A Historian Flubs History

And much else besides. Brad DeLong links to a post by Juan Cole, but the information Cole provides is so obviously erroneous where Africa at least is concerned that it immediately raises the question "Why is this guy taken for some sort of authoritative figure on all things Islamic?"

To see what I'm talking about, let us begin by considering the map below:

According to Cole,

blue indicates heavy Muslim populations, green means medium, and yellow means the Muslims are a significant minority.

But as anyone who knows anything about the demographics of West Africa would tell you, his "green" West African states are just as "heavily" Muslim as his blue North African and Middle Eastern ones, whether one means by "heavy" Muslims as a percentage of the population or in terms of sheer numbers: Mali, Niger and Chad are majority Muslim states*, the first two almost completely so, while Nigeria isn't only half Muslim, but also contains at least twice as many Muslims as any of the "blue" Arab states!

But Cole's glaring errors don't end there. Consider the following statements of his:

First, Western colonial powers invaded Muslim lands and detached them from the Ottoman Empire or other Muslim states. They ruled them brutally as colonies, reducing the people to little more than slaves serving the economic and political interests of the British, French, Russians, etc.

The problem with this generalization is that it manifestly does *not* apply in at least the West African case, and it is hard to see how one can claim that it applies to Malaysia either. Where Nigeria at least is concerned, if there was one thing British rule over Muslims in that country was not, it was "brutal." Lord Lugard's "indirect rule" was honed to perfection in Nigeria, so much so that the North was essentially untouched by Western civilization under British rule, and woefully unprepared for independence when it came in 1960, setting up the tensions that would lead to the Biafran War. The British reluctance to tinker with the status quo in Northern Nigeria was only reinforced by their admiration for the feudalistic, heirarchal nature of the society they found there, much in the same way that they took a natural shine to the princes of the Raj and Malaysian aristocrats like Tunku Abdul Rahman. Cole is talking absolute nonsense in making the generalizations he does, but because he's a history professor at the University of Michigan, he's assumed to be speaking the gospel truth. In my eyes at least, these sloppy errors of his are all the more unforgiveable occurring at the hands of someone who supposedly ought to know better.

PS: Speaking more generally now, if one takes Cole's thesis about colonial aggression as the spur to terrorism at face value, one has to wonder why it is that one has seen no counterpart to Islamist terror amongst the non-Muslim peoples of Africa. Hardly any peoples have suffered greater impositions and survived in numbers large enough to even entertain the dream of revenge, and yet even in South Africa, where harsh, discriminatory overlordship by white Western settlers was the rule less than two decades ago, one sees none of the viciousness towards the West that is taken for granted in vast swathes of the Muslim world. What Cole is doing here smells of apologetics driven by self-hatred.

*Check the CIA World Factbook if you doubt this.

Comments

[razib]

cole is an authority because most ppl are ignorant and stupid. expertise is being less ignorant and stupid, but it's all relative, isn't it? but seriously, people say ignorant shit all the time on these "warblogs" and "anti-warblogs." facts, what facts? truth?!?! only in the service of politics. it's all politics.

don't see why you waste your time reading them (as judging by your occasional links).

[razib]

also, before i seem too harsh to dr. cole, there are issues of precision involved in the kind of stuff he tries to talk about. he might not be ignorant, just glossed over detail in an imprecise and misleading fashion.

[captainblak]

Cole's crime is using "Middle Eastern Muslim" and Muslim in a sloppily interchangeable way. When the statements referring to "Muslim" are substituted with "Middle-Eastern Muslim" then his assertions are mostly to the point.
As to the non-Muslim colonised people of Africa, that has to be the biggest joke ever. Africans do not see these two looming dangers and will largely be caught off guard when they strike 1) the expanding caliphate from the middle-east and 2) the crowded Europeans from continental Europe.
You are an advocate of small homogeneous states (in terms of culture, ethnicity, language or any combination of those) and I am an advocate of huge sprawling states. Huge sprawling states can usually hold their own.

