The news out of Uganda Saturday was horrifying. The Associated Press reported that authorities in that country had “recovered the bodies of 41 people, including 38 students, who were burned, shot or hacked to death after suspected rebels attacked a secondary school near the border with Congo.” The rebels were members of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which despite its name is actually an Islamic group with ties to the Islamic State (ISIS) and aspirations of establishing a caliphate in Central and East Africa. While the world’s attention has been focused on Ukraine, climate and COVID hysteria, and the alleged crimes of Donald Trump, the global jihad, which most Americans regard as a relic from 2001, has been newly resurgent in Africa.
The massacre, according to AP, took place at Lhubiriha Secondary School in the town of Mpondwe, which is near the border of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The ADF, says AP, “has been launching attacks for years from bases in volatile eastern Congo.” Mpondwe-Lhubiriha Mayor Selevest Mapoze “said that some of the students suffered fatal burns when the rebels set fire to a dormitory and others were shot or hacked with machetes.” By the time soldiers arrived on the scene, the entire school was ablaze and there were “dead bodies of students lying in the compound,” according to Ugandan military spokesman Brig. Gen. Felix Kulayigye.
Uganda’s New Vision reported Saturday that only three students survived the attack. One of them, a young man named Mumbere Bright, recounted that “the rebels immediately shot dead the student who was at the entrance after entering the dormitory.” He added, “The rebels asked for Muslims among the students, but there were none. The rebels said they do not kill fellow believers.” After that, “they slaughtered every student in their sight using pangas, axes and sharp objects.”
The fact that the rebels hoped to separate Muslims from the other students before beginning their massacre is noteworthy. The Qur’an forbids Muslims to kill fellow Muslims (4:92); regarding non-Muslims, however, it repeats the injunction to “kill them wherever you find them” (2:191, 4:89, cf. 9:5), although subjugating them under Islamic rule is also offered as an option (9:29). There have been many instances in which jihadis separated Muslims from a crowd before killing the non-Muslims. Even in the U.S., a jihad terrorist in Minnesota in 2016 asked mall shoppers if they were Muslim and then stabbed non-Muslims.Robert Spencer
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