Center for Reduction of Religious-based Conflict

Muslims versus Christians

For more than 30 years, the bloody war between Ethiopia and now more or less independent Eritrea has taken its toll.  This conflict pits predominantly Muslim Eritrea against principally Christian Ethiopia. Initially the Muslims fought, with a measure of success, to gain their independence from Ethiopia.  Today, even after a form of independence, the violence continues.

Christianity in Ethiopia dates from the third or fourth century.  Attacked in later centuries by a hostile Islam,  Christianity initially flourished in the remote isolation of Ethiopia’s craggy, highlands.  The Muslims of the north maintain that they are ethnically and religiously different from the Christian southerners.

Formerly an Italian colony, Eritrea came under British administration in 1941. In 1948 the fate of Eritrea was referred to the United Nations, which voted in 1950 for the federation of Eritrea and Ethiopia.  The terms of the federation gave Eritrea considerable local autonomy.  However, in November, 1962, the late Emperor Haile Selassie announced the end of the federation and absorbed Eritrea as Ethiopia’s 14th province, asserting full control over the region in spite of the autonomy provisions of the 1950 UN resolution.  The United Nations stood helplessly by – and the fighting began.

In an attempt to depopulate the troublesome Eritrean region, the Christian government of Ethiopia launched a forced resettlement program in 1984 to relocate more than one million Eritrean Muslim peasants to Ethiopia’s central and southern regions.  The expressed objective was to move the peasants from famine-prone and “overpopulated” Eritrea into more agriculturally productive areas.  However, many thousands have died – and continue to die – in resettlement camps en route to their new locations.

Muslim Eritrea finally won independence from Christian Ethiopia in 1993, though at that time there was no decision on the final demarcation of the border between the two.  This eventually led to more violence.

The conflict renewed, culminating in a border war in 1998. By 2000, tens of thousands are believed to have died, with untold property and other damage generated.

Christians versus Muslims

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation with over 108 million people, is sharply divided along religious lines, and continues to be torn by violence because of this.  In this partially Christian country, the Muslims have been more and more strident in demanding the introduction of Sharia law, about which the Christians are wary.  Calls to introduce Sharia, or Islamic Law, in some northern states, such as Barno, have sparked fighting that has killed thousands during the first quarter of the year 2000.

Sharia supporters have assured non-Muslims they will not be tried under Islamic Law, which prohibits such things as drinking alcohol and calls for separate schools and public transportation for men and women.  But such assurances have meant little to Christians, who fear discrimination and marginalization under Sharia.

Other areas such as the states of Suleija, Kaduna and Zamfara, as well as the city of Kano, are suffering enormous unease over Sharia.

Not since the death of tens of thousands of Ibo Christians in the 1960′s in a war in which one million people died, has Nigeria fallen under such fear due to religious-based conflict.

In September, 2001, President Olusegun Obsanjo had to call out the army to combat Muslim-Christian violence raging in Jos, a hilltop city of 4 million some 620 miles northeast of Lagos, where terrified residents told of churches and homes burned and bodies piling up in the streets.  The fighting among the two religions apparently erupted at the time of Muslim prayers when a Christian women angered Muslims by trying to cross a street where Muslim men were praying.  Hundreds were killed during that and subsequent fighting.  According to commentators on the scene, the tension between the two religions is increasing.

In other parts of Nigeria as well, thousands have died in vicious Muslim-Christian clashes, ever since several states introduced Sharia. In the year 2000, 2,000 people died in Kaduna state alone.

In other parts of Nigeria as well, thousands have died in vicious Moslem-Christian clashes, ever since  several states had introduced the Sharia.

According to BBC News, in November, 2002, more than 200 people were killed in religious unrest in Kaduna, sparked by a row over the Miss World beauty contest.

Again in 2003, the Nigerian Red Cross Society reported hundreds were killed in the Dumne village area as a result of religious-based violence; many more were wounded, and more than 20,000 were displaced.  Many houses and churches were razed.

Christians versus Muslims

Sudan, a vast and impoverished country, is Africa’s largest nation in land area, larger than France, Germany and Spain combined.  It has been plagued by military coups and internal tribal, racial and religious strife since its early years as a nation in the 1950′s.  Sudan has been accused of sponsoring and aiding groups such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.  Though Sudan provided safe haven to Usama bin Laden and al-Quaeda in the 1990s, a decade later it changed its position, working to cut its ties with these and similar internationally recognized religious-based terrorists and their organizations.

In one of Africa’s longest-running and deadliest religious-based conflicts, the Christians and Animists of the south continue to fight their war of insurgency against the Muslims of the north in Sudan.  This incipient revolt, which is principally religious in nature, has been continuing unabated since its beginning in 1983, and has now reached a dangerous point.  The United States has, for instance, been uncertain as to whether it should supply food and other support to the Christians.  Other countries lean toward supporting the Muslim side.

This, however is not the only religious-based conflict in Sudan. In 1985, the Muslim regime of President Gaafar Nimeiri ordered the hanging of Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, the respected sage of the Republican Brothers for the crime of heresy. The Republican Brothers are a small religious organization of a few thousand which has existed in Sudan for about 55 years.

In any event, through 2001, it has been estimated that 2 million people have lost their lives as a result of the religious-based conflict here.  And, for those who have been luckier, their lives have been forever changed.  For example, the United Nations learned that the Christian rebels in the south of Sudan had used at least 10,000 children between 8 and 18 years as frontline soldiers.  Furthermore, at least 4 million others have been forced from their homes, forever losing them, as a result of this conflict.

In September, 2003 a purported peace agreement was signed at the Kenyan resort of Naivasha between the Sudan People’s Liberation Army and the Sudan Government calling for gradual steps to peace, requiring at least two and a half years to implement.  However, as with most peace processes, the closer the endgame draws, the more strident, obstructionist and legalistic the parties seem to become.  And, in any event, even if this process is successful – and all hope it will be – the root problem which was the initial cause of the conflict, will not have been attacked or resolved, setting the stage for renewed conflict in the future.

By October, 2004 the 2003 peace agreement had still not taken hold.  Sadly the conflict had even worsened.  An October 15, 2004 a United Nations health agency report revealed that in the recent refugee tragedy in Darfur which had resulted from forced displacement from their homes, an additional 1.5 million villagers were in displacement camps without proper food, water or shelter, and more than 200,000 of them had fled across the border to neighboring Chad.  The report further stated that the death toll in these refugee camps had reached 70,000, and that the people would continue to die from starvation and disease at the rate of 10,000 per month if more food and water was not quickly supplied.

We continue to closely watch this region.