The problem is complexity. The Paris story regarding the murder of the staff of Charlie Hebdo magazine and others has a familiarity and scale that I can grasp. The issues regarding deciding what to print and publish versus the reality that there are people who would very much like to curtail that freedom absolutely and remove that ability to choose how one uses ones voice is something I can find a fast position with. The scale of the tragedy is not dissimilar to mass shootings that have occurred here in the States, or in Canada or Australia recently. France, as with the US, is a majority Christian and white nation, where the Enlightenment traditions regarding freedom of speech, religion, and the press, have coincided with a history of colonialism that I feel competent to address in the microcosm.
The enormity of the scale of the Boko Haram attacks, (about which no true numbers can be found, because the people on scene have simply despaired of counting all the bodies, and because the government of Nigeria does not seem interested in the real numbers), is orders of magnitude greater, and coexistent with a more profound history of colonialism and without our little Western era of Enlightenment. In fact, Boko Haram, in name, is saying that Western Education--our Enlightenment concepts of science, liberalism, freedom, are forbidden.
