THE ISIC BRIEFING

No. 9

November 2002 WHO BEARS THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR ISLAMIST RIOTS IN NIGERIA?: A DISCUSSION OF POLITICAL AND MEDIA REACTIONS Enraged Muslim demonstrators took to the streets of Kaduna, Nigeria, on Wednesday 20 November after a Nigerian newspaper ran an article saying that the Islamic prophet Muhammad would probably have married one of the contestants of the Miss World contest which was due to be held in Abuja. After they had burnt down the offices of This Day newspaper Muslim rioters turned on local Christians, and Christian youths began to retaliate in kind. After several days of rioting over 400 people have been killed, more than 1,200 injured, some 12,000 people have been driven from their homes, and at least 22 churches have been destroyed, as well as several mosques. ANALYSIS In the wake of this appalling carnage Nigerian politicians and the western media have been scrambling to limit and to rationalise the violence. As well as deploying the police and army, establishing a curfew and arresting over 100 people, the Nigerian authorities have also responded quickly to try to assuage Muslim anger. Isioma Daniel, the female author of the offensive article, together with Simon Kolawole, the editor of the Saturday edition of This Day, have both been arrested. Various government officials have condemned the article (which This Day has since withdrawn and repeatedly apologised for). They have also promised to “punish” those responsible for it. Several Islamic organizations have also called for them to be punished and a fatwa has been put out on Isioma Daniel demanding that she should be beheaded. In the West many feminists, intellectuals and journalists, in seeking to explain and understand the violence, have placed the blame firmly at the door of the organizers of the Miss World contest. Muslims in Nigeria were fiercely opposed to the competition, which has now been relocated to London. One writer in Britain’s Guardian newspaper argued that “As contestants flee and Nigeria counts its dead, it is now impossible to argue that Miss World is harmless fun.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4553775,00.html). In the same paper another writer quoted one feminist speaking of contestants “wearing swimwear dripping with blood” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4553953,00.html). In the Independent another stated that “the contest is plainly offensive to many Muslims – a sentiment that ought to be understood even in the supposedly decadent West”

