Muslims killed in Nigeria in Revenge attacks

At least 20 people were killed in revenge attacks on Muslims in Nigeria yesterday as religious riots intensified after the country's leading Anglican archbishop warned Muslims that they did not have a "monopoly on violence".Top News | Reuters.co.ca

Mobs with machetes and guns roamed the streets of the mainly Christian city of Onitsha, in the south-east, in retaliation for Muslim violence in the north earlier this week which killed dozens of people, destroyed churches and left thousands homeless.

Nigeria is one of those countries on the border of jihad, with the Northern half of the country mainly Hausa and Muslim and the South Christian.

The Christian retaliation came after a widely publicised statement by the powerful Anglican primate, Peter Akinola, who warned that community leaders may not be able to contain "restive youth".

"May we at this stage remind our Muslim brothers that they do not have the monopoly on violence in this nation," he said.

He said the Muslim riots, which broke out at the weekend in response to the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that have generated fury across the Muslim world, were part of a plot to make Nigeria an Islamic country.

"It is no longer a hidden fact that a long-standing agenda to make this Nigeria an Islamic nation is being surreptitiously pursued," he said.

I don't agree with sectarian violence no matter who generates it, but the Archbishop is correct that there is a jihad agenda towards making Nigeria an Islamist country.

The northern provinces were the site of the `Beauty Queen' riots sparked by a casual mention in a local newspaper that `the prophet Mohammed would have been proud' to marry one of the women in the Miss Universe pageant, scheduled to take place in Nigeria. The subsequent riots killed hundreds of Christians and burned churches, caused the relocation of the pageant, resulted in a death sentence fatwa for the writer of the article and were widely seen in Nigeria as an excuse to impose Sharia law on the Muslim majority provinces in the north.

The latest outbreak erupted after Islamic prayers in the northern city of Maiduguri. Thirty Christian churches were razed and 18 people were killed, mostly Christians. There was also violence on Monday and Tuesday in the northern city of Bauchi, where witnesses and Red Cross officials said 25 people were killed when Muslim mobs attacked Christians.

Mr Akinola blamed "influential Muslims" for supporting the religious extremists behind the attacks.

Interestingly, the press almost uniformly refers to `Christian mobs' in articles about this....as opposed to the unidentified `disaffected youths' responsible for le Jihad Francais!

Nigeria, the 8th biggest oil exporter in the world is already in turmoil because of attacks by Muslim seperatists on oil company personnel and oil rigs, as regular Joshuapundit readers know.