The Enmity of My Enemy Does Not Make a Lasting Peace
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/12
President Buhari is making an appeal for the non-politicization of religion in Nigeria.
In an article, he described the ways in which the Muslims and Christians can live together in greater harmony than emnity. But, of course, this will or may require some work.
The article, on a historical note, states, “In 1844, the Revd Samuel Ajayi Crowther returned home to Yoruba land (now part of modern-day Nigeria). Twenty years earlier, he had been kidnapped and sold to European slave traders who were bound for the Americas.”
Crowther was given freedom by an abolitionist naval patrol. The Church Missionary Society received him. This became the basis for the story of the first Anglican Christian mission work in Yoruba land.
This coincided with translations of the Bible into Yoruba and Hausa languages. This then formed the further basis of communication between faiths.
Crowther was the first African Anglican bishop in Africa, apparently. Now, Nigeria has the largest conglomeration of Christians of any nation in Africa.
Thus, this becomes part of the beliefs of much of the population, of millions of people. The argument put forward is one in which the assertions of Christians and Muslims can be a basis for compassion and flourishing together.
Intriguingly, and predictably, in fact, this ignores the growing atheist community within Nigeria in addition to the violence, hatred, and bigotry exhibited in many inter-religious contexts.
Ideally, the amount of co-existence would be greater in these contexts; however, this is not always the case. Therefore, in spite of the call for co-existence, it is, historically and right into the present, instructive to note the centuries of horrors committed by the religious against the religious, and the religious against the non-religious.
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