For those not irredemiably ignorant, or just plain stupid, some moderate reflection on the colonial history, and the neo-colonial manipulations in re West African states would go far to shedding light on the rather unreligious aspects to the latest bloodletting, and indeed some moderate attempt at actually informing oneself on the history would rather take away your smug, if typically contemptibly ignorant posturing in regards to the religion and which way the blood has flown.
Regrettably no particular religion, if one is judging by the actions of its adherents, comes away clean in these circumstances, although as in Yugoslavia, each side can torture up some explanations.
It’s not just the bigotry. It’s the numerous logical fallacies flying all over the place. By the time some issues are being patiently addressed, the Mother of all of Medusa’s heads resurfaces: “I do not like X… But, I don’t go around killing X… these Muslims do…”
Uh-uh. The Christian-Muslim divide in Nigeria is largely ethnic. See below.
Yep. As below:
*…In a number of ways Kaduna is a miniature of Nigeria, a federation of 36 states. Not only is it made up of a multiplicity of ethnic groups, it also has a culturally distinct north that is predominantly Muslim and a south that is mainly Christian…
…While Muslims in Kaduna embraced the religious code, counter-protests by Christians soon resulted in ethnic and religious violence, which first engulfed the state capital of Kaduna with its two million people. When the first two bouts cleared - the first in February and the second in May 2000, more than 2,000 people had been killed. Scores of houses and other property had also been destroyed…
…Worse still, the ripples of the violence in Kaduna were felt in other states. Reprisal killings were soon mounted against northern Muslims in parts of the mainly Christian south of Nigeria…
…The other source of conflict in Kaduna is growing pressure on land as a result of migration. The Hausa-Fulani, who are mainly migrant traders, have established sizable communities among the ethnic minority groups in the state. And in recent decades the rate of southward migration has been accelerated by the advance of the Sahara Desert. Many Hausa-Fulani farmers are therefore seeking land for agriculture…
…This situation was at play in the town of Gwantu, in southern Kaduna, early in November where violence broke out between Muslim Hausa-speakers and local people…
…An attempt by Frank Bala Baba, elected chairman of the local government to relocate the headquarters to an area populated mainly by Christians of his ethnic group, was resisted by the Hausa-speakers, resulting in violence…
In 1992 similar violence erupted on a larger scale in Zangon-Kataf, also in southern Kaduna, between Hausa-speaking settlers and the local Kataf ethnic group…*
Bako, a Christian from an ethnic minority, however believes that for many communities in Nigeria the roots of the problems go back to the British colonial era and the early 19th century.
*…For decades Tivs and their Jukun neighbours in Nigeria’s central region have engaged in intermittent fighting, mostly over land and sometimes as political rivals…
…At the moment, the Tivs feel that they are fighting a three-front battle. Apart from the Jukuns, they also have to contend with Fulani nomads with whom they have had bloody disputes over grazing land. In Nasarawa State, there are still bloody remnants from clashes in June involving the Tivs and the Hausa-speaking Azeri over land ownership…
…Many analysts link the current bloodletting in central Nigeria to political problems dating to the colonial era…The Tivs were one of non-Muslim minorities who vehemently opposed Hausa-Fulani influence, resulting in a major eruption of violence in the early 1960s that required military intervention to contain. While the Tivs preferred political alliances with southern political parties, the Jukuns teamed up with the Northern Peoples’ Congress, controlled by the Muslim feudal oligarchs of the north. Violent eruptions between the two groups were recorded in 1959, 1964, 1976 and 1991-92…*
By the way, the Tiv are Christian and animist. The Jukun are Christian, Muslim, and Animist ( according to ethnologue ).
One more time - YES, the violence in Nigeria is absolutely tied in part to religion, religious differences, and religious extremism. No, that is not the only issue at work.
Does Islam today have problems with violent extremism? Yes. Does that mean all or most Muslims are inherently violent towards non-Muslims and Islam is unreformable? Not IMHO.
I had some misconceptions on the nature of the Nigerian riots, and Tamerlane cleared them up with an informative and genuinely educational post. Thank you, Tamerlane.
And both Nazism and Stalinism are very specific systems with very clearly defined goals and policies. Islam cannot be legitimately compared to either of those, as Islam, like Christianity, is more diverse and contains many more factions.
