- Since its early days Boko Haram has targeted the Muslim "establishment" in Nigeria
- The group accuses the "establishment" of corruption and "perverting" Islam
- Boko Haram has stepped up suicide bombings, causing mass casualties
- Friday's attack at a mosque in Kano killed at least 35, injured 150 others
(CNN) -- The devastating attack on the Grand Mosque in Kano, Nigeria, Friday was almost certainly the work of Boko Haram, which has stepped up its bombing campaign across northern Nigeria in recent weeks.
It may seem counter-intuitive that Islamist militants should attack a mosque, but since its early days Boko Haram has targeted the Muslim "establishment" in Nigeria, accusing it of not defending the interests of Nigeria's 80 million Muslims, of corruption and of "perverting" Islam.
One eminent member of that establishment is the emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, a former governor of Nigeria's Central Bank who frequently preaches at the Kano mosque on Fridays. The emir of Kano is the second-most influential Muslim figure in Nigeria.
Sanusi was reportedly out of the country at the time of Friday's attack -- but two weeks ago he used Friday prayers to urge Nigerians to defend themselves against Boko Haram.
A video of Abubakar Shekau, who claims to be the leader of the Nigerian Islamist extremist group Boko Haram, is shown in September 2013. Boko Haram is an Islamist militant group waging a campaign of violence in northern Nigeria. The group's ambitions range from the stricter enforcement of Sharia law to the total destruction of the Nigerian state and its government. Click through to see recent bloody incidents in this strife-torn West African nation: 
Bodies lie in the streets in Maiduguri, Nigeria, after religious clashes on July 31, 2009. Boko Haram exploded onto the national scene in 2009 when 700 people were killed in widespread clashes across the north between the group and the Nigerian military. 
An official displays burned equipment inside a prison in Bauchi, Nigeria, on September 9, 2010, after the prison was attacked by suspected members of Boko Haram two days earlier. About 720 inmates escaped during the prison break, and police suspect the prison was attacked because it was holding 80 members of the sect. 
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, second from left, stands on the back of a vehicle after being sworn-in as President during a ceremony in the capital of Abuja on May 29, 2011. In December 2011, Jonathan declared a state of emergency in parts of the country afflicted by violence from Boko Haram. 
Rescue workers help a wounded person from a U.N. building in Abuja, Nigeria, on August 26, 2011. The building was rocked by a bomb that killed at least 23 people, leaving others trapped and causing heavy damage. Boko Haram had claimed responsibility for the attack in which a Honda packed with explosives rammed into the U.N. building, shattering windows and setting the place afire. 
A photo taken on November 6, 2011, shows state police headquarters burned by a series of attacks that targeted police stations, mosques and churches in Damaturu, Nigeria, on November 4, 2011. Attackers left scores injured -- probably more than 100 -- in a three-hour rampage, and 63 people died. 
Men look at the wreckage of a car after a bomb blast at St. Theresa Catholic Church outside Abuja on December 25, 2011. A string of bombs struck churches in five Nigerian cities, leaving dozens dead and wounded on the Christmas holiday, authorities and witnesses said. Boko Haram's targets included police outposts and churches as well as places associated with "Western influence." 
A paramedic helps a young man as he leaves a hospital in the northern Nigerian city of Kano on January 21, 2012. A spate of bombings and shootings left more than 200 people dead in Nigeria's second-largest city. Three days later, a joint military task force in Nigeria arrested 158 suspected members of Boko Haram. 
A photo taken on June 18, 2012, shows a car vandalized after three church bombings and retaliatory attacks in northern Nigeria killed at least 50 people and injured more than 130 others, the Nigerian Red Cross Society said. 
A French family kidnapped February 19, 2013, in northern Cameroon is released after two months in captivity in Nigeria. The family of four children, their parents and an uncle were kidnapped in Waza National Park in northern Cameroon, situated near the border with Nigeria. One of the captive men read a statement demanding that Nigeria and Cameroon free jailed members of Boko Haram. 
A soldier stands in front of a damaged wall and the body of a prison officer killed during an attack on a prison in the northeastern Nigerian town of Bama on May 7, 2013. Two soldiers were killed during coordinated attacks on multiple targets. Nigeria's military said more than 100 Boko Haram militants carried out the attack. 
A deserted student hostel is shown on August 6, 2013, after gunmen stormed a school in Yobe state, killing 20 students and a teacher, state media reported. 
A photograph made available by the Nigerian army on August 13, 2013, shows improvised explosive devices, bomb-making materials and detonators seized from a Boko Haram hideout. Gunmen attacked a mosque in Nigeria with automatic weapons on August 11, 2013, killing at least 44 people. 
Nigerian students from Jos Polytechnic walk on campus in Jos, Nigeria, on September 30, 2013. Under the cover of darkness, gunmen approached a college dormitory in a rural Nigerian town and opened fire on students who were sleeping. At least 40 students died, according to the News Agency of Nigeria. 
Soldiers stand outside the 79 Composite Group Air Force base that was attacked earlier in Maiduguri on December 2. Hundreds of Boko Haram militants attacked an Air Force base and a military checkpoint, according to government officials. 
Catholic priest Georges Vandenbeusch speaks to reporters outside Paris after his release on January 1. Vandenbeusch was snatched from his parish church in Cameroon on November 13. Boko Haram claimed responsibility for kidnapping the priest. 
