\n\tWith the desert sands of the Sahara to their north, the duke and duchess of Gloucester watched as the parade of 3,000 turbaned cavalrymen cantered past in
\n\tan ancient display of military strength. A brigade of 7,000 chain mail-clad warriors accompanied the riders, as did musketeers, lancers, and archers. A
\n\ttroupe of dancers, musicians, acrobats, and snake charmers followed.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThese representatives of English foreign nobility were in Kaduna, Nigeria, witnessing a spectacle imported from India, known as a \u201cdurbar,\u201d a ceremonial
\n\tprocession held in honor of a visiting colonial viceroy. The duke and duchess were indeed representing a monarch, but not a Victorian king or an Edwardian
\n\tqueen from during the height of the British Empire. Rather, they had come to Nigeria to represent their niece, Queen Elizabeth II, who ruled as regent
\n\tduring this particular durbar in 1959 and remains on the British throne today.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThat such an event occurred only 55 years ago speaks volumes of how much the world has changed, but also of the many difficulties that Nigeria faced during
\n\tits decolonization process. For the Nigerian people, violence and terror would dominate the next half century, with more lives lost than if their archers
\n\tand lancers had stepped onto a cold-war battlefield. In order to understand the challenges facing Nigeria today, especially the religious conflict divided
\n\tby geography that has come to resemble a civil war, the sins of colonial history must not be ignored, just as contemporary acts of terrible violence must
\n\tnot be excused. \n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThe ruling elites of the British Empire were making themselves comfortable in northern Nigeria long before the duke and duchess of Gloucester arrived in
\n\tKaduna in 1958. Nigeria\u2019s split between a more arid Muslim north and a tropical non-Muslim south along the tenth parallel north had existed for centuries.
\n\tEven though one of the motivations for European imperialism was the spread of Christianity—particularly in southern Nigeria, where missionaries would have
\n\tgreat success doing so—British officials were much more comfortable in the north, and allowed their partiality to become outright regional favoritism.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tIn his book Ghosts of Empire: Britain\u2019s Legacies in the Modern World Kwasi Kwarteng explains that one of the causes of Nigeria\u2019s religious conflict today
\n\twas not Western hostility toward Muslims, but, rather, that Islam was so attractive to the British.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIslam was something they felt they understood,\u201d Kwarteng writes, \u201cas many of the district commissioners had experience in the Sudan or had served in Asia.
\n\tBritish officials appreciated the hierarchy and framework of Islamic society. The \u2018savages\u2019 of the south were less well understood. There were, naturally
\n\tenough, accusations that bias was showed by the British to the north.\u201d1 \n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tKwarteng continues with a quote of the novelist Frederick Forsyth, who once wrote of the British in Nigeria: \u201c\u2018The English loved the North; the climate is
\n\thot and dry as opposed to the steamy and malarial South; life is slow and graceful, if you happen to be an Englishman or an Emir.\u2019 The snobbery and
\n\tclass-consciousness that underpinned so much of British life in the early twentieth century found the idea of feudal rulers familiar and charming.\u201d\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tPart of that charming familiarity was the game of polo, the sport of kings, played upon horseback. Kwarteng cites a 1980 acknowledgment from the U.K.
