Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide (30 page)

In 1992, the Kordofan state government in Sudan declared jihad on the Muslim and Christian people of the Nuba Mountains in central Sudan. In 1993, six government-sponsored Muslim clerics in Kordofan issued a fatwa in support of the jihad and declared: “An insurgent who was previously a Muslim is now an apostate; and a non-Muslim is a non-believer standing as a bulwark against the spread of Islam, and Islam has granted the freedom of killing both of them.”
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This fatwa declared that the Nuba non-Muslims could be wiped out, as they were barriers to Islam, and that Nuba Muslims were now apostates who not only could be, but also should be, killed. Hence, half a million people were sentenced to death. Between May 1992 and February 1993, over 60,000 Nuba had already reportedly been killed and many of their villages burned to the ground. Death
squads targeted community leaders and intellectuals in particular, so that the Nuba would remain without a voice. The army and Popular Defense Force also disrupted trade and marketplaces to produce a famine that would wipe out tens of thousands more Nuba. These conditions continued through the 1990s and, by 1998, prompted human rights and refugee aid groups to identify the Nuba mountain region as a target of genocide
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In much of Africa, Islam draws on Sufi traditions, and in the past, levels of religious violence have been relatively low. However, as elsewhere in the world, there has been an increased radicalization that has led to more frequent accusations of blasphemy and apostasy, and to ensuing violence.
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To illustrate this, we will outline three countries—Nigeria, Somalia, and Sudan.

Nigeria, by population the largest country in Africa, has, in recent decades, been ripped apart by violence between Muslims and Christians—sometimes triggered by blasphemy and apostasy allegations—that have cost thousands of lives. More than anywhere else in the world, many people are killed because of rumors of blasphemy taking place far beyond its borders, even in Denmark or Bangladesh. There has been comparatively little state religious repression, though there has been discrimination. The major threat is from mob violence, and the victims include not only those accused but often also their coreligionists.

Somalia has no functioning central government, and religious violence is perpetrated by quasi-state militias and mobs. One goal has been the extermination of Somalia’s Christians, who have been targeted by the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabab movement. While Al-Shabab is the worst, the country’s other radical movements also attack anyone that differs from their version of Islam, including some Sufis. Due to this violence and the ceaseless warring between armed factions, Somalia may be the most religiously repressive country in the world.

Sudan is the largest African country in area. Its predominantly Muslim North has laws governing apostasy and blasphemy, and it has been the site of some of the world’s most significant blasphemy incidents. These have occurred against the backdrop of a twenty-year civil war triggered in the mid-1980s in part because the Islamist government sought to impose an extreme form of sharia on the South, which is largely populated by Christians and followers of traditional African religions, thus sparking a rebellion. Over two million were killed in that conflict before a fragile peace was established by the comprehensive peace agreement of 2005. Conflict reaching genocidal proportions also began in 2003 in Darfur, in the West, though that does not appear to be tied to government interference in
religious matters. One of the most notorious blasphemy incidents was Sudan’s execution of Mohamed Mahmoud Taha, a prominent Muslim intellectual and political leader. There have also been blasphemy-related death threats against UN Special Rapporteurs and government-backed pronouncements declaring that half a million people, the Nuba, should be killed as apostates. South Sudan gained independence in July 2011, amidst great insecurity.

