If you watch American television and listen to their radio stations then you've probably heard something like what MSNBC's Erin Burnett said this morning:

"What most people know about Nigeria, the most populous African nation, is that its people live in extreme poverty." 

She went on to describe oil-rich corrupt Nigerians (including Abdulmutallab's banker dad), and  10-feet long chandeliers found in one of Abuja's suburbs.

Then the talking heads, all over tv, begin to talk about Africa and Africom and the danger Islam poses to Western countries.

Here's what we need to be addressing: perhaps there are elements of radicalization in African countries, but the real issue here is the radicalization of Muslims in the West.  

There has been violence and skirmishes in Nigeria, but most of these have been battles for resources and not on ideological religious differences thus radicalized Muslims as a security threat to Nigeria and the West is a non sequitur. (I would appreciate if Nigerians reading this would chip in.) 

I am interested in our discussion of any sorts of radicalization, not just that of Muslims. Why, for instance, do many Africans become Pan Africanist when they live their countries of origin? Unlike Irshad Manji I do not think that Abdulmutallab attempted a terrorist attack because "he was suffering boredom, luxury of the rich reflecting on the arch of history".

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 What others are saying:

 Elizabeth Dickinson at Foreign Policy blogs :

Which brings me to one more point about extremism in Nigeria. Much of the religious violence that the country has seen in recent years has been less about religion and more about a country rife with corruption and wanting for institutions. When sharia law was introduced in the North earlier this decade, most analysts believe that it had more to do with a desire for the law -- any law -- to function. Since the secular government had failed for years, many sought refuge in the laws of religious fundamentalism.

And that brings us back to the alleged terrorist in questioning today. His grievances are different from these, one might imagine, since the lack of rule of law often works in favor of (rather than against) the elite. In short, what I'm trying to say is that there are two different phenomena going on here: mass dissatisfaction among many impoverished in the country's Muslim North, and the different brand of extremism that would incite a well-off 23-year-old to blow up a plane in Detroit.

Alex Thurston who blogs on the Sahel region, one that has been feared to host or potentially host terrorists has this to say:

We often hear that Saudi Arabian militants influence Sahelian jihadists , but it is striking to me that Arabs can fall victim to violence in the Sahel just as Westerners can. The world’s “ungoverned spaces” (lists of which often prominently features Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and the Sahel) are supposedly the ideal “breeding ground” for Al Qaeda. But in the most lawless parts of the Sahel, outsiders of any flavor can meet a hostile response. These Saudi Arabians could have been terrorist recruiters or tourists, but whatever the case someone made clear that they were not welcome. Ken Menkhaus has made a similar argument about Somalia – a would-be Arab Al Qaeda mastermind arriving in Somalia would stick out immediately, risking kidnapping or death. One incident does not mean that no Arab radicals can forge connections in Mali, Niger, or other Sahelian countries, but I do wonder whether Sahelian radicalism, and for that matter Somali, Afghan, and Yemeni radicalism, are primarily local phenomena.

Tola Olurunda comments :

As I write, hysteria is being whipped up about the "larger," "bigger," "harsher" picture--safe havens for Al-Qaeda in Africa. It might be a Black president's nightmare, but if intelligent forces can prove without a shred of doubt a rise in extremist activities on the "dark continent," it wouldn't take long before bombs are being dropped and homes shattered to restore the sense of safety most are willing to take another's life for. No one wants to feel "unsafe, unprotected, subject to random violence and hated," as Cornel West put it post-9/11. And it might shock some Africans to hear this, but if considerable fear is inflamed by the conservative kooks, very few would be left standing in defense of poor African mothers when babies are being blown to smithereens and villages decimated. Not even a sizeable portion of the African-American community would have the courage to speak up with dignity. 9/11 proved that enough.

So let's have at it folks.

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