\n\tForeign Office that the British were \u201chopelessly biased in favor of the feudal Emirs of the North\u201d and that British officials came to the region with \u201ca
\n\tromantic passion for Islam and for polo-playing.\u201d Kwarteng writes that it was \u201cin the polo-playing north of the country [where] pageantry, royalty, and
\n\tinvented traditions were combined in the institution of the durbars.\u201d\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tDecades later, with a burgeoning birth rate and a population of 175 million, Nigeria retains the feudal sense of class-consciousness and medieval attitude
\n\ttoward violence with very little of the supposed colonial charm and pageantry. The present-day partition between a Muslim North and Christian South is
\n\tpartly a legacy of British imperialism—a result of Christian missionaries introducing a new religion into the non-Islamic south and colonial officers
\n\tstrengthening the arid northern regions. Today, according to the U.S. State Department\u2019s \u201c2013 Report on International Religious Freedom,\u201d with
\n\tapproximately 10 percent of the population adhering to indigenous religious beliefs, Nigeria is approximately 50 percent Muslim and 40 percent Christian,
\n\tmaking it the largest country split so evenly between the world\u2019s two major religions. Unsurprisingly this has resulted in escalated sectarianism, and in
\n\tthe Middle Belt in particular, the central region of Nigeria where the two religions interact so disastrously, the growth of Christianity is especially
\n\tdramatic. In her analysis of the Nigerian religious conflict, Eliza Griswold, author of The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches From the Fault Line Between
\n\tChristianity and Islam, describes how \u201chigh birth rates and aggressive evangelization over the past century have increased the number of [Christians] from
\n\t176,000 to nearly 50 million.\u201d2 A large number of these worshippers belong to Pentecostal denominations, which has added another level of complexity to the
\n\tdistrust. According to Griswold, for Muslims in Nigeria \u201cwho find Christianity\u2019s explosive growth threatening, the Pentecostal language of being saved by
\n\tthe Holy Spirit is especially difficult to fathom. The Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—smacks of polytheism, and the idea that God could father a son
\n\tis blasphemy.\u201d If deeply held theological differences were not incendiary enough, there are the added financial problems in Nigeria that could cripple even
\n\tthe most sanguine society.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tEven though some experts cite Nigeria as one of Africa\u2019s great economic success stories with a giant national oil industry, \u201cmore than half of Nigerians
\n\tlive on less than one dollar a day, and four out of ten are unemployed. There are more than sixty million jobless Nigerian youth, a ready army free to man
\n\tthe front lines in any religious conflict.\u201d3 Regardless of the level of poverty and unemployment, a growing number of Nigerians must choose a side to
\n\tsafeguard what little they have.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tGriswold writes that \u201cin many regions, the state offers no electricity, water, or education. Instead, for access to everything from schooling to power
\n\tlines, many Nigerians turn to religion. Being a Christian or a Muslim, belonging to the local church or mosque, and voting along religious lines has become
\n\tthe way to safeguard seemingly secular rights.\u201d For the Jews, Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, agnostics, atheists, and others left unaffiliated, Nigeria has become a
\n\tdangerous place.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThe case of Mubarak Bala, a chemical engineering graduate from the predominantly Muslim area of Kano in the north, became an international news story in
\n\tJuly after his family admitted him into psychiatric care against his will for stating his atheism. According to the BBC, Bala received death threats for
\n\this nonbelief, and the hospital held him for 18 days before international organizations and a doctors\u2019 strike resulted in the hospital discharging him.4
\n\tNews of his release broke only after he was in a secure location.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tKano is one of several northern states in which state governments fund and support sharia law enforcement groups, albeit \u201cinconsistently and
\n\tsporadically.\u201d5 Kano in particular attracted the observation of the U.S. State Department and their \u201c2013 Report on International Religious Freedom\u201d: women
\n\tand men are urged to remain separate when riding public transport, male taxi drivers are reminded not to wear short pants, and in Kano City hundreds of
\n\tthousands of cigarette packets and bottles of beer were publicly destroyed.6 This system of sharia law in Nigeria\u2019s north includes government-funded sharia
\n\tcourts, which some non-Muslims worry amounts \u201cto the adoption of Islam as a state religion, while the state governments maintained no person was compelled
\n\tto use the sharia courts, citing the availability of a parallel common law courts system.\u201d7 Conversely, in the south of the country, in the coastal
\n\tNigerian metropolis of Lagos, a nonsharia court heard the case of an 11-year-old Muslim girl in the Lagos public school system, caned by her principal in