With an oil-rich delta, a relatively recent transition from military rule, and by far the largest population (over 130 million) in Africa comprising over 250 ethnic groups, Nigeria would face an uphill battle for stability, peace, and religious freedom even without its religious differences. But those differences can be deadly. The country is almost equally divided between Muslims and Christians, with about 10 percent of the population retaining traditional beliefs. Muslims are the majority in the North, Christians are the majority in the South, and the two are mixed in the middle belt, which is often the scene of violent conflict. Such outbreaks have tribal and regional dimensions and involve issues of political power, land, and resources, but there is also persistent religious tension. Since 1999, sharia law has been imposed in many northern states, which has increased tensions and led to thousands of deaths.
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Religious freedom is protected in numerous clauses in the 1999 constitution. Article 1 forbids the federal or state governments to “adopt any religion as State Religion.” Article 38 guarantees “freedom of thought, conscience and religion,” while articles 15 and 42 forbid religious discrimination. Despite these provisions, however, by 2002, twelve northern states had extended sharia law beyond matters of personal status, and some had imposed Islam as a de facto official state religion in contravention of the constitution. Some proponents of sharia say their aim is to have a majority of states adopt sharia and then proclaim Nigeria an Islamic state.
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The constitution allows personal sharia law but guarantees the right of non-Muslims not to be subject to sharia courts. Yet, several northern states use sharia in disputes between Muslims and non-Muslims.
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As noted, this expansion of sharia has led to conflicts in which thousands have died. The authorities have been largely ineffectual in preventing attacks, which, though stemming mainly from Muslim elements, are sometimes initiated by Christians. While neither blasphemy nor apostasy is explicitly punishable de jure, even in the sharia states, those accused face extrajudicial violence and persecution. Although the constitution guarantees the freedom to change religions, Muslims who become Christians are also frequently targeted as apostates. Strife has also broken out between Sunni and Shia Muslims, while animists continue to suffer in political, ethnic, and religious conflicts.

In October 1999, Ibrahim Shetima, a spiritual advisor to the late military Head of State, Ibrahim Abacha, was thrown out of his residence for becoming a Christian. According to Shetima: “I had to leave and they’ve been on my trail since. I have been hunted and harassed along with attempts to take my life.”
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In late May 2000, in renewed religious violence in Kaduna city, Father Clement Ozi Bello, a convert who became a Catholic priest in 1999, was brutally mutilated and killed. While thousands, both Christian and Muslim, were killed in mob violence in Kaduna in 2000, Bello appears to have been singled out for special treatment: fellow priest, Reverend Yakubu, reported, “They tied a rope round his mouth and dragged him into a culvert and left him there.… They plucked off his eyes.”
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In 2002, converts Lawani Yakubu and Mohammed Ali Ja’afaru were arrested by an Islamic monitoring group created by the government of Zamfara to enforce sharia. The group had no legal power, since criminal law is a federal matter, but demanded that Yakubu and Ja’afaru be executed for apostasy. The presiding sharia judge, Awal Jabaka, correctly responded that he did not have jurisdiction, but the group said they would try to kill the two converts anyway. Yakubu and Ja’afaru fled, and their current whereabouts are unknown.
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In 2003, fifteen-year-old Salamatu Hassan was ambushed, gagged, and threatened with death by her uncle Malam Kasimu and some Islamic clerics for converting to Christianity. Before sending her back to her parents, Kasimu said, “If you were my daughter, I would have slaughtered you, killed you here, you bastard infidel, for turning away from Islam.” Hassan’s parents did not attack her but did reject her, leaving her homeless.
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Sardauna Anaruwa Sashi, a thirty-year-old convert in Paiko, was seized by police on September 21, 2005. The officers asked him why he had converted but did not give him a chance to respond before they beat him. He was detained for four days and tortured.
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In Gombe city, in March 2006, a Christian teacher was beaten to death at the hands of her students after being accused of desecrating the Qur’an.
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On September 18, 2006, a Christian tailor named Jummai was talking with Muslim customers at her store in Dutse. When a Muslim woman named Binta called Jesus a drunkard for turning water into wine, Jummai retorted that if that were the case, Muhammad’s many wives would make him a womanizer. Her comments were called blasphemous by some bystanders, and she was dragged before an adviser to the emir of Dutse, who ordered her to leave the area within two days or be killed. Her current whereabouts are unknown.
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On June 12, 2006, Joshua Lai, a Christian high-school teacher in Keffi, in Nasarawa, was teaching an English class when a Muslim student, Abdullahi Yusuf, arrived late, with the excuse that he just was coming from prayers at the mosque. As a former Muslim, Lai knew
that morning prayers could not have delayed Yusuf until 9 a.m., and Lai caned him—a typical punishment for students in Nigeria. Yusuf later accused Lai of blaspheming by saying, “I will flog the prophet Muhammad.” That night, students burned down Lai’s school residence as well as his home. The next day, he was evacuated to Abuja for his protection and, on October 16, 2006, was put on trial in Lafia for, among other things, blasphemy.
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Charges of blasphemy also lead to generalized violence, especially in the northern state of Kano. On September 29, 2007, a Christian teacher allegedly posted an insulting caricature of Muhammad in his classroom, and nine people were killed in the ensuing clash between Christian and Muslim youth. On October 5, 2007, another nine people, all Christians, were killed, and churches, shops, and houses were torched in reaction to a Bangladeshi cartoon purportedly defaming the Prophet. Two months later, hundreds rioted and attacked Christians over claims that a Christian had written an inscription on a wall disparaging Muhammad. On February 2, 2008, in Bauchi state, five churches were burned in retaliation for alleged defamation of the Qur’an by a female Christian student.
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Muslims have also been victims of mob violence following blasphemy accusations. In August 2008, a Muslim man in Kano was beaten to death by angry youths because statements he had made the previous night were interpreted as blasphemous.
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One of the stranger incidents, which, unusual for Nigerian violence, received international publicity, concerned the Miss World competition, scheduled for Nigeria in 2002. Several Muslim clerics pronounced the pageant immoral. In response, Isioma Daniel, a journalist with
ThisDay
newspaper, wrote, “What would Mohammed think? In all honesty, he would probably have chosen a wife from one of them.”
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Daniel’s comments sparked riots in Kaduna, where she lived, that lasted for four days, resulting in over 200 deaths and leaving thousands homeless.
ThisDay
printed an apology, but, in November 2002, Islamic authorities in Zamfara state issued a fatwa urging Muslims to kill Daniel. Federal Information Minister Jerry Gana pronounced the fatwa null and void, proclaiming, “The federal government…will not allow such an order in any part of the federal republic.”
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However, it was not clear how the government could prevent someone from acting on the fatwa. Daniel fled the country.

