Nigeria: David Cameron gets it right
The kidnapping of over 200 Nigerian Christian schoolgirls focused the world’s attention, at last, on the outrages committed by Boko Haram (“No western education”) in Nigeria. Scores of churches have been destroyed and many Christians killed by Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria, but the world kept quiet.
Now more people realize that there is a serious problem in Nigeria. But what is the problem? Prime Minister David Cameron correctly identified it recently, according to the Rt Rev Dr Ben Kwashi, the Anglican Archbishop of the area where the girls were kidnapped and where most of the atrocities have taken place.
Mr Cameron said: “This is not just a problem in Nigeria. We’re seeing this really violent extreme Islamism. We see problems in Pakistan, we see problems in other parts of Africa, problems in the Middle East. Also, let’s be frank, here in the UK there is still too much support for extremism that we have to tackle, whether it’s in schools or colleges or universities or wherever,” (Quoted in The Times, 12 May 2014).
Archbishop Kwashi, on a recent visit to the UK, insists that the violence of Boko Haram does not arise out of their poverty or alienation. They have enough funding to arm themselves with weapons that can take on modern armies. There are many poor and alienated groups in Nigeria who do not resort to violence. And if they are representing the poor and alienated then why did they blow up a major fish market which is a centre for food, income and the export of fish many times over? Those fighting on behalf of the poor do not kill the poor or their children.
This is a civilizational conflict that roots itself in religious justification. Islam is of the view that it should be supreme in political and economic power. The North of Nigeria is by and large Muslim. The south is by and large Christian. Nigeria is an uneasy federation of the two. People regard themselves as loyal to their region and faith before they are loyal to Nigeria. The central government only maintains its position by controlling the oil revenues and using them to purchase loyalty from the regions.
A constitutional conference in Nigeria is due to report later in the year on how Nigerian constitutional unity can be maintained.
The churches have been slow to respond to the threats of militant Islam. The World Council of Churches appears to be doing nothing. The Lausanne Networks did not tackle this at their conference in Cape Town in 2010 but began to address this in the last year.
Dialogue with Islam is not going to address this issue of merciless violence. What is needed is an ethical framework by which Christian people can defend themselves, their families and their communities from annihilation. This applies to Nigeria, Syria and Pakistan. Loving one’s enemy may mean preventing him or her from continuing to sin by killing and raping people.
The threat that Islam holds out is that it will escalate the violence with no consideration for who suffers. But Islam is not monolithic. The turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa is not primarily hostility to the west or western civilisation. It is an internal struggle within Islam between Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran as they and the movements they support seek to demonstrate their purist Islamic credentials.
The current weakness of Saudi Arabia means that it is not able to threaten those who name what is going on as an organized pan-national operation to place Islam where it believes it should be by rights. Therefore David Cameron is able and free correctly and publicly to identify the problem.
When he was back in Nigeria on 21 May, Archbishop Ben Kwashi said that the attack on the markets on the previous day in which over a hundred people were killed, appeared to have been an opportunistic attack by Boko Haram. Victims included both Muslims and Christians.
He mentioned that among the victims were Muslim traders and the Muslim wife of a retired colonel who was a classmate and close friend of his. Archbishop Kwashi opined that if it was Boko Haram then their purpose may be to divert attention from the seizure of the 200 schoolgirls in the North-East.