\n\tFebruary for wearing her hijab outside of Islamic studies class.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThe public school system in Lagos is a direct descendant of the educational system put in place by colonial authorities, whose presence in the country
\n\tinspired some of the first Muslim uprisings in the region, which had shifted their focus from corrupt local kings and rulers to invading colonists. As the
\n\tBritish and other \u201cChristian colonial powers arrived in Africa, these holy wars morphed into battles against the infidel West. These jihads, while largely
\n\tforgotten, represent some of the earliest and bloodiest confrontations of Islam with the West; they drove colonial policy toward Muslims not only in Africa
\n\tbut worldwide. They also laid the groundwork for Islam\u2019s opposition to the modern West.\u201d8 Although much of the civil strife in Nigeria is a product of the
\n\tcolonial era, the specific split between north and south in Nigeria is a consequence of climate and tropical disease as much as it is foreign intervention.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tIn 1802 followers of Uthman dan Fodio, an ethnic Fulani herder and Islamic religious teacher, joined their leader in launching a campaign to conquer \u201ca
\n\tlarge swath of West Africa as their own Islamic empire.\u201d However, as they traveled deeper south, their surroundings changed dramatically: \u201cWhen they neared
\n\tthe tenth parallel, the desert air moistened and the ground grew wetter. Here the notorious tsetse fly belt began, and sleeping sickness killed off the
\n\tjihadis\u2019 horses and camels, effectively halting their religion\u2019s southward advance.\u201d9 The prevalence of malaria was a strong reason British colonial
\n\tauthorities preferred to spend time among Muslims above the tenth parallel north, the circle of latitude 10 degrees or 700 miles north of the equator.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tToday the religions remain divided by latitude and intermingle in the Middle Belt. Griswold states grimly that \u201csince 2001, Nigeria\u2019s Middle Belt has been
\n\ttorn apart by violence between Christians and Muslims; tens of thousands of people have been killed in religious skirmishes. . . . Yet these small street
\n\tfights, infused with deeper hatred, have often given way to massacres in churches, hospitals, and mosques.\u201d10 These conflicts have become charged with the
\n\tlanguage of holy war, leading one Christian writer to refer to Muslims in Nigeria as \u201ccockroaches\u201d in need of extermination, which Griswold claims is a
\n\t\u201cdeliberate reminder of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.\u201d\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tFor more than a decade the world has watched with equal parts apathy and pity as Nigeria proceeded to tear itself apart. For the Western world and the
\n\tformer European colonial powers in particular, most African conflicts fail to generate significant overseas concern, despite their colonial origins. Before
\n\tindependence, the sport of polo contributed to colonial favoritism in the north and played a part in preventing national cohesion so many years ago. In the
\n\ttwenty-first century a different sport threatens to exacerbate the conflict and deepen the religious divide.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tFor Nigerians, just as for so many other people around the world, the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil was a source of national pride, a unifying and
\n\tpatriotic rallying cry for their country. The Nigerian national soccer team, the Super Eagles, had won the 2013 African Cup of Nations and was heading into
\n\tthe global tournament in South America with high hopes. Just as in Seattle, London, Barcelona, and Buenos Aires, crowds gathered in viewing centers in
\n\tNigerian cities like Damaturu to watch one of the world\u2019s most popular sporting events unfold. On the night of Tuesday, June 17, 2014, however, few in
\n\tDamaturu were able to enjoy the televised soccer match between Brazil and Mexico, beamed in by satellite from thousands of miles away.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tAccording to a report by France 24\u2019s Nina Hubinet, a deadly explosion, caused by a bomb hidden in a tricycle taxi, ripped through the crowd, killing 14 and
\n\tinjuring 26 others. Just two weeks earlier another bomb had exploded in a northeastern Nigerian soccer stadium, where it killed 40 attendees.11 The central
\n\tcity of Jos suffered a similar viewing center bombing in May. Even though soccer is a favorite sport across the Middle East and the greater Islamic world,
\n\tnorthern Nigeria included, to many extremists, the global game reeks of Western capitalism and unwanted cultural influence.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tLocal as well as international media placed the blame for the attack in Damaturu on the now-infamous Islamic terrorist organization Boko Haram. Led by the
\n\tdisturbingly charismatic Abubakar Shekau, the extremist group shocked the world in April when it abducted more than 200 girls in Borno state in the far
\n\tnortheast of Nigeria. The kidnappings ignited an international outcry, spawning intense media coverage, strong attention on social media, and the famous
\n\tBring Back Our Girls movement. While more than 60 of the 200 kidnapped girls managed to escape, the fate of the remaining victims is still unknown.
