The rapid spread in the Muslim north of the Salafi version of the Islamic religion, whose cardinal doctrine is a return of Muslims to its own interpretation of what its self-appointed theological potentates considered being in conformity with puritanical prophetic tradition within a the legal frame work of a Sharia-ruled global Muslim state, resulted in the mainstreaming of the radical ideology of Islamist separatism in the region coming under the theological influence of Salafi clerics who continuously watered the seeds of radicalization for several decades by passionately preaching the virtues of a Sharia-ruled Muslim state and virulently denouncing the vices of a secular, multi-religious, constitutionally governed democratic society and, in the process, creating a cognitive conflict…