As others have noted, above, I have not asserted any moral equivalency between bin Laden and those who prefer to slam Islam without paying attention to actual facts. I have noted the strong intellectual similarity of resorting to an “us vs them” mentality that ignores factual differences among those labeled “them.”
If nothing else, there are very practical reasons to avoid pretending that Islam is some Borg-like monolithic structure. The Islamist extremists tend to live among other Muslims. If we treat all Muslims as the “bad guys,” we are effectively telling those people and those nations among whom the Islamists are hiding that we are going to treat them all as enemies, regardless of their actions. So, why should they then help us? The Brits treated the Catholics of Northern Ireland as though they were all IRA partisans for years–and that treatment helped the IRA recruit far more members than anything that the IRA, itself, could say or do. If you look at the history of the settlement of the U.S., you repeatedly find stories of Indian leaders who initially urged accomodation with the oncoming whites who, because the settlers and government treated all Indians as enemies, decided that if they were going to be treated as enemies, they may as well go down fighting.
Viewing disparate peoples who share a single identifier as one large clump is always self-defeating. bin Laden looks on the world as Muslim and infidel. The best support that we can provide him is to let him set the terms and adopt his worldview, dividing the whole world into bad Muslims and good non-Muslims.
I’d be really interested to know why the U.S. riots–which demonstrate that “good, civilized, Christians” can riot over religion–should be ignored. A few years difference? I’d give you a few years difference if there was a significant change in society. I do not hold up the Crusades to condemn Christianity now, because the Crusades were launched by a European society that was feudal, closely tied to a single church organization, and having no experience of republican forms of government. The same thing cannot be said of the religion riots of the 19th century. U.S. society has changed, but most of the forms of that society still exist (although the Catholics finally got enough people onto this continent to make attacking them problematic). The primary reason that we no longer have those riots is probably found in the two conditions that our society is more pluralistic and that our society is wealthier–people who have more to lose are less likely to engage in destructive behavior. The Nigerian riots are evil–and they are being waged among poor people with nothing to lose. (In the same way, race riots in this country were generally waged by poor whites on blacks until the whites got enough wealth to avoid them, leaving the poor to continue the practice).
The instigation of the Nigerian riots was a particular view of a particular religion and that is evil. However, no one outside of that region rioted over the issue; we saw no general Islamic calls for the disbanding of the Miss World contest or the death of the reporter. The event is prompted (or, at least, instigated) by one group within Islam and should be condemned in terms of that particular manifestation of Islam, not by a blanket condemnation of a few billion people.
On the other hand, your persistent attempts to claim that I approve of the riots for any reason are simply silly (not to mention dishonest). It would appear that your only point is that we should look at those riots and say “Islam is bad.” Each time you join this thread it seems to be for the sole purpose of ignoring the actual discussion so that you can brand anyone who does not condemn Islam a supporter of violence or hatred. You have not actually put forth an argument, here, but your comments seem to imply that anything short of total condemnation of everyone Muslim fails to meet some vague (certainly undefined) moral test.
Do you believe that Islam should be condemned or obliterated?
Do you think that such an action would be moral?
Do you understand the difference between defending a large group against gross (and false) generalizations and condemning the actions of a specific group for specific events?
Have you paid any attention to (or been able to understand) the points raised that indicate that Islam cannot be accurately painted as good or bad any more than Christianity, Judaism, or Hinduism?
I give up, entirely. You are right Tom. Conspiring to kill people based on their religion or ethnicity is A-OK with me. Kill the Jews, kill the infidel Americans for supporting the Jews, whatever. Yeah, I know, there are other reasons for the hatred, like being poor, or oppressed, or ethnic differences, or whatever. Sorry to interfere here. Hatred is OK., I guess. Whatever.
Well, milroyj, you’re running almost 100% on mischaracterizing my arguments, putting words in my mouth, and failing to make an actual point related to the discussion.
Aside from trying to characterize 2 billion or so people as evil, I cannot quite figure out what else you were trying to say.
As for hatred, it seems to me that you are doing a good job of displaying it.
Maybe veering slightly off-topic, but just to add a little more perspective to the picture, here are a few more salient facts on Nigeria that I think help illustrate the complexity of that situation.
