Understand Nigeria and understand Islam

November 26, 2002

Understand Nigeria and understand Islam

This past week, Muslims in Nigeria rioted. The reason for the beatings, and 
killings of Christians and the torching of Christian churches; the West's 
reporting of these riots; and the official Muslim reactions to the riots 
explain almost everything you need to know about the threat non-Muslim 
civilization faces at this time.

To understand the threat the non-Muslim world faces, you need to understand 
the reason for the Muslim riot.

Muslims in Nigeria, a country that is about half Muslim, opposed the 
presence of the Miss World pageant in their country. They condemned the 
pageant's "nudity" and its "encouraging of promiscuity."

In an article on the Muslim opposition, on Saturday, Nov. 16, 2002, the 
popular Nigerian newspaper ThisDay (almost half of whose staff is Muslim), 
published a piece by one of its reporters, journalist Isioma Daniel. In the 
piece she wrote, "The Muslims thought it was immoral to bring 92 women to 
Nigeria and ask them to revel in vanity. What would Muhammad think? In all 
honesty, he would probably have chosen a wife from one of them. The irony is 
that Algeria, an Islamic country, is one of the countries participating in 
the contest."

To most of us, this paragraph is utterly innocuous, insulting of no one and 
no faith. To many Muslims, however, it was more than insulting. It was 
blasphemy.

Though the management and editor of ThisDay immediately and profusely 
apologized in print day after day, "Islamic fundamentalists gathered after 
prayers outside the national mosque in Abuja, then marched through the city 
chanting 'God is Great' and burning cars, churches and houses. They also 
burned down the offices of ThisDay, despite a groveling apology from the 
paper" (The Sunday Herald, Scotland). As reported in the Nigerian press (The 
Vanguard, Lagos) "Muslim youths chanting 'Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar' God is 
great, God is great, brandishing swords, cutlasses, knives, cudgels and 
other dangerous implements faced some churches, hotel (sic) and other known 
Christian places of businesses which they razed."

Christians counterattacked, and as of this writing, over 200 Nigerians are 
dead, some burned alive in gasoline-soaked tires.

To understand the threat the non-Muslim world faces, you need to understand 
the way in which Western news agencies report Islamic violence.

Blame is almost never placed on the Muslim rioters. Rather, the passive 
voice, "violence broke out," is regularly used, and Muslims and Christians 
are simply reported to be killing each other in "sectarian violence." The 
Voice of America news report actually identified with the Muslim rioters: 
"The riots were sparked after a newspaper published an article mocking the 
Islamic leaders' protest."

It is crucial to identify this each-side-is-at-fault reporting. It 
characterizes world news organizations' descriptions of Arab-Israeli 
violence as well. Just as in Nigeria, where the press blames "sectarian 
violence" rather than Muslim rioters, in the Arab-Israeli conflict, the 
press blames a "cycle of violence" rather than Muslim terrorists.

To understand the threat to the non-Muslim world, you must understand the 
official Muslim reaction to the Muslim rioters in Nigeria.

One would think that leaders of any great religion would condemn members of 
their faith who murdered innocent people, destroyed others' houses of 
worship and homes, and burned down a newspaper's offices.

Yet in all the statements made by Nigeria's leading Muslim officials in the 
Nigerian press, I could not find a word of condemnation of the Muslim 
murderers. The Muslim leaders called for calm after accepting the 
newspaper's abject apologies. But the leaders made it clear that they, not 
only the Muslim rioters, consider the original article a grave insult to 
Islam. In fact, they compared the woman who wrote it to Salman Rushdie, 
whose death sentence they reaffirmed.

So here's where we stand:

Nigerian Muslim rioters murder innocent Nigerians and burn down over 20 
churches because of an innocuous sentence in a Nigerian newspaper.

The West and its press choose to regard the Nigerian violence as merely 
"sectarian violence," and hold Nigerian Christians equally culpable.

Muslims kill non-Muslims and the victims (i.e., the editors of the newspaper 
whose offices were razed) are told to apologize -- just as after 9-11, 
America has been repeatedly told to apologize to the Muslim world, and just 
as Israel, while enduring massacre after massacre at the hands of Muslim 
terrorists, is told to apologize for defending itself.

Nigerian Muslim leaders do not say a word against their murderous 
co-religionists but they do declare one innocuous sentence by a young woman 
writer to be an "abomination."

The woman who wrote the sentence has been fired.

The editor of ThisDay has been arrested and not been heard from since. One 
fears for his life. And ours.


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