NEWS STORY: Anglican Bishop from Nigeria Pleads for U.S. Help

c. 2000 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ An Anglican bishop from Nigeria came to Washington recently to flee the violence in his native country and to issue an appeal to U.S. religious and political leaders to help stop the killing. Muslims and Christians have been warring in the northern part of the country over the […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ An Anglican bishop from Nigeria came to Washington recently to flee the violence in his native country and to issue an appeal to U.S. religious and political leaders to help stop the killing.

Muslims and Christians have been warring in the northern part of the country over the implementation of Islamic “Sharia” law. Christians say the laws would make them second-class citizens while Muslims vow to implement the traditional laws in both criminal and civil cases.


The Right Rev. Josiah Fearon is the Anglican bishop of Kaduna in northern Nigeria, an area that has seen a rash of killing in recent months. Fearon came to Washington for a conference and to meet with leaders of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a conservative group urging reform in Protestant denominations.

Speaking with Religion News Service and the Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly television program, Fearon described the religious hatred that has bubbled to the surface and erupted into fighting in Africa’s most populous nation.

Nigeria’s northern states are predominantly Muslim, while the southern region is predominantly Christian. Muslim leaders in the north want to institute laws that would ban prostitution, alcohol and create separate accommodations for men and women, among other things.

Muslim leaders say the Sharia laws were in effect long before the British colonized the country in the 19th century and before the nation became independent in 1960.

Fearon said the nation’s Christians do not have problems with the laws specifically, but said it is unacceptable in a democratic setting for Muslims to impose Islamic law on Christians.

“The problem with Islamic law is very simple,” Fearon said. “If you are not a Muslim, you are a second-class citizen, you have no freedom. And in a democratic setting, everyone should be free. That is the main problem with Islamic law.”

Fearon has been appointed to be a part of a joint Christian-Muslim committee to discuss implementation of the law.


During a peaceful February march to protest the laws, Fearon said Islamic militants pelted the crowd with rocks and bullets and his city of Kaduna erupted with several days of violence.

“People were killed, houses looted and burned, human beings slaughtered and torched,” Fearon said. “It was like a battleground.”

Christians pleaded with Muslim government officials to only install the Sharia laws in civil cases _ dealing with inheritances, divorce and property _ but some Muslim leaders want the laws in criminal cases as well.

Fearon said criminal sentences under Islamic law are brutal and inhumane. Governors of the northern states have gone back and forth about how to implement the laws, and there has been no unilateral consensus.

Fearon cited the punishment of a man convicted of stealing a cow.

“Everybody was watching. It was a public thing, and we find that repulsive.” Fearon said.

“The Muslims need to accept that this is a democracy,” he said “Therefore, let us keep the constitution as it is, which is acceptable to us even though we are deprived of so many things.”


A sense of relative calm has returned to Nigeria, Fearon said, but his city has become segregated between Muslims and Christians. Since the fighting began, more than 1,000 people have been killed.

The 51-year-old bishop said the violence has been so bad he had to leave the country for a few days to escape the physical and psychological torment. He said he came to the United States to urge political and religious leaders to help bring an end to the bloodshed.

Fearon has received the support of the Right Rev. Frank Griswold, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, and Archbishop George Carey, leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

Fearon, who was ordained in 1971 and consecrated as bishop in 1990, said he fears the growing “Islamization” of the world as fundamentalist Muslims stake a claim in Africa and elsewhere.

“As a Christian, … it concerns me,” he said. “And as a human being, seeing what Islamic law is doing in Pakistan, in Sudan and what we have just experienced in my own land, it concerns me. I think people should be free to be whatever they want to be.

“If I choose to become a Muslim today, so be it. And if a Muslim chooses to become a Christian, he should be free, she should be free. But Islamic law does not allow that. So what we are asking for is the freedom to be whatever we want to be as we have it in the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights.”


AMB END ECKSTROM

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