[razib]

the expanding caliphate from the middle-east and

are you talking about *past* tense? most of africa was islamicized by non-caliphal related missions. that is, only the northern portions of africa were colonized during the real caliphal periods (the ummayyads and abbassids). during the other/later caliphs there was more expansion, but little of it by those who claimed to be caliphs (fatimids & ottomans).

[captainblak]

i'm talking abt this new caliphate the arabs are trying to come up with. it'd be a total enemy of subsaharan africa.

[James R MacLean]

Oh good grief, Mr Lapite!

The quote you include is a characterization of al-Qaeda's views, not those of Prof. Cole!

Now, as to the map:
Niger is 80% Muslim. Significant non-Muslim minority.
Mali is 90% Muslim.
Nigeria is 50% Muslim. A Muslim plurality, possibly a majority.
Algeria is 99% Muslim. No significant non-Muslim minority.
Mali is 90% Muslim, a bit high to be green, but still possessing a significant non-Muslim minority.
Guinea-Conakry is 85% Muslim. Politically significant non-Muslim minority. And lo! It is green.
How about neighboring Mauritania? 100% Muslim. Perhaps that's why it's blue.
As for Chad? 51% Muslim. Green.

So, I am sorry, but Prof Cole is correct. Countries with entirely Muslim populations are blue, those with significant non-Muslim minorities (mostly >5% Muslim) are green--"medium" is not the word I would have picked--and yellow refers to countries/regions with very large Muslim minorities.

Admittedly, there is some room for interpretation here since there are numerically significant non-Muslim minorities in Syria (Christian, 10%) and Jordan (6% non-Muslim); but these groups are not politically significant.

[Abiola Lapite]

"The quote you include is a characterization of al-Qaeda's views, not those of Prof. Cole!"

Reading what Cole wrote, I can't see how one can avoid the conclusion that they are both Al-Qaeda and Juan Cole's views. It needn't be a case of "only or the other", you realize, and it isn't as if he were just reading from a crib sheet handed to him by an al-Qaeda statesman. What I quote is his interpretation of what al-Qaeda's views are, and my problem with it is precisely that he lets his ignorance color his judgement in that regard.

"Countries with entirely Muslim populations are blue"

So Egypt is entirely Muslim? I'm sure the Copts will be glad to hear this! And why exactly do you consider 5% politically significant in one sentence and then say that 10% doesn't qualify in another? What exactly is your definition of "entirely", by the way, and do you realize that by your own "90%" criterion, Northern Nigeria would still qualify as "entirely Muslim?" Cole sees fit to separate Northern and Southern Sudan in his little map, so why can't he do the same with a country containing twice as many Muslims as Saudi Arabia? While we're at it, please tell us what percentage of Eritreans are Muslims, if you can.

[James R MacLean]

FWIW, I disagree with several conclusions of the post cited, but your invective against Prof Cole is unmerited.

Speaking more generally now, if one takes Cole's thesis about colonial aggression as the spur to terrorism at face value, one has to wonder why it is that one has seen no counterpart to Islamist terror amongst the non-Muslim peoples of Africa.

Different polities respond to frustrations in different ways. The sentence implies a mechanical chain of causality, one that almost never applies to human affairs. "Imperialist aggression ergo terrorist reaction" is not implied by the article, or, indeed, any of Cole's posts I've ever read. But past and present imperialism are undeniably elements of the militant Islamicist's historical naarative, and such narratives gain wider currency when they are validated by events.

Where Nigeria at least is concerned, if there was one thing British rule over Muslims in that country was not, it was "brutal." Lord Lugard's "indirect rule" was honed to perfection in Nigeria, so much so that the North was essentially untouched by Western civilization under British rule, and woefully unprepared for independence when it came in 1960, setting up the tensions that would lead to the Biafran War. The British reluctance to tinker with the status quo in Northern Nigeria was only reinforced by their admiration for the feudalistic, heirarchal nature of the society they found there, much in the same way that they took a natural shine to the princes of the Raj and Malaysian aristocrats like Tunku Abdul Rahman.