A man receives treatment at Konduga specialist hospital after a gruesome attack on January 26. It was suspected that Boko Haram militants opened fire on a village market and torched homes in the village of Kawuri, killing at least 45 people. 
Police officers stand guard in front of the burned remains of homes and businesses in the village of Konduga on February 12. Suspected Boko Haram militants torched houses in the village, killing at least 23 people, according to the governor of Borno state on February 11. 
Yobe state Gov. Ibrahim Gaidam, left, looks at the bodies of students inside an ambulance outside a mosque in Damaturu. At least 29 students died in an attack on a federal college in Buni Yadi, near the capital of Yobe state, Nigeria's military said on February 26. Authorities suspect Boko Haram carried out the assault in which several buildings were also torched. 
Rescue workers try to put out a fire after a bomb exploded at the busiest roundabout near the crowded Monday Market in Maiduguri on July 1. 
Police in riot gear block a route in Abuja on October 14, during a demonstration calling on the Nigerian government to rescue schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram. In April, more than 200 girls were abducted from their boarding school in northeastern Nigeria, officials and witnesses said. Boko Haram: Nigeria's crisis "People must stand resolute" against a group that enslaves girls and "must not assume that the crisis will not reach their area," Sanusi said.
The Kano attack, which authorities said killed at least 35 people and injured 150 others, is not the first aimed at a mosque, nor at an emir. Last year, at least 40 worshippers were shot dead at a mosque in Borno state, where Boko Haram is strongest. The group has also assassinated senior Muslim political and religious figures in northern Nigeria. And it has specifically targeted anyone calling for or organizing self-defense units, known as the Civilian Joint Task Force.
Sanusi's predecessor, Emir Al Haji Ado Bayero, was the target of an assassination attempt in February 2013. His driver and bodyguards were killed. Bayero died at the age of 83 earlier this year.
Boko Haram has stepped up suicide bombings, causing mass casualties in several northern states. Just this week, two female suicide bombers attacked a busy market in the city of Maiduguri, killing twenty-one people. And the bombing of a bus station near Mubi in Ademawa state killed some forty people.
Boko Haram claimed to have taken control of Mubi, a town of 200,000 people, at the end of October -- a sign of its commitment to build an area in northern Nigeria ruled by Islamic law -- in addition to carrying out terror attacks. The Nigerian army -- supported by civilian vigilantes -- was able to expel Boko Haram from Mubi two weeks later, but the group still controls several towns across northeastern Nigeria, including Gwoza -- a town of nearly 300,000 in Borno state.
According to Boko Haram's mysterious leader, Abubakar Shekau, Gwoza was evidence of the group's growing ambitions in northern Nigeria. "Thanks be to Allah, who gave victory to our brethren in Gwoza and made it a state among Islamic states," he said in August.
Virginia Comolli, research fellow for security and development at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told CNN that the Nigerian military faces multiple problems. It has been plagued by indiscipline, desertion and mutinies, with some commanders attacked by their own men. It has developed a well-documented reputation for human rights abuses -- alienating many of the people it is meant to protect.
Additionally, a lack of support has left many units exposed in the vast rural hinterland of the north, where Boko Haram has shown it can operate simultaneously on several fronts. Last week, for example, its fighters ambushed and killed nearly 50 fish-sellers close to Lake Chad, nearly 400 miles from Kano, despite the nearby presence of a multinational border force.
A state of emergency in parts of northern Nigeria has had little impact on Boko Haram, and despite intense international attention the Nigerian military has been unable to rescue any of more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped earlier this year.
The group's resumption of a campaign of suicide bombings is likely aimed at humiliating the government of President Goodluck Jonathan, who recently declared he would run for re-election in February next year. Besides its ideological aversion to democracy, which it sees as inimical to Islam, Boko Haram despises Jonathan as a southern Christian and wants to make the north ungovernable. Comolli says one of its aims is to ensure February's election cannot be held in the three northern states where emergencies have been declared. Attacking Kano, the biggest city in the north and a trade hub, is part of that strategy. (The state of Kano is one of the two most populous in Nigeria.)
In an effort to win more international support, Nigerian officials have likened Boko Haram to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Nigeria's ambassador in Washington, Adebowale Ibidapo Adefuye, said earlier this month: "There is no use giving us the type of support that enables us to deliver light jabs to the terrorists when what we need to give them is the killer punch."
Dismissing claims that the army was responsible for human rights abuses as rumor and hearsay, Adeyufe said the United States needed to do more to help a partner in the battle against terrorism.
"We find it difficult to understand how and why, in spite of the U.S. presence in Nigeria with their sophisticated military technology, Boko Haram should be expanding and becoming more deadly,'' he told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Despite providing technical assistance in the hunt for the missing schoolgirls, the Obama administration appears wary of engagement with a military that has such a flawed reputation.
There is evidence that Boko Haram has links with other jihadist groups. Some of its fighters spent time in Mali alongside a faction of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in early 2012, when much of that country fell under AQIM's sway for several months. Its rapid assimilation of bomb-making expertise and the use of kidnapping for ransom also suggests contacts with AQIM, says Comolli. But she believes that as AQIM has come under pressure following the French intervention in Mali, it has become less able to provide training or other help to Boko Haram.
For now, Boko Haram remains a very much Nigerian phenomenon focused on causing mayhem at home. And it is the civilians -- in their many thousands -- who bear the brunt of its attacks.
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