The Nigerian national elections of April 21, 2007, resulted in the first “civilian”-to civilian transfer of power ever in that vital African country. The election was troubled and disputed, with voting irregularities and electoral corruption that are traditional in Nigeria. The succession of President Olusegun Obasanjo by a fellow member of the People’s Democratic Party, Umaru Yar’Adua, was made possible in part, however, by a Senate vote and Supreme Court ruling that upheld the constitutional twoterm limit for presidents, barring Obasanjo from his attempt to run for a third term. Ironically, the president had been instrumental in establishing this American-style constitutional provision in the late 1970s, when as Lt. Gen. Obasanjo he succeeded the assassinated leader of the previous coup. Obasanjo remains powerful; the corruption and disorder characteristic of his presidency, and of previous regimes, are likely to continue in Nigeria, whoever is president. 1

The election also resulted in a transfer of the office from a Christian president, who was freely elected in 1999, to an elected Muslim. Yar’Adua previously served as governor of Katsina, one of the twelve northern Nigerian states that have implemented aspects of Muslim Sharia law since 2000. Most presidents of Nigeria have been Muslim, but almost all have been installed by military coup. In 1986 Nigeria, though divided almost evenly between Muslims and non-Muslims, became a full member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, while maintaining its constitutional claim to be a secular and multi-religious state. Many non-Muslims fear that it is national policy to transform Nigeria into a fully Islamic state. All the leading candidates in the 2007 election were Muslims, and it seems certain that it was necessary to alternate the presidency to a Muslim for this term, if not to make it a permanently Muslim office, in order to appease the leadership of the northern states. The elected vice-president, Goodluck Jonathan, was governor of the southern, oil-producing state of Bayelsa, and he is a Christian of Ijaw ethnicity. Obasanjo’s vice-president had been Atiku Abubakr, a Fulani Muslim, who also ran for president on an opposing ticket after falling out with Obasanjo.

The ticket-splitting and power-sharing election results highlight the longstanding ethnic and religious divisions in Nigeria, which are reproduced in many African states and are characteristic of the conti- nent as a whole. The divisions are geographic (north-south), religious (Islamic- Christian/animist), tribal, and political. In Nigeria, the northern tier of states in the federal union have implemented many aspects of Sharia, in spite of the secular federal constitution. In some states this has extended to Sharia-mandated criminal punishments, as well as implementing the traditional laws on polygamy, the family, and inheritance. 2

Yet Nigeria is also faced, as is much of Africa, with organized Islamic militancy not satisfied with power-sharing and coexistence, whose purpose is to establish fully Islamic governance, as well as the conquest or elimination of the part of Nigeria that is in the dar-al-harb —the part of the world not subjugated to Islamic law. Even the reintroduction of Sharia in the twelve northern states is incomplete and unsatisfactory to totalist movements that demand complete purity of law and religion. Nigeria— indeed, Africa—is in many ways the key battlefront in the civilizational contest being played out across the globe, and will increasingly be the site of extremist Islamic efforts, as well as Western responses. 3

With its federal system and regular elections, Nigeria exhibits some semblance of normal politics and democratic formation, offering institutional means to express differences— though greatly diluted by its history of local violence, civil strife, and regular military coups. Nigeria is the largest African country, with 140 million people, and the second largest African economy after South Africa. It is rich with oil reserves, yet its corruption and fragility keep poverty high and opportunities squandered, restricting the benefits of its wealth to a few. After the death of the last military dictator, Sani Abacha, in 1998, Obasanjo was elected twice, and other state and national elections have been held with some consistency, however corrupted. But militant activity and violent local clashes between Christians and Muslims continue unabated; Nigeria is the prize worth fighting over.

Other African states with similar internal divisions between Muslims and non- Muslims include Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Ivory Coast. In many of these, chronic violence is the daily diet for the opposing cultures and political agendas. The best known of these in the U.S. is Sudan, which has been an object of Bush Administration diplomacy regarding both the North-South civil war and the more recent atrocities in Darfur.