In late July 2009, a militant Islamist group calling itself “Boko Haram,” which roughly translates as “Western civilization is forbidden,” began violent attacks around the town of Maiduguri. The group, which is also dubbed “the Taliban” by locals because of its censorious tactics, attacked police stations, prisons, schools, churches, and homes, burning almost everything in its path. The violence spread to Borno, Kano, and Yobe states where Boko Haram treated as infidel anyone—Christian or Muslim—who did not conform to its views. Although the vast majority of Nigeria’s Muslims rejects the sect’s doctrines, Christians were a
particular focus of the violence. Many were abducted and forced, under threat of death, to renounce their faith. The riots continued for five days before police were able to stop them, and 700 people were killed in Maiduguri city alone. One arrested Boko Haram member, twenty-three-year-old Abdulrasheed Abubakar, confessed to receiving $5,000 and military training in Afghanistan, with the promise of $35,000 on his return there.
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Nigerian president Umaru Yar-Adua stated that intelligence agencies had been tracking Boko Haram and had regained control of the regions at risk. However, on August 9, 2009, the group released a statement aligning itself with Al-Qaeda and calling for jihad in response to the killing of its leader, Mallam Mohammed Yusuf. It further said it would “hunt and gun down those who oppose the rule of sharia in Nigeria and ensure that the infidel does not go unpunished.”
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In March 2010, it promised to continue its “holy struggle to oust the secular regime and entrench a just Islamic government.”
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With its clan and regional fragmentation, extremist religious groups, coups d’état, and war with neighboring Ethiopia, Somalia is one of the most dangerous and unstable countries in the world. Since independence in 1960, its history has been marred by relentless conflict, bloodshed, and poverty. In recent years, the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), enjoying UN recognition and Ethiopian interventionist military support, has fought with the more radical Al-Shabab—the Union of Islamic Courts, a group aligned with Al-Qaeda. While less extreme than Al-Shabab, which is not difficult, the transitional government also holds to a version of sharia requiring death for anyone who leaves Islam. Religious repression is endemic.
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