First, in view of the fact that you're using Cole's summary of the al-Qaeda narrative as if it were Cole's own, I really could/should stop there. But another point to remember is that occasionally congenial relationships with petty princely states often came at a terrible price for the great majority of people living in them. To argue that, "Abdul Tunku Rahman was well-liked by the British resident" = "Muslim commoners had a delightful time under Western colonial rule" is something of a stretch.

[Abiola Lapite]

"To argue that, "Abdul Tunku Rahman was well-liked by the British resident" = "Muslim commoners had a delightful time under Western colonial rule" is something of a stretch."

But what one can argue is that to the degree theirs was a less than delightful existence, it owed to the misrule of their local elites, not to the presence of the British. I'd even go further and say that for most of the subjects of these countries, life was better under the British, whose Victorian sensibilities pushed them to put a (very gradual, well-compensated) end to slavery, and occasionally acted to mitigate the worst abuses of the native elite.

My point isn't to praise colonialism, but to say that those who resort to "colonial oppression" as a means of rationalizing (or is that "understanding"?) Islamist violence are simply engaging in apologetics. Nothing the Arabs experienced can compare to the cruelties that went on in the Congo, or the humiliations that only recently came to an end in South Africa, yet one doesn't see Congolese or South African terrorists slaughtering children and beheading journalists for television consumption. Even in Nigeria, the Muslim north had a far easier time of it from the British than the non-Muslim South (British favoritism towards the North was actually rather blatant), yet it is up North that one finds the Bin Laden supporters and the "Death to America" chanting mobs. There is something seriously wrong with large parts of the Muslim world, particularly in the Middle East, and it isn't "the West" to blame if these people refuse to hew to standards of behavior that are taken for granted in far more benighted places. Where were the Sowetan suicide bombers?

[kola alabi]

sorry, i cannot take the CIA's word on anything right now, considering the issues at hand, why would any one?, also i do not thing the british just waltz through any part of nigeria/africa and they expirienced no resistance. the northern muslims would have tried to repel any rule contrary to the sharia. serria leonne is 85% muslim, and if one examines the facts, you might find that in fact the population of muslims exceed 50% in nigeria. If the hausas are a majority and enjoy about 95% of their population being muslim, the yorubas enjoy about 60% and majority of igbos being christian. huge sprawling state can hold their own or it becomes easier to counter if they're invaded and subjugated, if they wish to remain so. Mr. lapite is somewhat correct in saying that the arabs haven't expirienced close to what has been expirienced in the congo etc, perhaps the reason is because the arabs were and a more willing to inflict the same kind of brutality towards their invaders and the africans aren't (we are always so hospitable towards outside aggresion). which is why i asked why it seems that negreos are so despised. i'm not expressly eloquent, and i wish i could put into english what i mean. The brits made concessions with the north, the north being a stronger opponent, and the north looking in the long term agreed to be ruled considering the less palatable alternative knowing that the brits would not be able to hold on forever or allowing the south dominance over them by the brits. But one will find that your guests will be less likely to stay for prolonged periods if one make them feel very unwelcome. As to why the muslim north etc are anti- american, i simply do not know. I pose a question though, Do they oppose the practice of subjugation per se or is it the pretext they find intolerable?

[Abiola Lapite]

"the yorubas enjoy about 60%"

I don't know about that statistic: all the figures I've seen show a figure of about 50% Christian, 30% Muslim and 20% traditional Yoruba religion.

In any case, it isn't Yoruba Muslims who are out on the streets torching churches because Isioma Daniel said something about prophet Mohammed, and they aren't the ones beheading Igbo traders for supposedly desecrating the Koran (Gideon Akaluka). The question isn't whether Islam can be a "peaceful religion" - sure it can, while Christianity can be and has been violent too - but whether those who adhere to it are willing to practice it peacefully. In places like Gambia, Mali and the Southwest of Nigeria, the answer is "yes", but in Northern Nigeria, the Sudan, the Middle East and South Asia ...

"perhaps the reason is because the arabs were and a more willing to inflict the same kind of brutality towards their invaders and the africans aren't (we are always so hospitable towards outside aggresion). which is why i asked why it seems that negreos are so despised."