Because of the significance of these African conflicts both to American interests and the expanding war against international jihad, the American Department of Defense recently announced plans to establish a new Africa Command (AFRICOM) to join the other long-established regional unified commands—in effect, completing the global reach of American power through permanent geographic representation. Covering all of Africa except Egypt, even the Muslim Arab states of the Maghreb (northern Africa) will be calculated strategically in the African sphere, in spite of their orientation toward the Middle East and the Mediterranean. One stated mission of the new Africa Command is to support the emerging African Union—the regional organization of African states authorized under the U.N. Charter to develop collective security and other integration on the continent. The Islamic challenge forces us to ask whether AFRICOM will become an expression of the limitation of U.S. power as it runs up against a situation unlike the old bipolar Europe, or even the relatively more cohesive nature of the conflict in the Middle East. 4

A Divided Continent

Islam is not new to Africa, having arrived in the Maghreb at the dawn of the Islamic age. Islamic forces spread rapidly across provinces that had been largely Christian under the Roman empire, and Islam displaced and nearly removed Christianity from the land of Augustine, Cyprian, Athanasius, and the great centers of Christendom at Alexandria, Carthage, and Hippo.

Islam spread to what is now Nigeria as early as the ninth century, and even earlier to Sudan. Islam also moved into the African interior from Mali in the west, where a large Islamic empire developed in the twelfth century, and from its predecessor, the empire of Ghana, both of which controlled large territories. The vital Islamic city of Timbuktu, founded in A.D. 1000, passed among these empires and functioned as a key point of dissemination of Islam for centuries. Across sub-Saharan Africa the Hausa states—the kingdoms of Kanem, Borno, and Safawya—all thrived for centuries as Islamic domains, as did emirates on both African coasts. More recently, the Sokoto caliphate, established in 1804 in what is now northern Nigeria, competed with the British and French for control of the region until the final British consolidation of the Nigerian colony in 1901. This caliphate extended Islamic control over much of central Africa, and inspired jihads that implemented Islamic rule elsewhere in west and east Africa. Its leader and first Sultan, Usman dan Fodio, developed significant teachings on Islamic reform and purity of law which still inspire programs of Islamization in Africa today.

In Sudan, the rebellion led by the apocalyptic and jihadist figure Muhammed Ahmed, who styled himself the Mahdi or chosen messianic leader, established an Islamic state based in Khartoum after the defeat of British and Egyptian forces under Gen. Charles “Chinese” Gordon in 1885. This regime was defeated in 1898 by forces involved in British efforts to control Egypt and the Suez Canal, aiding in the weakening of the Ottoman Empire and enhancing the “Cape to Cairo” policy of imperialism. Along with economic and imperial motivations, the British incursions against Muslims in Africa included “civilizing” efforts to abolish slavery, as well as Christian missionary endeavors. 5

This recent past of European colonialism was preceded by a millennium of Islamic presence in Africa. The early bases of Islamic control in the Maghreb became launching points for the encirclement of the Sahara down both coasts of Africa, across the Sudanese trade routes and up the Nile, and eventually into the interior, penetrating as far south as the line roughly represented by the current southern borders of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania. The growth of European colonization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries inaugurated conflict between these Islamic forces and external powers. Colonialism also brought a vibrant missionary Christianity, creating the lines of civilizational conflict that determine African public and private life today. Muslims are now found in every African country, though they represent a much smaller portion of the population in central and southern Africa, where they are more likely to be of Indian or Arab origin than of native stock. Strong Muslim missionary activity is carried out throughout Africa by organizations such as the Kuwaiti- funded Africa Muslim Agency and the Muslim Brotherhood. Saudi-funded Islamic Community Centers, complete with educational scholarships and other enticements, are found all over Africa, as they are in much of the developing world, and other Saudi-funded agencies promote Islamic activity across Africa under the principle of da’wa —missionary activity, education, and mosque building. 6

The growth of Islam in Africa and world wide has led some to claim that “Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world today.” On the other hand, the historian Philip Jenkins believes this is not the case, but that Christianity is growing faster and will soon dominate the “global South,” with Nigeria, Congo, and Ethiopia among the nations with the largest Christian populations. 7 His claims are echoed by missiologists such as Lamin Sanneh and Andrew Walls. 8 Christianity certainly was the faster growing religion in Africa in the twentieth century. For example, in Nigeria in 1900 there were almost no Christians; by 2000 nearly fifty percent of the population was Christian, with nearly twenty million of them Anglicans, the largest Anglican church in the world. But Islam is still demonstrably a fast-growing religion, both by natural demographic growth and conversion. It is clearly an “African religion,” even if not indigenous to Africa—as is Christianity in all its various forms. Christianity is still vibrant and growing, and conflict between the two is now endemic to Africa.

