At 3 am on the morning of 7 March, over 500 Nigerian Christians were subject to an indescribable genocide.

It began when Muslim Fulani herdsmen set the homes of Christian villagers on fire. As the occupants (mostly women and children) fled, they were cut down and killed by rampaging Muslims.

Many of the fleeing villagers were trapped in nets and then hacked to death with machetes. Other Christians fell into animals traps that had been carefully set outside the huts.

Above the shrieks of the butchered women and children could be heard the Muslim war cry: “Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar.”

When the violence finally ended four  hours later, hundreds of dead and dying bodies lay in the streets.
The final death toll was 500.

According to the Nigerian newspaper, This Day, on March 6, at 9 p.m., the governor reported the possibility of the attack to Major-General Maina Saleh, the commanding officer of the military in the area. But the military failed to take actions despite the warning by the governor.

Growing Tension

The outbreak was situated in central Nigeria’s Plateau State, which sits between the country’s predominantly Muslim north and Christian south. The separation runs right through the town of Jos, the epicentre of the violence.

The division within Nigeria has been growing for centuries. In the 9th century, Islam came to northern Nigeria. By the 16th it had spread to all the major Northern cities. Some Northern states have now incorporated Sharia law into their legal system. Christian missionaries, on the other hand, were very effective in evangelizing the south during the 19th and 20th centuries. This led to the existence of a Muslim north and a Christian south, making the middle of Nigeria a faultline of pressure. This tension has been increased in recent days as a result of Christianity spreading into some traditionally Muslim regions.

After the violence had ended, the bodies of hundreds of Christians were piled into mass graves.

The attacks, which were coordinated to occur at the same time in three separate villages, also represent the larger conflict throughout all of Africa between the religion of light and the religion of darkness. Philip Jenkins, Professor of History and Religious

Studies at Pennsylvania State University, has observed that the recent confrontation, about 10 degrees north of the equator, marks the larger boundary between Muslim and Christian regions that runs all the way to Asia.

In the April issue of the American Conservative, Professor Jenkins explained that

“A tectonic plate of religious and cultural confrontation runs across West and Northwest Africa, through Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. A decade ago, Indonesia witnessed some of the worst fighting, as Muslim militias launched bloody assaults on that nation’s Christian minority, some 25 million strong. For decades, the overwhelmingly Christian Philippines has suffered constant insurgency from a ruthless armed movement concentrated in the Muslim south. Mob attacks and pogroms have raged in Malaysia. In Africa, the Sudan is probably the best-known theater of mass martyrdom, while Nigeria remains deeply polarized. And that is not to mention ongoing killings in countries like Uganda and Kenya.

Humanitarian concerns apart, there are plenty of reasons for the West to be deeply worried about these conflicts. Nigeria has almost 160 million people and by 2050 is expected to have 300 million, making it one of the world’s most populous nations. If it ever escapes from its present political horrors, it will be the obvious leader of sub-Saharan Africa. Nigeria also matters enormously in terms of natural resources. It is the third largest source of U.S. crude-oil imports, ahead of Saudi Arabia. Other up-and-coming oil suppliers in West and Central Africa are also among the religiously divided nations. Meanwhile Indonesia, with 240 million people, is already a population giant, and unlike Nigeria, it seems set for serious economic development in the coming decade.

If such massive countries ever became monolithically Muslim, that would be significant enough for the West, especially because these states wield such cultural influence over their neighbors. But if they fell into the hands of a radical form of Wahhabi or Salafist Islam, that would be an epochal catastrophe.”

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This article will be appearing in the April edition of the Christian Voice magazine (http://www.christianvoice.org.uk/) It is reprinted here with permission.