Well, at the rate at which things are going, the Arabs are rapidly earning themselves the "most hated" position in the global league table, and no matter how strong they think they are, if the extremists among them keep pushing their luck, they'll find out that full-blown Western colonialism can return as easily as it left - that is, if the "Nuke 'em all" brigade don't get to have their way.

[kola alabi]

Also, I do not think any country or people champion the american cause if it isn't in their interests at the moment. The muslims or arabs etc, it seems are just less sofisticated or savvy about power, it could be cultural.Think are the chinese delighted at the idea of being surrounded by american forces?, or the russians?. May be the brutalized african simply have lost their will to fight, i forget what the pschological term for "giving in" is. Most of us, if china grows into the biggest, most prosperous economy regardless of it being communist or not would probably be saying au revoir NY, hello shanghai. Please though i implore all of us to read the quran or sunna and tell me where you will find such practices as in the middle east . That way our soppositions will be based more knowledge than hearsay. AND NOBODY has it easy under anothers rule.

[Timothy Burke]

Oh, now I see where the comment in the other Nigeria thread is coming from.

I think all you are seeing here is the degree to which experts on Islam whose primary specialization is in the Middle East have a hard time conceptualizing the place of West African Islam. A problem, but it doesn't invalidate the main thrust of Cole's argument, particularly because the main subject (al-Qaeda) shares the same issue, primarily thinking about non-Middle Eastern Islam as a theater of operations rather than as part of the possible new configuration of dar-al-Islam.

The other thing, Cole's quick gloss on the history of colonialism, is a reasonable enough general summary from the point of view of his particular argument. I happen to disagree with it from the same perspective that you do, but it's ok here at the level that Cole's small essay is operating at for two reasons: first, because even if I read the nature and causality of indirect rule properly, it's fair to say that one of its consequences was the reconfiguration of African and Middle Eastern polities of the 18th and 19th Centuries into nation-states with very little organic historicity to them, which is the most material part of Cole's argument, and second, it's fair for Cole to argue as he does because he's trying to summarize the way that nationalists, even the odd kind of pan-Islamic nationalism that inflects the ideology of al-Qaeda and other Islamicist groups, conceptualize the role of colonialism in their own ideological rendering of modern history. It may not be true that colonialism was a one-sided and purely brutal imposition, any more than US hegemony in the Middle East from 1960-2004 is or was simplistically imperialist, but Cole's making a reasonable enough point that this is how both official and unofficial nationalist mythography tells the story of modernity. National leaderships in Africa as diverse in character as contemporary Uganda, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Nigeria, Botswana and South Africa all pretty much have a standard mythico-historical representation of colonialism and its nature to slot into the story of their own making; so do various and sundry rebel or dissident interests. It's a very powerful orthodoxy, not just for historians but for whole nations. Ergo, it's reasonable to talk about this as the way al-Qaeda sees the world, and there's just enough truth to it that it's not an undebatably false representation of colonialism (say, in the way that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is nothing but anti-Semitic fiction). One still has to actually engage the view that colonialism was a pure brutalism imposed by violence from above with clearly instrumentalist ideals of extraction: that view is wrong in the generalities and the particulars, but there's a real discussion that has to take place in between that view and a more nuanced and complex one.

[Abiola Lapite]

"Cole's making a reasonable enough point that this is how both official and unofficial nationalist mythography tells the story of modernity."

Yes, but the question is where one goes from there: do we take this mythmaking at face value and start asking ourselves "Why do they hate us?", or do we try to show it up for the myth that it is, and say "No, you guys DON'T have an argument, and nothing you've suffered can justify the way you're acting"?

My problem with Cole is that he doesn't tend to go beyond saying "here's how they see it" to actually showing how mistaken the worldview behind the myth is, so what we get is scads of people who read him and take the picture he's laid out as inviolable truth (even if he claims to merely be laying out the Arab POV), with the next step being to effectively say "If only America would leave the Arab world alone, then there'd be no terrorism!" Not only is such a proposal unworkable, but it isn't ethically justifiable; should we avert our eyes to the gassing of Kurds, slave-raiding in Mauretania and the hanging of 16-year olds for premarital sex in Iran simply because the US supported the Shah 25 years ago? The worst of it is that those who uncritically use this very same "Western interference in Arab affairs causes terrorism" line are also the ones who tend blame Western indifference to Middle Eastern despotism for Arab hostility - in short, the West is damned if it interferes, and damned if it doesn't.