Some of the confrontational and ideological expressions of Islam—variously called Islamism, jihadism, or salafism— have origins in Africa, or at least early roots there. Egypt is the home of a long line of radicalism traceable from Jamal al-Din al- Afghani and Ahmed Urabi in the nineteenth century, to Hassan al Banna, Sayyid Qutb, and the Muslim Brotherhood in the twentieth, to the Islamic Jihad of Muhammad al-Zawahri that is now incorporated into Al-Qaeda. These were Arab or Persian Africans, of course, but other leading figures, such as the Sudanese Mahdi and the caliphs of Sokoto were tribal Africans. Hassan al-Turabi of Sudan, leader of the National Islamic Front, remains an important theorist of Islamism, having given refuge to Osama bin-Ladin in the 1990s. He is famous for his aphorisms, such as “Islam is the state and the state is Islam.” In all these movements, a variation on the salafist claim that “Islam is the Answer”—meaning a pure, ancient, and totalistic Islam that implements Sharia and creates a fully Islamic society—guides action toward the establishment of a political and social utopia.

Most Sub-Saharan Muslims are traditionally practitioners of the Maliki school of fiqh9 —or Sharia jurisprudence—which would not normally demand a harshly rigorous implementation of punishments as has come to be expected of Saudi Wahabbism, a product of the more “fundamentalist” Hanbali school of fiqh . Also, a Sufi or mystical influence on Islamic practice is found historically in the formation of African Islam. Even Turabi of Sudan at times espouses a gradualist approach to the implementation of Sharia and has advocated federal cooperation with Christians— though with the national government remaining officially Islamic. These factors could perhaps help explain why African Islam has in many places found means of coexistence with non-Muslims, and why Islamic rule in Africa has been more loosely and differentially organized, and even why most African Muslims are not necessarily keen on enforcing a totalist Islam. But while there is no evidence of a single Al-Qaeda or other centralized command structure fomenting coordinated jihad in Africa, Saudi Wahabbism and other forms of militancy are increasing in Africa:

In 2007 alone, major attacks attributed to Al-Qaeda-related groups occurred in Algeria, where suicide bombers attacked the prime minister’s office, killing 33. ·

In Somalia, Ethiopian forces helped lead attacks against the Union of Islamic Courts, which had taken power and attempted to establish a fully Islamic state.

A group known as the Taleban of Nigeria attacked a police station in Kano state in northern Nigeria just before the 2007 elections with a force of at least 300, leading to many deaths, just one example of years of insurgent activity in Nigeria.

The continent of Africa as a whole is divided roughly 50/50 between Muslims and non-Muslims, about 400 million each. The agenda of the more aggressive Islamic groups is to force the expansion of Islam to a greater majority, and even to complete domination. The Nigerian concession to the expansion of Sharia law in the north is the latest stage in an effort of more than two decades to Islamize the whole country begun under Gen. Ibrahim Babangida. Such efforts, which could be repeated across the continent, are not at all accepted by the Christians, who have experienced many attacks by Muslim groups against churches and individuals in recent years. Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola, perhaps the strongest and most widely recognized Christian leader in Africa, refuses to appease violence, but has attempted to improve Christian-Muslim relations in Nigeria. In February 2007 he visited with the Sultan of Sokoto—spiritual leader of Nigeria’s Muslims, and a direct descendant of and successor to the first Caliph of Sokoto in the nineteenth century. The meeting resulted in an agreement of coexistence and mutual resistance to violence, yet recognized the serious tensions. Akinola has also consulted with newly elected President Yar’Adua to argue for religious freedom in Nigeria, in spite of his skepticism over the selection of one who had been a “Sharia Governor” in Katsina. 10 Christians in Sudan still experience the effects of forced Islamization in the south, continued slavery, and effective dhimmitude —the state of subordinate existence allowed to non-Muslims in Islamic states. 11

