist and human rights advocate, said.
Igwe said police had denied Bala access to a lawyer and had not said what the charges were, heightening fears for his safety.
While Islamic massacres of Christians have gotten plenty of attention, the growing Islamist crackdown through its legal system is making waves. Belatedly.
The situation in Nigeria resembles that of the Arab Spring, where Obama’s people decided that the best solution to Islamic terrorists was to empower Islamists. Now a range of ordinary people are paying the price.
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