It would be nice if Cole offered a corrective to the shoddy foundations underlying such thinking, but all he does is say "this is why the Muslim world says it hates the West ...", and then he simply leaves it at that, while when it comes to Israel, "neocons" and AIPAC he's never short of strong opinions of his own. That selective silence in itself says volumes.

[James R MacLean]

So Egypt is entirely Muslim? I'm sure the Copts will be glad to hear this! And why exactly do you consider 5% politically significant in one sentence and then say that 10% doesn't qualify in another? What exactly is your definition of "entirely", by the way, and do you realize that by your own "90%" criterion, Northern Nigeria would still qualify as "entirely Muslim?" Cole sees fit to separate Northern and Southern Sudan in his little map, so why can't he do the same with a country containing twice as many Muslims as Saudi Arabia? While we're at it, please tell us what percentage of Eritreans are Muslims, if you can.

Not a mindreader, so I don't know exactly how Prof Cole defined which colors to use where. But as I attempted to explain with Syria: in that country, the 10% non-Muslim minority has little, if any political significance. You might disagree, and argue that it has as much or more than the non-Muslim minority in Guinea-Conakry, but not without getting creative (hint: Alawites & Druze are often not counted as Muslim; for Cole's purposes, I don't think that's relevent.) The case of Egypt is almost exactly the same as Jordan: 6% non-Muslim. This group supplied Boutros Boutros-Gali, but for rather compelling reasons may be treated as a politically insignificant minority.

So, if you want to say the map is "is so obviously erroneous where Africa at least is concerned that it immediately raises the question 'Why is this guy taken for some sort of authoritative figure on all things Islamic?'" then I humbly submit you are wrong.

The map legend allows for subjective interpretation; if you want something that adheres strictly to statistical data, there are plenty of specimens. "Political significance" arises from having influence. The Copts of Egypt are virtually powerless. In Guinea-Conakry they have influence far beyond their numbers, or did.

Eritrea--IIRC--has something like 50% Muslim population. Why?

Why hasn't he divided Nigeria into pieces? I can only guess that, unlike Sudan, Nigeria doesn't really offer itself up into a meaningful geographical division. Sudan is very definitely split along geographical lines; the regional division of Nigeria is more gradual, and the power of a centralized politiy is greater. But you invective against him is thoroughly unwarranted

...To the degree theirs was a less than delightful existence, it owed to the misrule of their local elites, not to the presence of the British.

Plausibly; but observe US support for the Shah of Iran has quite emphatically incurred tremendous hostility..

[Abiola Lapite]

"But as I attempted to explain with Syria: in that country, the 10% non-Muslim minority has little, if any political significance."

What is the political significance of non-Muslims in Mali or Niger? What is their political significance in Northern Nigeria? This shift in definitions is oddly convenient for Dr. Cole, isn't it?

" Sudan is very definitely split along geographical lines; the regional division of Nigeria is more gradual"

Oh really? That's news to me, and I only lived in the country for more than a decade.

"Eritrea--IIRC--has something like 50% Muslim population. Why?"

Because it's colored blue in Juan Cole's map, and 50% Muslim is about the same percentage as Nigeria. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

"but observe US support for the Shah of Iran has quite emphatically incurred tremendous hostility"

And what about US support for apartheid South Africa and its destabilizing invasions of Mozambique and Angola? Why hasn't that stirred up the sort of black hatred that manifests itself with Arabs? Brutal US-supported regimes in black Africa were a dime-a-dozen, but it's in the Middle East that we see the inflammatory rhetoric, and from which the international terrorists almost always emerge.

