Abstract
This chapter examines the various roles and manifestations of Islam and Christianity in Nigeria. An unbridled African sensibility infuses both religions and subjects them to new interpretations and understandings. Today, both Christianity and Islam can be described as African religions. The notion that Africans were passive recipients of both religious traditions belongs to a moribund religious interpretation. It is a simple caricature of both religions to affirm that their theological credentials have not been influenced by the African context, especially the Christian tradition when much of its early theological tradition was forged in North Africa. The current of renewal has become the lifeblood of both religious traditions. In an atmosphere of affirmation and redefinition, Africa became the living laboratory for testing new teachings, movements, and models for both religious traditions. Christianity and Islam have not just been limited to the rigid dictates and demands of predetermined orthodoxy or credo; rather, they have been transformed by a dynamic African context. Context indicates social, cultural, religious, political, and economic circumstances and conditions and it is safe to assume that the themes of indigenization and Africanization have both political and religious implications.
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Noel Quinton King, Christians and Muslims in Africa (London: Harper and Row, 1971);
Benjamin F. Soares, ed., Muslim-Christian Encounters in Africa (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishing, 2006);
Lissi Rasmussen, Christian and Muslim Relations in Africa: The Case of Northern Nigeria and Tanzania (I. B. Tauris, 1993);
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Lamin Sanneh, The Crown and the Turban: Muslims and West African Pluralism (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996);
Andrew Walls, “Africa as the Theatre of Christian Engagement with Islam in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Religion in Africa 29 (1999): 155–74;
Gabriel Maduka Okafor, Development of Christianity and Islam in Modern Nigeria (Wurzburg: Echter, 1992);
Cokkie Van’t-Leven, “Africa’s Tradition of Peaceful Co-existence: Threatened Dream or Lasting Reality,” in Muslims and Christians in Europe: Breaking New Grounds, ed. Dirk Mulder et al. (Kampen: Uitgeverik Kok, 1999), 15–20;
and John Voll, “African Muslims and Christians in World History: The Irrelevance of the Clash of Civilizations,” in Muslim-Christian Encounters in Africa, ed. Benjamin F. Soares (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishing, 2006), 17–38.
Lamin Sanneh, “Christian Experience of Islamic Da’wah, With Particular Reference to Africa,” International Review of Mission, 260 (October 1979): 410.
It should be noted that as a religious tradition that started after the time of Christ, Islam has always presented a formidable theological challenge to Christianity in terms of Prophet Muhammad’s status and the Qur’an as the Word of God. For an excellent study of the theological differences between Islam and Christianity, see Christian van Gorder, No God but God: A Path to Muslim-Christian Discussion about the Nature of God (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2003).
Chinua Achebe, The Trouble With Nigeria (Oxford: Heinemann, 1983), 12.
Several commentators still have serious questions about the corporate existence of Nigeria. According to Karl Maier, “the Nigerian state is like a battered and bruised elephant staggering toward an abyss with the ground crumbling under its feet.” See his This House Has Fallen: Midnight in Nigeria (Public Affairs, 2000), xx. In the words of Adebayo Williams, “like a badly mauled elephant suffering a thousand cuts, Nigeria lurches about in wild disorientation, stomping and stamping as life drains away,” in his “Towards the Transformation of Nigeria: A Jubilee of Elite Infamy,” http://nigeriaworld.com/ articles/2003/Oct/201.html, October 20, 2003, p. 1. In another caustic observation, another Nigeria scholar states that the present Nigerian state is faced with “darkness and decadence, poverty and prostitution of power, greed and graft, incompetence and inertia.” See Femi Ojo-Ade, “Dividends of a Nascent Democracy,” http://nigeriaworld.com/articles/2001/jun/23/231.html, June 23, 2001, p. 4. In the words of Tam David-West, “Nigeria is like a one-act play, like a broken disc permanently stuck in a groove,” http://nige-riaworld.com/feature/publication/chidi-achebe/061405.html, June 14, 2006, p. 6. Speaking on the debacle of political inertia bedeviling many nations in Africa and specifically Nigeria, Chinua Achebe remarked, “We are like the man in the Igbo proverb who does not know where the rain began to beat him and so cannot say where he dried his body.” See his “Nigeria’s Promise, Africa’s Hope,” New York Times, January 15, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/ opinion/16achebe.html.According to Niyi Akinnaso, “the theory of the absurd life is even more applicable today as Nigeria engages in a freefall due to endless repetitions of the same mistakes and maladies.” See Niyi Akinnaso, “Nigeria as the Theatre of the Absurd,” Punch, July 3, 2012, http://www.punchng.com/viewpoint/nigeria-as-the-theatre-of-the-absurd/. For an excellent study on the potentials and pitfalls of Nigeria, see John Campbell, Nigeria: Dancing on the Brink (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield, 2011).
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For a good historical understanding of this complexity, see Toyin Falola and Matthew M. Heaton, A History of Nigeria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
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Quoted in Peter B. Clarke, WestAfrican and Islam (London: Edward Arnold, 1982), 260.
See S. U. Balogun, “Arabic Intellectualism in West Africa: The Role of the Sokoto Caliphate,” Journal Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs 6 (July 1985): 394–411.
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Mervyn Hiskett, quoted in Lamin Sanneh, “Christian Experience of Islamic Da’wah, With Particular Reference to Africa,” International Review of Mission, 65 (October 1976): 416.