(http://argument.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/story.jsp?story=354877). More seriously, the western media in much of its coverage of the massacres has, as often happens with complex conflicts in far away places, portrayed the violence as a simple sectarian conflict in which both sides are equally at fault. In describing the conflict articles speak of “attacks by rival Christian and Muslim gangs” and “violence between Christians and Muslims”. Such coverage makes little attempt to distinguish between those who unleashed the violence and those who are retaliating to it. WHERE DOES THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY LIE? In the face of these disturbing trends ISIC would like to suggest that whilst the article in This Day was offensive to Muslims, and whilst most Christians also find the Miss World contest offensive, the fact remains that the moral responsibility for the appalling violence in Kaduna lies with the Muslim youths who unleashed it and the extremist leaders who encouraged them, not with This Day or the organisers of Miss World. It may be that this fact is so obvious the western media has by and large considered it not worth mentioning. However, by focusing only on attacking This Day newspaper and the Miss World contest the impression is being fostered that such appalling violence is an understandable reaction by Muslims whose religious sensibilities have been offended by those who should have known better. Such irresponsible journalism ignores several important facts. Firstly, Nigeria is not a Muslim country; Muslims account for only 40% of Nigeria’s population. Some 50% of Nigerians are Christians and there is also a significant animist population. Secondly, the Miss World contest was not scheduled to take place in Muslim-majority North Nigeria, but in the capital Abuja where Muslims are in fact in a minority. One group in society should not be allowed to use violence to push its demands on the whole. Thirdly, since last year’s contest was one by a Nigerian it had been planned to hold the contest in Nigeria for the past year, with the full agreement and encouragement of the Nigerian authorities. This was not an example of western cultural imperialism seeking to push its decadent ways on a more modest and reluctant third world society as it has been portrayed. Fourthly, and perhaps most importantly, Nigerian Christians who were targeted by the rioters in Kaduna had nothing whatsoever to do with either the article in This Day or the Miss World contest. In what sense can it be said that slaughtering Christians was an understandable reaction to feeling offended? Many Nigerian Christians oppose the Miss World contest just as strongly as their fellow Muslim citizens. However, they did not believe the best way to oppose it was by butchering innocent Muslims. Fifthly, there is strong evidence that the violence was not a simple spontaneous emotional reaction but was co-ordinated and planned by extremist leaders in the Muslim community for their own political and religious motives. The violence began five days after the article had been published. Even then it occurred only after local mosques began calling for action against This Day newspaper. Some of the Muslim youths involved are reported to have been mobilised through text messages sent out to their phones alerting them to the article. Both Bishop Josiah Fearon, the Anglican Bishop of Kaduna, and Bishop Ben Kwashi, Anglican Bishop of Jos, have denounced the violence as deliberately planned and orchestrated for political and religious reasons, something the western media has largely failed to pick up on. In recent years there has been an increasingly disturbing trend amongst some sections of western media, church and society to place more blame at the door of those who arouse Muslim violence with mere words, than with the perpetrators of that violence. When eight American, German and Australian missionaries were threatened with a death sentence by the Taliban in Afghanistan in August 2001 because they sought to share their Christian faith with Muslims there was a danger that Christian relief agencies may have been expelled from the country. Many journalists felt the blame for this would primarily lie, not with the Taliban for blatantly abusing human rights and all humanitarian norms, but with the missionaries for not being more sensitive to local culture. Similarly, in October this year eight people were killed in a riot in India triggered by Muslims demonstrating against the, admittedly provocative, statements of American Southern Baptist Minister Rev Jerry Falwell that he considered the Islamic prophet Muhammad a “terrorist”. Once again the overwhelming sense given by the media and political and church leaders was that responsibility for this lay with Falwell not with those who rioted. However, with these cases and others, as well as the latest tragedy in Kaduna, the moral responsibility for such violence surely lies primarily with those who perpetrated it not with those who caused the offence. It is not the responsibility of political and religious leaders to be forever tip toeing around issues involving Islam and Muslims, afraid of making the slightest criticism or causing the least offence for fear that this will unleash a wave of bloody violence. No such considerations are made for the sensitivities of other religious groups. When Hindu militants murdered five Dalits (untouchables) in India last month, after they quite legally killed a cow, it was not the murdered Dalits who were blamed. Responsibility must lie with the Muslim youths who perpetrated the latest violence and with the extremist leaders who cynically manipulated and fostered it. In consistently seeking to justify such Islamic violence the sufferings of Christian minorities and its other victims are trivialised. Rather than forever blaming those who offend Muslim sensitivities by exercising their freedom of speech the western media should instead invest more of its time in challenging those who are responsible for such violence to learn to fight against verbal criticisms and insults to their faith with letters, articles and peaceful protests, not clubs, knives and guns. Now that the Miss World contest has been moved to London, a city which also has a large Muslim population, what would the western media say if some British Muslims took to the streets and massacred hundreds? Would that also be an understandable reaction? The Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity (ISIC) is the educational arm of BARNABAS FUND. Please direct all general enquiries regarding Please direct all enquires regarding BARNABAS FUND to

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To which Elizabeth Kendal responded:

re Nigeria

here are a few short excerpts that sum up the issue I think –

Elizabeth Kendal WEA RLC

http://www.worldevangelical.org/rlc.html

Newspaper Offices Burned Down By Islamic Fundamentalists

Reporters sans Fronti ¨res (Paris)

NEWS November 21, 2002 Posted to the web November 21, 2002

Reporters Without Borders called on the authorities today to protect for press freedom in northern Nigeria after Islamic fundamentalists burned down part of the offices of the daily newspaper This Day in Kaduna.