[kola alabi]

yes at least half of yorubas are muslims, i don't know what numbers you've seen. Our best bet is to ask the office of census in lagos, i think they'll be more informed than the cia worldbook of facts, or simply ask yourself how many yorubas you know and what ratio are from muslim families. You forgot to mention the militant christians that have proven to be instigators in some recent riots, burning mosques etc in jos of northern nigeria. We shouldn't go back and forth. And what hapened when an old pensioner said somethin unflattering about bush, the F.B.I came calling, and at the most he will be a leader for 8 years. You should understand the level that muslims place the Prophet(Saw),not similar to how the christian have allowed Jesus(saw) has been regarded. How would you feel if someone a muslim for example set fire on the federal reserve, in our soceity the way money is valued you can just imagine the reaction, consider this and you still will not understand how precious the qur'an is to a muslim, or maybe the igbo man understood perfectly and that is why he did it. One of the reasons why it was prudent the U.s did not attack the mosque of imam ali. I wish the igbo man had reconsidered or had an advisor like the U.S, perhaps we could hae avoided that incident. One of the unfortunate things about a weapon like the nuclear bomb is it's impracticality in battle. so you kill 60 million arabs, plus destroy a viable supplier of energy, destroying world economy, and other powers are pissed off, i mean really pissed off, plus clean up costs, radiation spill over into allied territory, you will be trying to destroy thevillage to save it. very counter-productive i think, but what do i know. I think negroes are most hated, and it matters little if you're loved or hated, so long as you are reckoned. When we speak of extremism though, we should be careful to be equitable. the world has seen many faces of extreme, so perhaps a cleaning of house will in order on both sides or all sides. On side give up quest to islamatize the world, the other to capitalize on it, one using the other as justification for it's actions. but then somehow this two opposites seem to protect each other.

[captainblak]

abiola
why do u keep giving these examples of african reaction to their colonial masters as if that's the "correct" way to react and everybody else who might react a little bit more harshly is wrong?
the african elite for the most part are wrong and have simply given up safeguarding the welfare of most of their citizens and the futures of their citizens. the arabs on the other hand, think that if they just unite and pool their intellectual and capital resources, they can become a world power with considerable world influence.
the arabs see the west as preventing them from doing so. everything else is simply "details".

[kola alabi]

after centuries of the africans never having autonomy, perhaps we're used to being dictated to, and resort to self hatred instead of others, maybe we have less guns available to people, or we're ust more flexible to being ruled. Alot of africans do not mind migrating to seek work etc, or there's still enough to go around so we "manage", who knows.

[kola alabi]

i agree, captainblank, the arab leaders though i think care little for the welfare of their people to. They may be just wary of them so seek a means of apeasement. I do not Know any arab government that truly enjoys popular support from it's people.

[Abiola Lapite]

"yes at least half of yorubas are muslims, i don't know what numbers you've seen."

And where are yours? That you think it has to be true doesn't make it true. Yorubas in Lagos, Ogun, Osun and Ondo are overwhelmingly Christian, and in Oyo there are still enough of them to make it a certainty that Muslims are a minority. If you have actual facts that differ, please show me your references.

"or simply ask yourself how many yorubas you know and what ratio are from muslim families."

That answer still doesn't give me a Muslim majority, and I think between living in Lagos and having two Yoruba parents I know quite a few.

"You forgot to mention the militant christians that have proven to be instigators in some recent riots, burning mosques etc in jos of northern nigeria. We shouldn't go back and forth."

In response to Islamist violence, and in particular, to Hausa Muslim attempts to push them off their own land. I actually covered the issue you're talking about some months ago.

"You should understand the level that muslims place the Prophet(Saw),not similar to how the christian have allowed Jesus(saw) has been regarded. How would you feel if someone a muslim for example set fire on the federal reserve, in our soceity the way money is valued you can just imagine the reaction"

See, right here in your response is the problem with what how so many Muslims view the world. When have Muslims ever been lynched en masse for terrorist attacks? I was actually living in NYC when 9/11 happened, and was in Washington DC on the very morning the Pentagon was hit, and guess what? Nobody went on a Muslim lynching spree, and this despite thousands of innocents (some of whom I knew personally) getting killed! What does it say about Muslims that they should think it reasonable to kill other human beings simply because a journalist mentioned Mohammed in a story? Why should reverence for the Koran justify beheading a man for "desecrating" one of its pages? It isn't as if religious Christians don't think the Bible is a holy book. I'm sorry, but that is just madness, unacceptable, barbaric fanaticism.