It is a little over twice the size of California, but with ~4x the population ( ~130 million ) and an increasing problem with desertification ( and other degradations ) of arable land ( though Nigeria started out with a fairly high percentage in this category compared to most countries ). In the 1990’s about half of that population was under 15.
Anywhere from 250-400 ethnic groups ( mostly linguistic-based ) depending on how you ask and in the region of 4000 dialects. The big three are the Hausa-Fulani ( a fused group that isn’t entirely fused, for example socially the less numerous urban Fulani tend to control town administrations, though they intermarry freely with, and speak the language of the Hausa, while the semi-nomadic cattle-herding Fulani speak Fula rather than Hausa, and generally don’t intermarry with the Hausa ) in the north, the Yoruba in the southwest, and Ibo ( Igbo ) in the southeast - All of the above having numerous subgroupings. Together these three broadly-defined groups comprise ~60% of the population.
Also while I think my earlier comment, that religion often tends to separate on ethnic lines in Nigeria, is a reasonable generalization ( especially in Kaduna state ), there are all sorts of exceptions. Note these comments on the nature and complexity of ethnicity in Nigeria:
*Language groupings sometimes shifted their distinctiveness rather than displaying clear boundaries. Manga and Kanuri speakers in northeastern Nigeria spoke easily to one another. But in the major Kanuri city of Maiduguri, 160 kilometers south of Manga-speaking areas, Manga was considered a separate language. Kanuri and Manga who lived near each other saw themselves as members of the same ethnic group; others farther away did not.
Markers other than language were also used to define ethnicity. Speakers of Bura (a Chadic language closely related to Marghi) saw themselves traditionally as two ethnic groups, Bura and Pabir, a view not necessarily shared by others. Bura mostly adhered to Christianity or to a local indigenous religion, and a few were Muslims. They lived originally in small, autonomous villages of 100 to 500 persons that and expanded split as the population grew. The Pabir had the same local economy as the Bura, but they were Muslim, they lived in larger (originally walled) villages of 400 to 3,000 with more northerly architectural styles, they resisted splitting up into subgroups, and they recognized a central ruler (emir) in a capital town (Biu).*
The ethnicity of Nigeria is so varied that there is no definition of a Nigerian beyond that of someone who lives within the borders of the country (Ukpo, p. 19). The boundaries of the formerly English colony were drawn to serve commercial interests, largely without regard for the territorial claims of the indigenous peoples (38). As a result, about three hundred ethnic groups comprise the population of Nigeria (7), and the country’s unity has been consistently under siege: eight attempts at secession threatened national unity between 1914 and 1977.
But here’s what troubles some of us about the state of the Muslim world: No More Fanaticism as Usual (requires Registration).
The linked article is an op-ed by Salman Rushdie, who says in part:
The point is, these are not rare incidents, carried out by extremists with little popular support. When Iranian students protested the death sentence of Aghajari (as Rushdie points out, young Iranians seem to be just about the only Muslims willing to protest the excesses of fundamentalist Islam), tens of thousands of Muslims took to the streets to defend the death sentence and call for even harsher punishments. The Fatwa issued against the journalist in Nigeria was supported by the president of the country, for Pete’s sake.
So where’s all the Muslim outrage? Where are American Muslims in this? Why are they not protesting in front for the Iranian embassy? Why are there not marches in protest of Sharia law in the Middle East?
Rushdie himself was victim of a fatwa, and was forced to live in hiding for years for writing The Satanic Verses. Again, I don’t recall a massive Muslim backlash against that Fatwah.
I think that Rushdie has a point about the need for more Muslims to stand up and condemn the evil of their fellow religionists. Of course, I would like to see more Christians stand up and condemn the evil done by Christians, and more Capitalists, Socialists, and people in the media stand up and condemn the evil done by Capitalists, Socialists, and people in the media. I would like to see more Jews condemning the evil perpetrated by Israel and the JDL (although they seem to do a better job of producing people of conscience than the other groups I listed). However, the majority of people everywhere spend an inordinate amount of time condemning their opponents instead of cleaning their own houses.
On the other hand, Muslims have opposed the various actions of other Muslims. (I often wonder how many condemnations get lost simply because the news media never bother to report them. People acting responsibly is just about never news.)
