What lies behind Nigeria’s bomb?

IT is highly disturbing that as a family you can go to attend, say, a midnight Christmas Mass only to be met with a reaper’s sickle, as happened with the bomb attack on St Theresa Catholic church in Madalla, Nigeria, now referred to as the Christmas Massacre.

Yet again, I looked at from a faith perspective, it is a holy way to die.

Faith is dangerous because it is directed to the eternal. To paraphrase Dostoevsky’s Mitya Karamazov, faith is the battlefield where God and the devil war for the soul of man. And the battle runs deep on the faithful sons of Abraham.

Pope Benedict called the Madalla bombing “senseless violence”. This is a good way to respond from the leader of the Catholic Church and the vicar of Christ. Yet, to most people it might feel like it downplays the situation—as if we don’t want to face up to the reality of what is happening in Nigeria, and, in fact, thoughout central and west Africa.

Personally I’m glad that the pope’s remarks bore none of the hallmarks of arrogance from the times of the Crusades when an eye for an eye was demanded, and you would get plenary indulgences for killing a Muslim and so on. We’ve now adopted the authentic way of our faith, which St Francis of Assisi tried to teach to the Crusaders when he held peace talks with the Muslims’ leader, against the wishes of leaders of the Crusades.

Just to be clear, atrocities in Nigeria are perpetrated by both Christians and Muslims. Its roots are mostly historic: tensions over land rights and ethnic backgrounds that go back to ancient times. These are compounded by religious differences, which provides the press with a simplistic reading as just a Judeo-Christian vs Islam conflict.

Organisations such as Boko Haram—an Islamist sect that wants to impose Islamic law throughout the Nigerian Federation—takes advantage of these tensions for its own vested interests. In fact, Boko Haram is the nickname for a group which is actually called Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad, which means People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad. In the Hausa language of northern Nigeria, Boko Haram means “Western education is sacrilege”. They despise all and every Occidental influence.

Such groups play on the emotional scars of the people, especially those with a history of experiencing oppression, like the once colonised who have a resultant anti-imperialist sentiment. They advocating Shariah law in attempt to rid governments of corruption, greed, and so on.  The group came to prominence in 2009, when its members rioted and burned police stations near its base of Maiduguri, a north-eastern city near Bauchi.

In 2011 alone, Boko Haram claimed responsibility for attacking the UN headquarters in Nigeria’s capital Abuja, destroying a police station at Damaturu in the north-eastern state of Yobe, and assassinating several prominent individuals. And, of course, the recent Christmas Day bombings, targeted at the Catholic Church as the ideological centre of Christianity.

Boko Haram’s motivation is purely ideological and directed as much at Muslims who do not share their extreme views as it is at Christians. They see Western influence as sin. It is clear that they have identified central and western Africa, and Nigeria in particular, as a key arena of sectarian warfare.

The 2011 Christmas Day attacks have been condemned by both Pope Benedict and Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general. But if these leaders’ words are not supported by a clear strategy of combating the rising sectarian warfare, their condemnations will mean very little.

Decisive political leadership, with all arms of the state resolute in tackling this problem, will be needed to prevent further horror. Words of peace must prevail over and above those of revenge and warfare. As the purifying fire reaches let it turn us into true instruments of God’s peace.

We must be careful when in reacting to these atrocities not to place blame on the religion of Islam. Like Christianity and other religions, Islam is practised in many cultures and societies, sectarian, stratified, schismatic and pluralistic. To the degree Islam followers become fundamentalist, in particular what I understand to be the misinterpretation of Jihad, it is mistaken reaction against the secular age that puts beliefs under siege.

The common enemy is fundamentalism—religious or secular. In other words, fundamentalism, which is religion under siege, responds to exogenous forces that it perceives as weakening its mores, endangering its values, seducing its children, and destroying its communities. In fact, all the very qualities displayed by organisations like Boko Haram.