This is a revised and expanded edition 2019 of the tainted legacy released in 2017. This new edition included update to the chapters and an addition of Chapter 16 detailing specific ways the latest impact of islamization in having on Northern Christians and minorities.
The past twenty years have seen a spate of violent riots and other conflicts in Nigeria resulting in considerable numbers of Christian and Muslim dead, of churches and mosques destroyed, of homes and businesses ransacked and burned. These incidents have taken place mainly in the Middle Belt, where Christians and Muslims are present in approximately equal numbers. Recently, however, we have seen such violence occurring in the ‘northern North’ itself, where Christians are a small minority. More often than not, Christians have been the targets of Muslim-initiated violence, perpetrated by groups ranging from gangs of young people to fully armed Islamist militias. Attacks by Muslims in the last ten years have killed thousands of Christians.
The climate of intimidation and fear that these repeated conflicts engender adds to an existing situation of anti-Christian discrimination and marginalisation in the North. The vulnerability of Christians has been effectively enshrined in law in twelve northern states, where shari’a has has become the main source of civil and criminal law since 1999. Despite Muslim promises that Christians will be exempt, expe- rience has repeatedly shown the opposite. The fact that some Islamists are calling for an Islamic state in Nigeria, ruled by shari’a, is a cause of very serious concern for Nigerian Christians.
This valuable work by Yusufu Turaki shows how the present situa- tion does not arise simply from ethnic differences, as is often suggest- ed, but is deeply rooted in the history of West Africa, dominated as it was by the mighty empires of the Sokoto Caliphate and the Sultanate of Kanem-Bornu and their Islamic colonialism. This Islamic rule was then consolidated by British colonialism, employing Lord Lugard’s policy of indirect rule. The centralised administration of the Fulanis
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