The central Nigerian city of Jos is at the crossroads of the country’s Muslim-dominated north and the mainly Christian and animist south. In recent months, renewed clashes between Muslim and Christian communities there have left hundreds dead.
Nigerian authorities are under mounting pressure to prosecute those behind the unrest. Nighttime curfews and an increased military and police presence are maintaining order ”” for now.
But observers warn that while religion may be the fault line for a decade of periodic fighting, underlying grievances in Jos go much deeper. The area is plagued by poverty, joblessness and fierce competition over land and scarce resources.
It bothers me that religion is factored out of this conflict so quickly. The article makes no mention of the introduction of Muslim Sharia law as a factor. Yet the Archbishop of Jos, who is quoted in the article, gives a rather different picture in an interview given to the Zenit news agency in Rome. Here he mentions Shariah and while believing that the conflict is not wholly religious, in this interview he does see a religious element as central to what happens:
http://www.zenit.org/article-28647?l=english
Read the interview and then assess the NPR article in the light of what is said there about Muslim pressure.
I too am bothered by the lack of careful reporting in the NPR story. Here at the New Wineskins Conference we have just heard a detailed report from the Most Rev. Edmund Akanya and another by Baroness Cox on what is happening on the ground in Nigeria… and the problem is quite clearly a case of Muslim aggression and imposition of Sharia law. The evidence is horiffic and self-evident. Certainly there are other contributing factors, but the brutality stems from deep matters of the heart that are spiritual before they are anything else.
Agreed (Fr. Tee and Dr. Harrold), but after all, what do you really expect with liberal NPR? Still, although the reporting is skewed, I’m glad for more information coming out about the volatile, dangerous situation in the Jos area. I learned some new things. And it’s good that this powerkeg situation isn’t being totally forgotten but to some extent anyway kept in the public eye by follow up stories like this.
David Handy+