Given the rapid growth of Christianity in many forms on the one hand, and on the other hand the fact that Islam is increasingly represented in Africa by radical movements, one is surprised to discover that the stated policy of the United States is accommodation and encouragement of a “moderate” or secularizing Islam, along the lines of Turkey or Jordan. Is working with established but radical-leaning organizations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, a viable approach, as suggested by Robert Leiken and Steven Brooke? They write: “Jihadists loathe the Muslim Brotherhood…for rejecting global jihad and embracing democracy. These positions seem to make them moderates, the very thing the United States, short on allies in the Muslim world, seeks.” 12 What would be the real effects if Africa sees the increasing victory of those for whom “Islam is the Answer”—even if they seem less strident than others?

I slam is the Answer?

The assertion “Islam is the Answer” is the political credo of organized movements currently active in Africa and around the world, with centuries-old roots. It is the traditional demand of all Islamic “reform” movements—which typically means the demand for a more rigorous implementation of Islamic law and consistency of life in society. It appears in the modern world as a response to the question of how to form an orderly state that can function in the inter- national system—or whether incorporation into a larger Islamic realm, the ummah unified under one legitimate caliph, successor to the Prophet, is preferable. According to John Kelsay, Islam is

a community formed by a particular narrative and having a mission to fulfil. That this perception sometimes leads to conflict is not surprising. In encounters between the West and Islam, the struggle is over who will provide the primary definition of world order. Will it be the West, with its notions of territorial boundaries, market economics, private religiosity, and the priority of individual rights? Or will it be Islam, with its emphasis on the universal mission of a transtribal community called to build a social order founded on the pure monotheism natural to humanity? 13

In Africa, Islam emerges as one answer to the post-colonial, nation-building needs brought about by independence. “Islam is the Answer” competes with liberal democracy, socialism, nationalism, and outright despotism, as the solution to the problems of African political disorder. It also presents itself as the means of regional integration.

But is it to be encouraged, even in a moderate form, as advocated by many Western proponents, and by Western governments? Is it possible to differentiate the “global jihadists” such as Al-Qaeda from the “national jihadists” who merely want “Islam in one country”—opposing the former but somehow accommodating the latter? For many, such as Leiken and Brooke, this alternative seems the only viable policy approach to take to largely Islamic states, where Islam is fully entrenched and provides the cultural cohesion for state and society. Further, as Islam is a religion and culture “of law” for which the following of divine law is all in all, it seems to some that Islam could form the basis for some form of “rule of law”:

Islam, with its program of organizing its own public order, defined its goals in terms of a comprehensive religious and social-political system, requiring its adherents to devote themselves exclusively to the well-being of the community of believers, and to defend its social system…. Of all the Abrahamic religions…it is Islam that was from its inception the most conscious of its earthly agenda. In its conscious commitment to founding an ethical public order, Islam has been accurately described as faith in the public realm. 14

Because Islam emphasizes families, and resists many expressions of immorality, it can be seen as a solid basis for a healthy society built on strong values. Others find within Islam traditions and practices that can be steered in the direction of democratic participation and respect for human rights, thus hoping for the “maturing” of Islamic states that may otherwise begin in a more “fundamentalist” and severe form. 15

Such were the Western hopes for the Taliban (and of course, for the Bolsheviks and the Jacobins and the Khmer Rouge…). Islam is proclaimed as the answer to corruption, to kleptocracy, to violence, to disease, to the problems of “post-colonialism,” and to many other social pathologies. Getting just the right “balance” of religious demands with personal freedom and the “demands of progress” is touted as the best policy for development and peace, in spite of the obviously totalistic understanding of even moderate Muslims. Former U.S. intelligence official Graham Fuller espouses this perspective:

