“It feels like God visits everywhere else, but lives in Africa” —Will Smith “Africa has her mysteries, but even a wise man cannot understand them” — Miriam Makeba Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race (1887), by the African American writer Edward Wilmot Blyden, was a splendidly timely publication. Blyden, an historian and social scientist, left the United States and lived most of his life in Liberia and Sierra Leone in West Africa. He died in Freetown in Sierra Leone in 1912, aged 79. His newspaper column, “A Voice from Bleeding Africa,” is terrific testimony to the genius of this father of Pan-Africanism, as he is fondly known by his admirers. This year may be the year in which religion in Africa has its moment of truth, for Islam and Christianity are at odds across the continent. Blyden perceived this long ago. His stay in West Africa illuminated the dynamics of proselytising and propagating monotheistic faiths in Africa. Religion is one of the most controversial aspects of the continent, its depth and scale similar to the religious wars of the Middle East. The era of peaceful religious coexistence in Africa may be fast coming to an end. In the past, Africans were largely unaware of the diversity within both Christianity and Islam. There are various sects and schools of thought within Islam, and Christianity is not composed of a single church. There was a time when African countries had Christian presidents ruling predominantly Muslim nations, such as Leopold Sedar Senghor, a Roman Catholic presiding over a 95 per cent Muslim country, Senegal. Or Ahmadou Ahidjou, the first president of Cameroon, who was a Muslim presiding over a mainly animist and Christian country. Or Julius Nyerere, who was a Christian ruling over the overwhelmingly Muslim nation of Tanzania. None of these leaders ran into strong opposition from their compatriots. Blyden was one of the first intellectuals to delve into the crux of the matter, the precise relationship between the two main religions of the African continent, Islam and Christianity. Hailing from a Christian background, he was nevertheless convinced that Islam was the better religion for Africans. Blyden was born in 1832 in Saint Thomas in the Virgin Islands. He was of ethnic Igbo descent, and was suspicious of what he saw as Christianised and Westernised Africans. Later, as a professor of Greek and Latin at Liberia College, he embraced “Ethiopianism,” a form of messianic millenarianism. He later converted to Islam. Africa's Muslims: African Muslims have traditionally belonged to one or other of the Sufi orders, but the continent is now subject to a wide array of new religious expressions of Islam, among them Wahabism, Salafism and takfiri ideology. Sufism is under threat and is even branded heresy by the takfirists. In this framework it may be that Africa's wars will increasingly be fought along religious lines. The militant Islamist takfirists are critical of the Sufi orders and are intolerant of Christians and animists. What is certain is that animosity between Christians, privileged under colonialism, and Muslims in Africa has been exacerbated over the past three decades. Years of relative isolation and the marginalisation of Muslim communities have also resulted in their underdevelopment and impoverishment in areas such as northern Nigeria. Religious extremists are not a new phenomenon in Africa. Jihads were fought in past centuries in the Sahel belt of Africa, what is now Senegal, Guinea, Mali, Niger, northern Nigeria, Chad and even as far afield as Sudan and the Horn of Africa. The Nigerian civil war (1967-1970) had definite religious overtones, as the Biafra region in the south of the country was Christian and most of the commanders of the Nigerian army that moved against it were northern Nigerian Muslims. Impoverished and underdeveloped northern Nigerians suspected that an independent, oil-rich Biafra would further impoversish them. After the fall of Biafra in the civil war, a succession of mainly northern Muslim military rulers harmed Nigerians of all faiths, wresting control of the country's oil resources and looting the state coffers. Perhaps as far as Nigeria is concerned, Blyden was in a sense a forerunner of the extremist group Boko Haram. Blyden argued that Christianity had a demoralising effect on Africans, whereas Islam, he said, had a unifying and elevating impact. Precisely why he came to this conclusion is a subject of much debate, but he propagated what he called the “decolonisation of the African mind” through the promotion of Islam. With hindsight, the mid-20th century was a golden era of African religious tolerance, after which there was growing Muslim-Christian divergence. In his classic work Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for De-Colonisation, for example, Ghana's first president and founding father, Kwame Nkrumah, outlined the critical importance of viewing Christianity, Islam and traditional African religions as integral components of the social composition of Africa and the collective identity of African peoples. Geography, too, has had an influence in fomenting religious strife. In Nigeria's Plateau State, and in particular the capital Jos, fighting between