\n\tNigerian citizens took to the streets in protest of government ineptitude at combating Boko Haram, whose atrocities in 2013 alone included the killing of
\n\tmore than 1,000 people through targeting \u201ca wide array of civilians and sites, including Christian and Muslim religious leaders, churches, and mosques,
\n\tusing assault rifles, bombs, improvised explosive devices, suicide car bombs, and suicide vests.\u201d12\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThe U.S. State Department acknowledges that Boko Haram has apprehended numerous apostates and \u201cattempted to force them to renounce Christianity, killing
\n\tthose who did not convert on the spot. One Christian group reported suspected Boko Haram fighters had attacked a majority Christian town near Gwoza, Borno
\n\tState, on 11 separate occasions, attempting to force residents to convert or flee.\u201d13\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tBoko Haram have also targeted Muslims \u201cengaging in activities they perceived as un-Islamic.\u201d In January of 2013 \u201cgunmen reportedly killed 18 hunters
\n\tselling nonhalal meat at a market in Damboa, near the Borno State capital of Maiduguri. Also in January, gunmen reportedly killed five men gambling by the
\n\tside of the road in Kano State.\u201d14 The Islamist militants have escalated their rampage in the summer of 2014 with brazen attacks including the kidnapping
\n\tof the vice prime minister\u2019s wife in Cameroon, where Boko Haram-inspired fighters also killed 10 villagers in a remote village.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tIn May, militants killed more than 25 people in a northeastern Nigerian village of Chikongudo, near Gamboru Ngala, a town where suspected members of Boko
\n\tHaram killed more than 300 residents earlier that month. A state of emergency has existed in the northeastern part of the country for more than a year as
\n\tthe death toll continues to rise and Nigerian soldiers fight what looks to be a long and bloody war for many years to come.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tIt has been widely reported that the eventual goal of Boko Haram is to establish an Islamic state in Nigeria, an aim that bears strong regional and
\n\thistorical precedent. When malaria halted the advancing camels and horses of Uthman dan Fodio and his followers at the tenth parallel two centuries ago,
\n\tthe political objectives were remarkably similar. However, Boko Haram would do well to study Nigerian history. Although it is true that dan Fodio embarked
\n\ton a jihad to purify Islam and to conquer the region through force of arms, the former herdsman also did so in order to promote the education of women.15
\n\tGiven the recent Islamist attacks on female students throughout the greater Middle East, this might come as something of a surprise. The very name of Boko
\n\tHaram translates roughly as \u201cWestern education is forbidden,\u201d and the terrorist organization\u2019s kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls demonstrates their
\n\tconsideration of the education of women as inherently Western. Vladimir Duthiers, Faith Karimi, and Greg Botelho reported that Boko Haram vehemently
\n\t\u201copposes the education of women. Under its version of Sharia law, women should be at home raising children and looking after their husbands, not at school
\n\tlearning to read and write,\u201d16 a message sharply contradicting the teachings of dan Fodio, one of Nigeria\u2019s leading Muslim figures of the nineteenth
\n\tcentury.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tIn contemporary Nigeria heroes of Islam can still be found, but they are not on the battlefield and do not call for violent jihad.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen Eliza Griswold visited Nigeria and reported on her journey in The Tenth Parallel, she wrote of a visit she paid to a local Muslim king called the Emir
\n\tof Wase. Tired of the violence between Christians and Muslims, the emir and the local Catholic bishop had collaborated in creating a small yellow pamphlet
\n\tthat contained a list of complementary teachings of Islam and Christianity to inspire harmony and interfaith cooperation. Pointing to similar verses in
\n\tboth the Bible and the Koran, the emir explained his findings with the peaceful desires of a man who had seen enough death to last several lifetimes. The
\n\tauthor recalled that the king had \u201chighlighted the Quran\u2019s universal messages of coexistence for all of humankind, many of which were revealed to Muhammad
\n\tearly on in his life as God\u2019s messenger,\u201d as well as to Jesus during His ministry in Jerusalem and Galilee. \u201c[He] made the point,\u201d Griswold continued,
\n\t\u201cthat if both of these men, beaten and bloodied—the incarnations of their respective faiths—asked God to forgive their aggressors, then who were today\u2019s
\n\tleaders to advocate holy war?\u201d\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Emir of Wase explained to his guest that Islam and Christianity were \u201ctwo religions that were deeply linked,\u201d \u201cbut leaders did not know of, or else had
\n\tforgotten, their common bonds.\u201d \u201cThese verses command believers to live together peacefully.\u201d \u201cWe know that Jesus taught that if someone slaps you on the
\n\tright cheek, turn to the left. We know that Muhammad was sacked from his village and stoned at Ta\u2019if, but he quietly left for Medina.\u201d17\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThe world may never know whether the local population of Wase ever transformed their thinking because of picking up the little yellow pamphlet produced by
\n\tthe emir and the bishop. Perhaps its success will be judged on how few of the Nigerian people reach for their rifle instead.\n\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With the desert sands of the Sahara to their north, the duke and duchess of Gloucester watched as the parade of 3,000 turbaned cavalrymen cantered past in an ancient display of military strength. A brigade of 7,000 chain mail-clad warriors accompanied the riders, as did musketeers, lancers, and archers. A troupe of dancers, musicians, acrobats,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[303],"tags":[135],"class_list":["post-6280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-november-december-2014","tag-november-december-2014"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}