Upheaval in Nigeria
News Bulletin
(from ChristianityTodayOnline): Nigerian Archbishop Demands Justice Peter Akinola affirms warning to government and Muslims, fires back on the Western press. (April 20, 2006)
Professor Keener responds:
I have spent time in northern Nigeria, and the Archbishop is speaking the truth. The western media reported when “Christians” massacred a few hundred “Muslims” in the “Muslim” town of Yelwa, but they took the matter completely out of context. A few years before local non-Muslims retaliated against Muslims there, I taught 60 pastors in Yelwa—which was not an exclusively Muslim town, and was in a mostly Christian state. I was conversing with some church leaders over a meal and overheard a Muslim from outside the area instructing local Muslims negatively about my presence (though I could only reconstruct it from the gestures and the few words of Hausa I recognized).
The next year, the Christians were slaughtered or driven out of Yelwa, and their churches burned. Thousands of Christians were murdered by jihadists throughout that state, starting just a few days before the infamous Sept. 11 in the U.S.A. But in contrast with the U.S. response to jihadists’ attack, nothing was done effectively to protect the Christians in Plateau state, and they received no media attention. Tens of thousands of people became internally displaced refugees.
Finally, some non-Muslims in the area retaliated. The media response, which blamed the Christians, invited the slaughter of hundreds of Christians in Kano; my friend’s contact there reported that all the morgues and refrigeration units were full—but the official report said only a few were dead, and their faith was not specified. To this date, I am more likely to see media reports saying how Muslims and Christians kill each other, or giving inflated figures for Muslim casualties and negligible figures for Christian casualties. That Christians turned the other cheek for years is routinely ignored. Yet how long would Americans have turned the other cheek? (It was only a matter of days, as I recall, before the U.S. went to war in Afghanistan.) We have a real double standard here.
The archbishop is right to work against the violence. But he is also right to be sensitive to the youth who are tired of turning the other cheek. Violence cannot solve anything and violence cannot win. But we need to understand what motivates it so we can address it.
Grace be with you,
Craig
April 20, 2006
Category: Church History
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