Americans brought up to venerate the separation of church and state may wonder whether a movement with an explicit religious vision can ever create a democratic, tolerant, and pluralistic policy. But if Christian Democrats can do it, there is no reason in principle why Islamists cannot. … Non-Muslims should understand that democratic values are latent in Islamic thought if one wants to look for them, and that it would be more natural and organic for the Muslim world to derive contemporary liberal practices from its own sources than to import them wholesale from foreign cultures…. The real story is the potential rise of forces in the Muslim world that will change not Islam itself, but rather the human understanding of Islam, laying the groundwork for a Muslim Reformation and the eventual emergence of a politics at once authentically Islamist yet also authentically liberal and democratic. The encouragement of such trends should be an important objective of U.S. policy. 16

But sobriety ought to guide our policy, not the imaginations of hopeful diplomatic analysts. Examples of such development are rare, and “if one wants to look for them,” it will require looking very hard. That may be because the individual and social formation brought about by the Islamic concept of law, for example, and by its understanding of human nature and social order, to mention just a few considerations, need critical examination. Many secular rationalists too easily assume that the right dose of social scientific discovery, economic growth, and reasonable dialogue will displace “irrational” religious traditions, or they hold that any belief system is a valid cultural basis for a modern political order. Such hubristic Enlightenment perspectives, if they inform policy, will extract a great price.

The type of citizen, and the type of social order, formed by Islamic assumptions do not lend themselves easily to peace—at least not the Western vision of peace that includes cooperation, tolerance, and mutual respect. The distinction inevitably made in Islam between the Muslim, as one who truly submits to God and his law, and all others who do not, charts out the world into two alien camps: the dar-al-Islam , and the daral- harb . The name Islam does not mean “peace” as is popularly claimed, other than the peace that comes from absolute submission. The term Islam means “submission” and a Muslim is “one who submits.” This in itself sustains a very passive understanding of law—one very different from an interactive perspective that calls for education, understanding, and then a virtuous obedience to right order such as represented in the Western natural law tradition. A Muslim is to recite the Koran, and submit to Sharia, and not to question, examine, or interpret. Prayer is highly structured, exact, and legally bound to times and places. Sharia, in all its schools, is extensive, detailed, covering the minutiae of life as well as the large questions. Sharia requires the issuance of fatwas , rulings, for all aspects of life by the enlightened ulema who are trained in interpretation—and limits the role of ijtihad or reasoning to those so trained. The individual has little scope to engage in moral reasoning or develop habits of reflection. There is little basis in Sharia to commend human rights, since humanity is radically divided into two camps, the Muslim and the non-Muslim, and those who are not Muslim must be forced to submit, if necessary, to conform to the will of God. Women in the Islamic world are especially aware of this. The fatalism engendered by Islamic submission is one explanation for the relatively non-progressive, or non-alterable social structures found in Islamic societies.

Islam’s view of the law and man’s relation to it follow from basic Islamic theology regarding human nature, creation, and the nature of God himself. Islam denies that man is created in the image of God—indeed, to make such a claim is idolatry and to be punished. In Islam human reason is suspect, something to be corralled and restrained lest it commit sin. The Koran states that “God is not such as a man that he could have a Son,” and so Allah is not a Father. God is wholly Other, supreme, removed, one who must be obeyed, radically monotheistic, and thus radically alone.

For Islam there is no Savior; any “salvation” comes only because one submits fully to the law, and then only if God in his absolute sovereignty wills it. John Paul II wrote that the God of the Koran “is ultimately a God outside of the world, a God who is only Majesty, never Emmanuel , God with- us. Islam is not a religion of redemption. There is no room for the Cross and Resurrection…. For this reason not only the theology but also the anthropology of Islam is very distant from Christianity.” 17

