It has been 29 days since the radical Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram abducted more than 300 Nigerian schoolgirls and took them into hiding. The Nigerian government says 53 of the girls have escaped, but no one knows the whereabouts of the remaining 276, who were taking their exams when they were kidnapped. All we know is that Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, says he plans to sell the girls—for $12 each—into forced marriages. In a video he released this week, he also offered to swap 200 of the girls in exchange for prisoners.
The United States, Israel, France and the U.K. have sent technical teams to Nigeria to help in the frantic effort to locate the missing girls, but so far it’s anybody’s guess what has happened to them. They may still be hiding in covert camps in Nigeria; they may have been taken to Chad, Cameroon or Niger; some of the girls may have already been sold to husbands four times their age in Sudan or Libya.
Wherever they are, I’m sure these girls are suffering unimaginable horror while their traumatized parents fear the worst.
Boko Haram’s leader is defiant in his demands. In this week’s video, he is shown holding an AK-47 as he laughs and says: “All I am saying is that if you want us to release the girls that we have kidnapped, those who have not accepted Islam will be treated as the prophet (Muhammad) treated infidels and they will stay with us.”
How do we respond to an outrage like this from the other side of the Atlantic? We can post our protests on Twitter or march in the streets, but I doubt Boko Haram is paying too much attention to American demands. After all, the name Boko Haram means “Western education is a sin.” These terrorists will not be satisfied until radical Islam rules Nigeria and all of Africa’s girls are removed from school.
The best response to this crisis is united prayer. If Christians around the world asked for divine intervention, I believe we would witness a miracle. If you agree, please share this prayer with friends and church leaders, and encourage everyone you know to call for a special prayer gathering to petition the Lord for a swift answer. You can pray along these lines:
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SOURCE: Charisma News
J. Lee Grady is the former editor of Charisma. You can follow him on Twitter at leegrady. He is the author of Fearless Daughters of the Bible and other books.
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