Ambassador Robert Jackson, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs, testified yesterday before the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs, and according to Pajamas Media, said:

…while anti-Christian sentiment is a strong motivator, the fact of the matter is that Boko Haram is trying to portray its philosophy as being a Muslim philosophy, and that’s just not accurate,” Jackson said. (snip)

Jackson said about 85 percent of the more than 200 teens taken from the Chibok secondary school are Christian.

However, the abducted teens who were Christian have been forced to convert to Islam, so Jackson is trying to fool himself and the Senate committee, evidently taking the position that he can define what true Islam is.

The State Department has long been afflicted with Islamophilia, believing that if we pretend Islam’s persecution of other religions is not a central part of scriptural orthodoxy,  then Muslims will behave like Episcopalians, Jews, and other tolerant  religious folk. Jackson’s foolish blindness has deep institutional roots, and an unwillingness to confront the ugly realities of Suras 9 – 14 of the Koran.

Willful blindness.

Hat tip: Ed Lasky