Egyptian rights group criticizes state TV over show
(And it should be noted, again, that this has much more to do with anti-Israeli or anti-Jewish sentiment than it has to do with Islam. Egypt is basically a secular (if authoritarian) society at odds with Israel that is, itself, battling the Islamists within its borders.)
Now, where was the loud hue and cry and condemnation of the Christian massacres of Muslims last year in Cote d’Ivoire? For that matter, where was the condemnation of the Christian massacres of Muslims in Bosnia (as opposed to some minor hand-wringing that it was a terrible thing that was going on)? I suspect that just as Christian leaders in the U.S. and Europe saw those massacres as “civil war” rather than sectarian violence, Muslim leaders see the recent outbreaks of violence as “internal tensions” or civil war, rather than sectarian violence.
Ya know, nobody ever answered my question. I’ll ask it again:
If I said jesus christ had been an abortion doctor (in a newspaper article), **how many people would die in the streets due to rioting christians? ** Sure, a christian might shoot me in the head, but aside from myself, nobody else would have anything to fear from rioting, murderous christians. But say mohammed would approve of a harmless beauty pageant, and over 100 people are dead at the hands of foaming-at-the-mouth muslims.
“So where’s all the Muslim outrage? Where are American Muslims in this? Why are they not protesting in front for the Iranian embassy?”
Well I don’t know Sam. Where is the Chinese-American outrage at the atrocities of China in Tibet? Where is the Russian-American outrage at the atrocities of Russia in Chechnya. Where is the African-American outrage at the war in Congo? Etc. etc. More importantly where is your outrage at the lack of outrage.
As has been shown repeatedly in this thread the Islamic world is hardly unique in terrorism or mass violence against civilians or repression. It exists all over the Third World and even beyond. The rationale for the violence may be different in the Islamic world but the magnitude of the violence is not systematically worse.
Which brings us to the interesting question of why people like you are so incredibly exercized about the Islamic world while compartively indifferent to atrocities elsewhere?
The answer can only be that Muslim extremists target Westerners far more than other extremists. But that alone doesn’t make them worse than those other extremists who also kill innocents. The life of an innocent Tutsi or Sri Lankan is just as valuable as that of a New Yorker or Israeli.
I wonder if those who direct disproportionate outrage at the Islamic world understand this.
I will need to see a cite for this claim. The government of Nigeria has officaly stated their disaproval. The fatwa was called not only illegitiment by the government, but they also said that they wouldn’t allow such a thing to be carried out. Also add that to the fact that the president is not even a Muslim, he is a born-again Christian. I would be interested in that link.
If you bothered searching you would have need not looked any further then the internet for numerous opinions about Sharia and even calls for democracy in Middle Eastern countries.
I am starting to think that this is futile, to argue that Muslims aren’t a backward, violent, uncivilized, and barbaric people to a bigot (Islamophobe). Is like trying to argue that Blacks aren’t a backward, violent, uncivilized, and barbaric people to a bigot (klansmen).
Moreover, IMHO, US started off with as clean a slate as historically possible with remarkable visionary leadership in the founding fathers…yet, slavery was condoned, Indians were forcibly relocated etc, i.e., serious ills plagued a theoretically egalitarian society or the pluralistic experiment if you will, even up until the 1960s. Now, look at a country like India, which started its birth as a nation state with a plethora of visionary leaders but a few millenia of history catches up quite easily, especially in the presence of much strife. Not trying to find excuses for the violence at all, but just trying to put things in perspective. I do agree that Islam as a religion is going through turbulent times but to use brushes of the kind seen here is unfair to many of its adherents.
Because you’re lucky enough to live in a rich, democratic, stable, not torn away by civil wars and unresolved issue, country.
If you were to live somewhere else, you could be massacred during a riot because you’re a christian, or because you’re a muslim, or because you’re a chinese, etc…
As everybody already told you, you’re only noticing the events which support your point of view about islam, and are ignoring (or are only unaware of, or both) the events which contradict it, be they positive (the numerous, mainstream, and respected muslim clerics condemning the terrorist attacks, for instance) or negative (Hindus massacring muslim people during riots, for instance).
Which is another way of saying that you don’t live in the context of a dysfunctional civilization badly in need of Reformation–which brings us right back to where we started, does it not?
That is true. I am fairly sure that Kalt is not an animist living in Rwanda or a Muslim living in Cote d’Ivoire who must fear for his life from unreformed Christians.