Christians fled when they heard the chanting: “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his Prophet!”
A mob of 200 young people marched toward Oore-ofe Baptist Church in Kaduna, Nigeria, where a Sunday morning worship service was in progress despite threats from Muslim leaders to burn Christian churches that day.
Clutching torches and cans of gasoline, the Muslim marchers stood at the gate of the church compound, crying: “Kill them! Burn down their church! Confiscate their property!”
Pastor Fola Lateju, now alone in the building, decided to face them. Walking to the gate, he told the crowd, “What you are about to do is against the will of God. You will incur his wrath. Go back and tell those who sent you that this is against God’s will.”
Taken aback, mob leaders paused to talk among themselves. Suddenly they seized the young pastor, drenched him in gasoline and torched his clothing.
Nothing happened.
Turning to a clump of grass, they poured out some of the gasoline and touched the torch to it. The grass exploded in flames.
Wheeling back on Lateju, they drenched him again, but for the second time the torch would not set him ablaze. A third try also failed.
Confusion spread among the Muslims, and Lateju retreated into the churchyard. The crowd followed, pelting him with stones. One attacker struck him with a weapon, and he fell, bleeding profusely from the forehead. The Muslims left without burning the church. Several deacons emerged from hiding and took their injured pastor to a nearby clinic.
God has intervened on several occasions to protect his people in the face of Muslim persecution, says Lateju, who now teaches world religions at the Nigerian Baptist seminary in Ogbomosho.
Northern Nigeria has endured 20 years of religious conflict. Clashes between rival Muslim groups, or attacks on Christians, often have degenerated into rioting and bloodshed, ending only with police or military intervention.
An upsurge in activity by militant Islamic groups — some reportedly directed by agitators sent from radical Muslim nations — has raised tensions in Nigeria’s once-peaceful religious environment.
Groups like Izalah — dedicated to “purifying” Islam of innovations — clash with others like Jamatul Nasir Islam, a more politically minded council of Muslim emirs, imams and scholars. The mix becomes more volatile with the addition of factions like the Maitasine, a bizarre sect obsessed with blood. Their rites reportedly include drinking their enemies’ blood — especially of rival Muslim groups. The Nigerian government has used military action in its efforts to disband the sect.
Besides tensions between Muslims, a surge of growth among Nigerian Christian groups set the stage for more conflict.
Muslims reportedly have tried several strategies to slow Christian growth: blocking land allocations for church buildings; excluding Christians from political office, jobs and schools; shutting off the supply of gasoline or currency to stymie the economy in strong Christian areas; even encouraging Muslim men to impregnate Christian women. Failure of those tactics has led to threats, intimidation and often violence against Christians.
Persecution peaked in the late 1980s but has continued sporadically. Last September, a Baptist church building was burned and a pastor and deacon from an evangelical church killed in Potiskum, in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno State. About 6,000 people — mostly Christians — have died in rioting since the 1980s. One result: the growing popularity of a militant Christian faction, the Christian Association of Nigeria, that pledges to retaliate for every instance of anti-Christian violence.
Lateju abhors such vengeance — or violence from any side — even though he himself has suffered at the hands of Muslim militants. Instead, he participates in PROCMURA (Project for Christian and Muslim Relations in Africa), an organization dedicated to winning Muslim to Christ.
Organized in 1959, PROCMURA conducts seminars to teach Christians the basic tenets of Islam. Understanding Muslim beliefs opens the door to friendships — and opportunities to share God’s love — Lateju says.
Muslims revere Jesus as a prophet, virgin-born and sinless in life. This provides an important point of contact for Christian witness. When Christians show they understand the basic beliefs and customs of Islam, the door to friendship often opens.
“We emphasize witness through living the Christian faith before our Muslim friends: prayer, Scripture reading, attending Christian meetings, being kind to others,” Lateju explains. “Muslims respond to such witness. Many converts have been won this way among both nominal Muslims and Muslim leaders.”
Vengeance and retaliation will not defuse Nigeria’s religious powder keg, Lateju says. Understanding, friendship and living a life of love will.
Some observers expect Muslim-Christian tensions to worsen over the next decade, culminating in the division of Nigeria into a Muslim north and Christian south. Others dismiss the idea as a myth.
While a northern Muslim oligarchy has controlled the country since independence in 1960, elections in 1993 demonstrated the power brokers hold little sway over the populace. Not only did a moderate Muslim from the south get the overwhelming majority of votes in presidential balloting, but non-Muslims prevailed in most local elections in many northern states.
When the military government annulled election results and arrested the self-declared presidential winner, riots and strikes swept Nigeria. A strike in the oil industry, which generates 90 percent of Nigeria’s foreign earnings, paralyzed the country and sent an already-declining economy into a tailspin.
If rapid growth of Christian churches continues unabated in the north, the Muslim power base will continue to erode, observers say. Muslim political or religious leaders may feel driven to more desperate — and violent — measures to maintain control.
Should that happen, will Christians fight fire with fire, or respond with love and mercy — like Fola Lateju?
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This story first appeared in the July-August 1995 issue of The Commission magazine, published by the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board. (BP)
Copyright (c) 1995 Baptist Press RNbp5928mrjB5928g6929