“It is getting harder and harder for journalists to do their job in the region,” said Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert M ©nard in a letter to Kaduna state governor Alhaji Ahmed Makarfi. “Several have been physically attacked or threatened by Islamic fundamentalists or by police. The local authorities must take clear steps to guarantee press freedom.”

Several hundred Muslims arrived in a bus at the Lagos-based newspaper’s offices in Kaduna on 20 November and burned down part of the building. Earlier in the day, youths burned all the copies of the paper at a warehouse. They were angry that the paper had carried an article on 16 November saying that the Prophet Mohammed “would probably have chosen a wife” from among the Miss World candidates who will appear in the contest in Nigeria on 7 December.

Several religious groups have strongly protested against the article and called for the paper to be punished. The Supreme Council for Sharia Implementation in Nigeria said the paper had “declared total war on Islam” and that Muslims should “declare the same on the paper.” It called for a advertising boycott.

On the eve of the fire in Kaduna, the paper’s management had printed an apology to Muslims and said it had been wrong to publish the article. The newspaper Daily Trust reported that federal security officials had summoned the managing editor of This Day, Nduka Obaigbena, for questioning.

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Friday, 22 November, 2002, 17:07 GMT

Eyewitness: A narrow escape in Abuja By Haruna Bahago BBC, Abuja

After Friday prayers at the main mosque in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, Muslim youths took to the streets destroying the vehicles of motorists and burning police cars.

They were beating people and shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is great), asking people if they were Christians – and if they were then beating them up.

It has been total chaos out on the streets.

I myself was caught up in the midst of a group of hundreds of youths – some armed with knives, sticks and daggers.

Some were saying I was a Christian. I had to shout Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Muhammad Rasoul Illah (God is great, God is great, Muhammad is the prophet of God) before they would let me go.

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I personally think President Obasanjo’s statement was VERY unfortunate – the NYT took it up as a Quote of the Day and it gives justification to the violence and slaughter, even permission for it to happen again should it be again justified —

New York Times Quote of the Day – 23 Nov 2002

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“The beauty queens should not feel that they are the cause of the violence. It could happen at any time irresponsible journalism is committed against Islam.”

OLUSEGUN OBASANJO, president of Nigeria, on religious clashes linked to the Miss World pageant.

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AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE in Lagos 22 Nov 2002

A statement issued by Kano’s Supreme Ulema Council, an influential group of Muslim scholars, warned it would “be unable to restrain Muslims from taking whatever action they deem appropriate” unless the government took action against the paper.

One Kano cleric, Ibrahim Khalil, said: “There is no difference between the author of this article and Salman Rushdie”.

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however the issue is much deeper — it is not about offence or even religion per se. It is about domination, and any excuse will do. The Islamists had threatened to disrupt the pageant long before the This Day article was printed.

A lesson has now been reinforced – violence works. It is like giving in to a child having a temper tantrum.

A position of dominance has been clearly established – a dominance established by violence and maintained through threat of terror – a dominance that is designed to leave the trembling dhimmis grovelling in the dust.

Nigeria has elections due in March / April 2003 (see http://www.worldevangelical.org/persec_nigeria_12aug02.html)

Cote d’Ivoire is facing the same – and the same movement / Islamic disaffection is rising throughout central Africa (with help primarily from Gadhafi and the Saudis and various Islamist networks) – Asia is the same, only a fair bit behind Africa and to a lesser extent. It is very serious in Africa – like a strong tide, and accelerating. Gadhafi is certainly keen to see his dream of a United Islamic Africa realised.

The Church in Africa is like the young David before Goliath — without sufficient strength or arms (how do you compete with OPEC money and a jihad theology, when you have a give to the poor and love your enemies theology??) Praise God bigger stones are not the answer – but ONLY by God can there be victory for freedom, justice, peace and righteousness. The Church just has to remember to take God into this spiritual battle!

Elizabeth Kendal WEA RLC

http://www.worldevangelical.org/rlc.html