"consider this and you still will not understand how precious the qur'an is to a muslim"

That's the point. I don't care how much a Muslim values his Koran or a Christian values his Bible; neither has any right whatsoever to go rioting and murdering innocent people because he thinks somebody's profaned his religion's "holy" book. People say nasty things all that time about Christianity without getting killed for it, but Muslims think they have a right to be above the law because of how precious the Koran is to them? Ridiculous! Being part of a civilized society means being able to restrain oneself even if others are doing and saying things one doesn't like. If "God" or "Allah" exists, he doesn't need to be defended or avenged by ordinary human beings.

"When we speak of extremism though, we should be careful to be equitable. the world has seen many faces of extreme, so perhaps a cleaning of house will in order on both sides or all sides"

The thing is, over here in the West the lunatics aren't running the asylum. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell can rant and rave, but they don't get to issue fatwas calling for Muslims to be killed, and when they do talk shit about Muslims, their own fellow Americans are the first to condemn them. "Equitable" cannot mean that we should pretend that there are thousands of Christians running about carrying out suicide attacks on discos, schools and innocent Muslim journalists visiting London, New York or Paris.

[Abiola Lapite]

"why do u keep giving these examples of african reaction to their colonial masters as if that's the "correct" way to react and everybody else who might react a little bit more harshly is wrong?"

Because it's morally wrong? And even if you don't agree, even if you think South Africa and Israel are exactly the same, who's running the former state today? How are the Arabs doing in the latter? Does that tell you that reacting "a little bit more harshly" is effective, even from a purely pragmatic viewpoint?

[kola alabi]

Mr. lapite be nice!. i am qiute naive. I have 2 yoruba parents too, i'll bet you you have moer muslims in your family than christian, ask any yoruba, as for my figures, my brother just completed his study on this is his class at the university of ibadan, it could be sub-standard when compared to say dartmouth, but he does live in the area and should be a better expert than you and i( or is it you and me), he could be wrong though and he is christian. lagos, ogun oyo etc cannot be overwhelming christian, sorry!
Some lunatics are running the sylum or have run it. thatcher was a lunatic, a savvy one, nixon similarly, all this is my opinion though please do not hold anyone else to it. i'll never had a religious quarrel in my family and we have a mix of muslims/christians
The hausa muslims should try to push the christians of their land, it is theft by any law, but some civilizations you hold in high esteem have done and are doing just that(where will i find equity). Have innocent muslims not died over the years from different governments, do you hear the entire muslim population blaming all americans or brits for it. And who was the queen osf spain(Isabella?) that did lynche muslims en masse, you're the historian i'm sure you'll find accounts, in india maybe.
it was inept of that journalist in a politically/religiously charged atmosphere of the north of nigeria to say something like that. i feel as if the resulting chaos is what he hoped for, what i'm saying is that if i know you hold something sacred i'm very careful about how i address it etc.
speaking of christians IRA ring a bell

[kola alabi]

after this i shall not speak again on this issue, are you saying that resisting occupation, or invaders is morally wrong?, so what moral right will the occupiers have? especially unprovoked, in africa/s.africa, or isreal. i do not think the arabs are faring well in palestine, but should they appease isreal for their land back or the right to live in dignity. What alternative do they have to overwhelming force. If the world can apply even pressure on both sides. Too much politics, rhetoric and hate is involved. But while we so called moderates are talking about it, the extremists are gaining ground, and can we speak out and risk being labeled, traitors or unpatriotic.

[Abiola Lapite]

"are you saying that resisting occupation, or invaders is morally wrong?"

I am saying that bombing discos full of teenagers, blowing up buses full of civilians, cutting the throats of journalists and machine-gunning schoolchildren are morally wrong. "Resisting occupation" isn't any excuse for behaving like an animal.