Quoted in John Alembillah Azumah, The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-Religious Dialogue (Oxford: Oneworld, 2001), 11–12.
For a good analysis of the confrontation between colonial powers and the forces of dan Fodio, see Toyin Falola, Colonialism and Violence in Nigeria (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 14–16.
See Jonathan Reynolds, “Good and Bad Muslims: Islam and Indirect Rule in Northern Nigeria,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 34 (2001): 601–18.
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The major monographs on Aladura Christianity includes H. W. Turner, African Independent Church, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967);
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On the demonization ofAfrican Traditional Religions, see Rosalind I. J. Hackett, “Discourses on Demonization in Africa and Beyond,” Diogenes 50 (2003): 61–75;
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and Kalu, The Embattled Gods: Christianization of Igboland, 1841–1991 (Trenton, NJ and Asmara, Eritrea: Africa World Press, 2003), 334.
See Rosalind I. J. Hackett, “Radical Christian Revivalism in Nigeria and Ghana: Recent Patterns of Intolerance and Conflict,” in Proselytization and Communal Self-Determination in Africa, ed. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999), 246–67;
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See Afis O. Oladosu and Habibah O. Uthman-Oladosu, “The Cross, the Crescent, and the Media in Nigeria,” in Fractured Spectrum: Perspectives on Christian-Muslim Encounters in Nigeria, ed. Akintunde E. Akinade (New York: Peter Lang, 2013), 30–42.
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For a good study on the subject, see Daniel Jordan Smith, A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).
Chinua Achebe, The Trouble with Nigeria (Oxford: Heinemann, 1983), 38.
Lamin Sanneh, Summoned from the Margin: Homecoming of an African (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012), 192.
For an excellent analysis of some of these initiatives for peace and reconciliation, see Rosalind Hackett, “Nigeria’s Religious Leaders in an Age of Radicalism and Neoliberalism,” in Religious Leaders, Conflict, and Peacemaking: Between Terror and Tolerance, ed. Timothy D. Sick (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011), 123–44.
See Scott Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation (Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 2000).
For a good explanation of this phenomenon, see Francis Arinze, Meeting Other Believers: The Risks and Rewards of Interreligious Dialogue (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, 1998), 17–18.
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H. J. Fisher, “Conversion Reconsidered: Some Historical Aspects of Religious Conversion in Black Africa,” Africa 43 (1973): 27–40;
H. J. Fisher, “The Juggernaut’s Apologia,” Africa 55 (1983): 153–73;
and Matthew Hassan Kukah and Toyin Falola, Religious Militancy and Self-Assertion (Aldershot: Avebury, 1996), especially Chapter four on “Rumblings below the River Niger: Protest by Yoruba Muslims,” pp. 65–97.
John N. Paden, Muslim Civil Cultures and Conflict Resolution: The Challenge of Democratic Federalism in Nigeria (Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, 2005), 109.
See Adeagbo Akinjogbin, Dahomey and Its Neighbors 1708–1818 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967).
Jacob K. Olupona, ed. Religion and Peace in Multifaith Nigeria (Ibadan, Nigeria: African Books Collective, 1992), 145.
Charles Amjad-Ali, “Theological and Historical Rationality Behind Christian-Muslim Relations,” in Islam in Asia: Perspectives for Christian-Muslim Encounter, ed. J. P. Rajashekar and H. S. Wilson (Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1992), 14.
Pope John Paul II, “Address to Participants in the Annual Meeting between the Secretariat for Non-Christians and the WCC Sub-Unit on Dialogue,” Bulletin 62 (1986): 146.
Paul Gifford, The New Crusaders: Christianity and the New Right in Southern Africa (London: Pluto, 1991).
Peter L. Berger, “The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview” in The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics, ed. Peter L. Berger (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 2.
For an excellent study of religious violence in Nigeria, see Toyin Falola, Violence in Nigeria: The Crisis of Religious Politics and Secular Ideologies (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1998).
Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 248.
John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, God Is Back: How Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World (New York: Penguin, 2009), 297.
Cited in Amos Yong, Hospitality and the Other: Pentecost, Christian Practices, and the Neighbor (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books: 2008), 19.
This dimension can be classified under what Paul Hedges referred to as “human dialogue.” See Paul Hedges, Controversies in Interreligious Dialogue and the Theology of Religions (London: SCM Press, 2010), 61.
See Simeon O. Ilesanmi, Religious Pluralism and the Nigerian State (Athens: University of Ohio Press, 1997) for his prescription of dialogic politics as a viable model for grappling with religious pluralism and the state in Nigeria.
Afe Adogame, “Fighting for God or Fighting in God’s Name! The Politics of Religious Violence in Contemporary Nigeria,” Religions 0 (2009): 182.
This idea resonates with what Paul Hedges referred to as “particularities” and what David Ray Griffin described as “differential pluralism.” See Paul Hedges, Controversies in Interreligious Dialogue and the Theology of Religions (London: SCM Press, 2010), 27–30
and David Ray Griffin, “Religious Pluralism: Generic, Identist, Deep,” in Deep Religious Pluralism, ed. David Ray Griffin (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 24.
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© 2014 Akintunde E. Akinade
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Akinade, A.E. (2014). Glimpses of the Terrain: The Cross, the Crescent, and the Nigerian Terrain. In: Christian Responses to Islam in Nigeria. Palgrave Macmillan’s Christianities of the World. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137430076_3
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