Wonderous.
Come back for a quick check and one finds the same drooling idiocy, the same pimping of bigotry under more polite cover, and the same violent ignorance, even premeditated ignorance.
Now then if Milly were capable of lifting a finger to do some actual motherfucking learning, then he might inquire after the Xian on Muslim riots in Lagos not more than a year ago, and then add on to this, if the cognitive dissonance were not too much or if perhaps he did not slide into the easy explanation that they’re just nigs after all, reflect on the Xian on Muslim violence in Cote d’Ivoire not a few months ago. Milly et all, were they not so comfortable in their ignorant lazy bigotry, might very well like to read about that – ah but it is the nigs, eh? Doesn’t count against the White Xians, right boys? Or were you just to bloody lazy to inform yourselves?
He then might reflect on how these items strangely get spun in the US press as “tribal” or better ‘ethnic’ violence - but should Muslims engage in the same time honored human idiocy, well then it rather must be the religion, eh what?
Apples and motherfucking oranges are not being compared, what Tamerlane and Tom and others have, regretably, if not not utterly in vain, is alevate your gross, yet not unexpectecly bigotted habitual ignorance.
Now, what is occuring in Nigeria is but tangential to Islam per se, and has rather a lot to do with the general political crisis, one that is structurally similar to that of Cote d’Ivoire, only something of a mirror image (insofar as the Roman Catholic dominated southern elite in CI has held political dominance, the legacy of the colonial era and post-colonial interventions by the ex-colonial power and local power structures, whereas Nigeria is something of the reverse.)
And this is but in the same region. We might easily look to the rather bloody minded behaviour of certain Greek Orthodox and Catholic Xians in a region called the Balkans vis-a-vis Muslims, or the somewhat atrocious history of the Maronite Phalange etc.
No need to delve into what Milly evidently considers, in his ignorant, navel gazing manner, ‘ancient history’
As to clairobscur’s question:
As Tamerlane noted I believe - read the thread rapidly and with no small degree of disgust at the festering yet habitual ignorance on this issue of Islam - there is an historical divide in Nigeria between a largely Islamized North (the Sahel region) and a largely Xian South, the ‘Forest’ – a division that is replicated across West Africa and reflects both colonial and pre-colonial ethnic and climactic/social divisions.
The dryer North, the plains or Sahel, was historically characterized by larger states with some Islamic connexions, although state formation predates Islam. The South, different ethnicities and smaller states, and rather differnt social patterns. Both physically and socially the Sahel folks are distinguishable from the ‘Forest’ folks.
In the case of Nigeria, there is a division btw the Hausa-Fulani North, largely Muslim, and the Yoruba and Ibo (largely Xian, esp. the Ibo, the Yoruba more mixed Muslim-Xian) South. Interestingly, the ethnic divisions (these are ethnicities, not tribes for it is language, not descent that define them) trump religion in the Yoruba areas, to date.
The real struggle here is regional, btw North and South, over a dwindling economic pie (Nigeria’s economy is less than brilliant as one might suspect, given the kleptocracy that the Abache ran) with a growing population. Politics is rapidly devolving into the sort of grim logic of destruction that we saw in Rwanda or in Yugoslavia, especialy Yugoslavia. Should one want to investigate this, rather than fulminate in stinking filthy ignorance, one could research the development of Xian integrisme in the South, about as ugly as the ugly fundementalism being promulgated in the North.
Consolidating power. All about consolidating power. As it happens historically the Army has been Northern and largely Muslim - a British conciet held the Hausa and the Fula were more “martial” people while the Ibo and Yorubu were ‘commercial’ or some such nonesense. Nice old prejudices.
Well, rather enough of this. I have rather given up hope that any dent can be made on this topic, bigotry likes its self-serving ignorance.