Sunday, May 11, 2014

"boko" is writing 999 words and still not saying what you mean...,


christiansciencemonitor |  Newman writes that "boko" has a variety of meanings focused around denoting "things or actions having to do with fraudulence, sham, or inauthenticity" or deception. He says the false linkage to the English word "book" was first made in a 1934 Hausa dictionary by a Western scholar that listed 11 meanings for the word – ten of them about fraudulent things and the final one asserting the connection to "book." An incorrect assertion, says Newman.

A big deal? Not a huge one, but a good example of how received "facts" are often far from the truth.

I'm more interested in the current claims that Boko can be translated as "Western education." Does it? Sort of, but not really.

Let's go back to the British colonialists in northern Nigeria. In their aggressive push for modern secular schooling – and the resistance from Muslims – lies the spark for Boko Haram's murderous rampages against "Western" education.

Newman writes about the history of the word's use in this context:

    The correct answer was implicitly presented by Liman Muhammad, a Hausa scholar from northern Nigeria, some 45 years ago. In his study of neologisms and lexical enrichment in Hausa, Muhammad (pp. 8-10) gives a list of somewhat over 200 loanwords borrowed from English into Hausa in the area of “Western Education and Culture”. Significantly, boko is not included. Rather one finds boko in his category for western concepts expressed in Hausa by SEMANTIC EXTENSION of pre-existent Hausa words.

    According to Muhammad, boko originally meant “Something (an idea or object) that involves a fraud or any form of deception” and, by extension, the noun denoted “Any reading or writing which is not connected with Islam. The word is usually preceded with ‘Karatun’ [lit. writing/studying of]. ‘Karatun Boko’ therefore means the Western type of Education."

Newman explains that when Britain's colonial government began introducing its education system into Nigeria, seeking to replace traditional Islamic education (including replacing the Arabic script traditionally used to write Hausa with a Roman-based script that they also quickly called "boko") , this was seen as a "fraudulent deception being imposed upon the Hausa by a conquering European force."

    Rather than send their own children to the British government schools, as demanded by the British, Hausa emirs and other elites often shifted the obligation onto their slaves and other subservients. The elite had no desire to send their children to school where the values and traditions of Hausa and Islamic traditional culture would be undermined and their children would be turned into ’yan boko,’ i.e., “(would-be) westerners”.

8 comments:

CNu said...

yan boko is becoming an increasingly popular rallying cry http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/04/04/whose_side_is_god_on_now_122172.html

Vic78 said...

That explains right wingers all of a sudden becoming Putin fans. They're not just US nationalists anymore.
http://townhall.com/columnists/patbuchanan/2013/12/17/is-putin-one-of-us-n1764094/page/full

Vic78 said...

Too bad the GOP can't produce someone with Putin's self discipline. They're looking for their great leader but the problem is that the tea billies are of such low quality that they won't be able to produce such a person. All their leaders can be is a reflection of their worthless asses. You see it when they project manly qualities to Chris Cristie. Or when they say Ted Cruz has a good chance at being president. It also explains the Reagan worship. So they're left with having to admire Putin.

Makheru Bradley said...

According to a 2011 Wikileaks report Boko Haram received funding from a CIA-front organization as part of a plan to destabilize Nigeria.
[In December 2011 an Algerian based CIA wing gave out 40 million Naira as a planned Long term partnership with boko haram with PLEDGE TO DO MORE.] Would this be consistent with the long history of American intervention and destabilization to serve the interest of international finance capitalism? Absolutely.

http://bit.ly/1l7hHFa

Per this analyst: Over a third of the Nigerian Army is serving outside of Nigeria as peacekeepers in other parts of Africa (Mali, Sudan, CAR, Niger, etc.).

http://bit.ly/1shf6fN

Your country is in turmoil and one-third of your army is deployed in other countries. Is that not total manipulation by the imperialist powers? Why are Nigerian troops needed in Mali? Mali was stable before the imperialist overthrew Muammar Qaddafi.The destabilization of Libya spread to Mali. Now your own country is being destabilized and one-third of your army is elsewhere. SMDH!!!

CNu said...

Thank you for the interesting links Bro.Makheru. Tarnews, while providing some interesting schematic context, must be taken with a large sack of salt because it's conspicuously LaRouchian. Without even doing the whois to confirm this, their presentation on the web, reliance on facebook, and specious notions about using LSD to create suicide bomber "robots" - has all the earmarks of a Lyndon H. Larouche news service/executive intelligence front.

Makheru Bradley said...

Of course everything has to be cross-referenced. I focused more on the history of US destabilization than murky accusations. The African Renaissance article was written by this brother, Atheling P Reginald Mavangira of Zimbabwe

[A.P.R.M is founder and Chairman of APRM Capital Holdings. APRM-Capital Holdings is a brokerage and investment advisory firm that offers highly personalized services to a select group of individuals, Corporations and Countries.] Interestingly Mavangira is being attacked by Stormfront. http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t994845-32/

Per the Boer Nation, Mavangira is a financial supporter of Julius Malema and the Economic Freedom Fighters of South Afrika, who received 6.4 percent of the vote in the recent SA election.

http://www.censorbugbear.org/farmitracker/reports/view/2236

However, the original source as far as I can determine, for the article about the CIA/Boko Haram connection is News + Resuce. That article was supposedly written in December 2011 and it cites the GreenWhite Coalition. I can't find much on that coalition, which is one reason why I titled an email I sent out: "Is Boko Haram a tool of imperialist destabilization."

http://bit.ly/1sDVRPz

CNu said...

No, this is rich and fertile ground for further investigation/dot-connecting. But anytime I see all the telltale signs of Larouchism, I begin to worry about the agenda and subtext of the narrative that's being presented. I don't claim to understand what the Larouche memeplex purports to do, other than to know that from direct personal exposure to it, I don't like it and I don't trust it.

Makheru Bradley said...

If memory serves I first read a LaRouche newspaper sometime during the 1970s. All of my peers had the same reaction. How can this dude know so much about the CIA, without being CIA himself. As we know all policies in Nigeria are driven by oil, and that has generated enormous corruption. How does $20 billion from oil sales disappear? A good history is presented here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2TgAe-UNvo

Remember Ken Saro-Wiwa.

http://remembersarowiwa.com/

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