Muslims and Christians in November 2008 claimed the lives of over 385 people and left more than 400 injured in two days of rioting. Just after midnight, mainly ethnic Hausa Muslims set Christian houses and churches on fire. The following day, the Christians retaliated. This resulting mutual mistrust has fuelled suspicions that other religious pogroms could be a fixture of Nigeria's political future. Christian missionaries had congregated in Plateau State because of the climate, and it became a centre of Christianity in what is now Nigeria. Ethnic communities not indigenous to Plateau settled there because of the tin and other mineral resources. Large concentrations of ethnic Hausa settled in Zango, a district restricted to Muslims. Barkin Ladi, a Hausa settlement, and Jos, a city of about four million people, became the centres of the local Islamists. Naraguta, another Hausa settlement that houses the University of Jos, is another stronghold of the Islamists. Clashes between indigenous people and settlers from other parts of the country have continued unabated in Plateau State. The violence has even reached Lagos, Nigeria's capital. With its population of 30 million people, Lagos is the largest city in Africa. In Kano State, too, with a population of 20 million, making it the second-largest in Nigeria after Lagos, is also divided along religious lines. The state capital Kaduna City is divided into segregated sections, and landlords sometimes ask potential tenants whether they are Muslim or Christian. Settlers in the state cannot own property even if they were born there, and religious affiliation is sometimes used as a pretext for discrimination. “My child cannot get a scholarship from Plateau State. I must register him as a Muslim in neighbouring Jigawa State first. Originally my grandfather came to Plateau State in the 1930s,” a Nigerian journalist who requested not to be named told the Weekly. In northern Nigeria, the indigenous Hausa control commerce, and the Hausa language is the local lingua franca. “If a Berom marries a Hausa Muslim they are both banished from their own community and, at worst, are murdered,” the Nigerian journalist said. Niger and the Central African Republic: Minorities asserting their own interests and ethnic identities have become a political matter in Nigeria, raising the question of whether it is religion or ethnicity that has been creating the troubles. The clan issue is more pronounced in southern Nigeria, where tribal distinctions are less palpable. Christian-Muslim clashes can also be a facade for more formidable tribal and clan clashes. The indigenous Beroms of Plateau State adopted Christianity as a result of missionary activity. In neighbouring Niger, there was rioting in the capital Niamey and the country's second largest city, Zinder, in the aftermath of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo's publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed earlier this year. At least ten people died, according to Nigerian President Mahamadou Issoufou. The victims of the violence were mainly Christians, a tiny minority of 0.4 per cent in an overwhelmingly Muslim nation where Muslims constitute 99 per cent of the population. Very few people practice animism or traditional indigenous African religious beliefs, though among these are the Woodabe Fulani, or Peul, who are under intense pressure to convert to Islam. Alcohol, such as the locally produced Bière Niger, is widely consumed and sold in bars and restaurants in Niger, however. A secular nation where separation of state and religion is guaranteed by Article 3 of the 2010 Constitution, and freedom of religion is protected by Article 30, Niger has resisted the application of Sharia law. But tensions occasionally arise between the Sunni Muslim majority (60 per cent), the Shia Muslim minority (seven per cent) and members of the Ahmadiya Muslim sect prevalent in Africa south of the Sahara. Tensions are also common between members of Sufi orders such as the Tijaniya, the Sanussiya and the Niassi Brotherhoods, who follow the Maliki School of Islamic jurisprudence, and the Wahhabi sect introduced more recently by Nigerians, mainly students, returning from Saudi Arabia. Traditionally, women are not secluded in Niger, and sexual segregation was virtually unknown. Head coverings are not part of the traditional female apparel in Niger. Today, however, the veil has become more common and even the niqab is not unknown, presumably as a result of the spread of Wahhabi teachings. The Central African Republic has also emerged as a centre of Muslim-Christian clashes in Africa. On the second anniversary of a rebellion against the central government the mostly Muslim Seleka Movement embarked on a ruthless campaign of killing Christians. Christian militias calling themselves the anti-Balaka organised to fight back, and the conflict escalated. In October last year the Seleka abducted a Polish missionary, Mateusz Dziedzic, and his 16 African attendants. He was freed by Cameroonian military forces after two months in captivity. The priest had been taken hostage by the Muslim Democratic Front of the Central African People (FDPC). His captors sought to exchange him their imprisoned