Free Boko Haram by Mike Smith Page A

battle Boko Haram and had been accused of major human rights abuses before it was replaced by the 7th Division in 2013.
    Salafism: a strict, fundamentalist interpretation of Islam that advocates a return to a purer form of the faith. Boko Haram’s original leader, Mohammed Yusuf, was a Salafist. Boko Haram under his leadership before his death in 2009 was a Salafist-like sect based at his mosque in Maiduguri.
    Sufism: a mystical version of Islam. Usman Dan Fodio, the nineteenth-century jihad leader in what is today northern Nigeria, was a Sufi. Nigeria’s Muslim establishment today remains mainly made up of Sufis in line with Sunni tradition. Opposition to Nigeria’s Sufi establishment developed in the 1970s through dissident clerics who had embraced Wahhabi-Salafist or Shiite beliefs. Such clerics retain substantial followings today.