Over at the ever-excellent Loonwatch, Garibaldi writes: “Western journalists and media outlets have been extremely irresponsible in lazily describing Boko Haram as an ‘Islamist’ and or ‘Islamic’ group…. This is a good place to remind readers that ‘Islamist’ is quite often used as a blunt polemical hammer that dumb downs our understanding and quite often conflates fringe and even cult-like groups such as Boko Haram with ‘Islam’ as a whole.”

Garibaldi notes the media’s very different reporting of the Lord’s Resistance Army: “In a clear double standard the LRA’s (its leader Joseph Kony is fond of describing himself as a ‘devout Christian’) relation to Christianity is rarely mentioned in media reports. When it is mentioned there is a painstaking effort to relate how bizarre, cult-like and deviant the LRA’s ideology is from mainstream Christianity. Most news outlets and agencies refer to the LRA as a ‘rebel army’.”