leader, Abdoulaye Miskine. Meanwhile, Muslims in Bambari stressed that because of repeated attacks by Christians they dared not leave the town, even as both Bambari and Dekoa became virtually ghost towns. The United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA), deployed on 15 September 2014, has thus far failed to stem the violence or prevent human rights abuses. To date, MINUSCA is several thousand troops short of its mandated numbers. Seleka militiamen have blocked two key highways leading to the capital Bangui. Rich in diamonds, uranium and gold the Central African Republic's economy has been crippled by intercommunal violence and bloodshed, making it one of the world's least developed and most impoverished countries. “Throughout Africa religion has become more important, perhaps because people are suffering and need spiritual solace. But there are also evil forces at work that foment trouble. My main concern is not Christian-Muslim strife, but Christian-Christian strife and Muslim-Muslim conflict,” Helmi Sharawy, an Egyptian Africanist, told the Weekly. “Peace is fragile in the Central African Republic today,” said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at the New York-based rights organisation Human Rights Watch. “The story of how the country unraveled remains critically important as the international community struggles to respond appropriately,” he said. Thousands of besieged, mainly ethnic Fulani, Muslims are trapped in enclaves in the southwestern corner of the republic. There are periodic attacks by anti-Baleka Christian militias and the humanitarian conditions of the Fulani in the refugee camps are fast deteriorating. Problems elsewhere: In January, United States military advisers supporting the African Union Regional Task Force in the Central African Republic received Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) commander Dominic Ongwen into custody. The LRA is a militant Christian fundamentalist movement that has terrorised people across large swathes of Africa, including northern Uganda, South Sudan, the northeastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic. The US, Uganda — the primary contributor to the AU task force — and the Central African Republic should now ensure the prompt transfer of Ongwen, believed to be about 34 years old, to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for trial, observers say. Ongwen is a senior aide to Joseph Kony, the fugitive warlord wanted by the ICC. Kony is reportedly camped out in Kafia Kingi on the Sudan-South Sudan border where, ironically, the Islamist government of Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir is secretly supporting Kony and his Christian fundamentalist LRA. Al-Bashir, like Kony, is wanted by the ICC for war crimes. Reports of a gruesome massacre by Nigeria's militant Islamist terrorist movement Boko Haram last month in the village of Baga on the Nigerian-Chadian border was yet another escalation of religious-inspired violence in Africa. The Baga tragedy was described as the “deadliest massacre” by the London-based rights group Amnesty International. According to the Nigerian authorities, some 2,000 villagers were feared dead and around 1.5 million people displaced and rendered homeless by Boko Haram in Nigeria and hundreds of thousands of Nigerian refugees fled the country, crossing the border into the neighbouring countries of Chad and Cameroon. Meanwhile, militant Islamist groups like Al-Shabab in Somalia pose a threat to secular Ethiopia. In 1875, the then khedive of Egypt attempted to overrun Ethiopia from the Gulf of Aden port of Zeila, today in Somaliland, leaving an ethnic Somali-inhabited region of Ethiopia, Ogaden, that has been a sticking point between the two countries ever since. Siad Barre, the former president of Somalia, led an invasion of Ethiopia to reclaim the Ogaden region as an integral part of his country in a war that was widely seen as a religious jihad by Muslim Somalia against Christian Ethiopia. Tribal and religious clashes also have deep roots in the Horn of Africa. In 1888, the Mahdist forces of Sudan sacked the mediaeval Ethiopian capital of Gonder, threatening Ethiopia with a resurgent Islam. A stipulation by the Prophet Mohamed himself for Muslim armies not to invade Ethiopia was thus overlooked, since the Prophet had instructed his persecuted followers to cross the Red Sea from Mecca into Ethiopia and seek refuge with the Negus, or Christian Emperor Ashama ibn Abjar, Armah in Amharic and Ge-Ez (the ancient liturgical language of the Ethiopian Christian Orthodox Tewahedo Church), of the Axumite Abyssinian Highlands. Pagan Quraysh tribesmen from Mecca, in hot pursuit of the Muslims, pleaded with the emperor to hand the Muslim refugees sheltering in Ethiopia over to them. He rejected the request and the Prophet Mohamed was grateful. Indeed, the very first salat al-ghaib, or prayer for the deceased, was delivered by the Prophet Mohamed specifically for the Christian Emperor Armah. It was suspected that Emperor Armah had converted to Islam before he died. But, in all cases, this story holds out hope that Christians and Muslims in Africa will in future work together for a better future for the continent.