The human formation of such an anthropology is one that therefore demands “striving”—constant effort to achieve the hoped for and remote reward. So, the concept of “jihad,” which means “striving” or “effort,” is central to Islam. The greater jihad is the striving for the full law of God and his global rule, through persuasion, good works, and prayers. But the “lesser jihad,” the jihad of the sword, is also required, both to defend Islam from its enemies and to extend the rule of Islamic law. Any territory that submits to Islam must remain Islamic, part of the ummah ; and if any territory is taken away, it becomes the duty of all Muslims to take it back. Thus, the striving in Palestine, the Middle East, and now in Africa; and thus also, the impossibility of true pluralism for Islam. 18 It is true that Islam sustains notions of “people of the book,” or “Abrahamic religions”—Christianity and Judaism—that can be allowed some scope for co-existence within clearly defined limits known as dhimmitude . But the greater demand is that all become Muslim. Conversion by a Muslim to another faith is apostasy, punishable by death. 19

Civilizational Conflict

The hope for a moderate Islam is a stretch of imagination that never seems to reach its goal. To support the notion that Islam can be moderate and pluralistic, advocates have to reach back 700 years to the Andalusian caliphate in Spain, or to the restricted pluralism of the Ottoman Empire. They reach to examples that may not be all that is claimed for them, and to movements that were suppressed, such as the Mutazilites or the westernized philosophers of Andalusia. 20 These examples existed, but they did not prevail. The “What Went Wrong?” thesis skimps on demonstration that things were ever really “right” in the first place. 21 All this presents a serious dilemma for Western policy, since the “correction” or reform of religion and culture is beyond even the military power that might be able to achieve regime change, or shift the balance of power among states. To encourage moderation may be the best that can be done, but it will only buy time. And U.S. power projection will provide targets for resistance more than encourage moderation.

In light of history, it seems predictable that a “moderate” Muslim state will always be pressed by radicals for whom it is takfir or insufficiently Muslim, if not outright kafr (infidel)—even in Africa, where coexistence has some precedence. Witness the situations in Jordan, Egypt, Algeria, Afghanistan, and currently in Iraq, all with insurgencies that are seeing varying degrees of success. These may presage the future for African states now pressured by similar groups. For the radicals, a state that is not officially and exclusively Islamic will by definition be open to attack as part of the dar-al-harb , in need of conversion or conquest. Even if these efforts are meager or unsuccessful, the utopian goal will always be before them as an inspiration, making them a permanent source of disorder.

This may seem a too pessimistic stance regarding the possibilities for cooperation or dialogue, always the official hope of diplomacy. Academic analysis often assumes that with enough good will and dedicated effort, if we just try to understand their perspective, just listen, we can achieve peace. But a clear-eyed examination of recent and historical patterns indicates rather that religious dedication, especially if its demands are totalistic and apocalyptic, will overwhelm and outmaneuver “positive thinking.” Islam, if any movement does, “immanentizes the eschaton” and demands total adherence. Muslims who work for the restoration of the caliphate in preparation for global victory are giving one political expression to such dreams, but so are those whose goals are limited to one state or region.

Western policy, then, must be prepared for the conflicts that will appear if it chooses to pursue a global expectation of democracy, stability, commerce, and pluralism. Islam is not likely to yield to that vision on its own, unless it becomes exhausted by its current activity. Barring mass conversion to secularism, or to Christianity, the Islamic world will fight back. One almost rediscovers a certain sympathy with the Christianizing and civilizing legs of the old imperial policies. Western policy is no longer capable of acting on such goals, and is limited to security and trade policies. The West can at best find encouragement in the fact that Christianity is so vibrant and growing in Africa. Churches and non-governmental groups can help encourage and reinforce Christian growth in the “global South” without needing to control it. A vigorous Christian faith resists Islamic expansion whereas secularism appeases it or dismisses its significance.

American power may have little to do with determining the future of Africa, but we will be required to give more attention to the continent. Africa, more than the Middle East and even than Europe, will join Asia as the main front in the conflict with Islam. The Middle East is already given over to Islam, barring mass conversions, and may already be lost to radical movements. The future there will be taken up with containing radicalism, or attempting to moderate Islam, or accommodating it for reasons of trade and security. Europe will not compete against Islamization with the resources of Christendom, unless Pope Benedict XVI is successful in his campaign for returning it to its roots; it will try rather to overcome Islam with tepid and faltering secularism. But in Africa the battle will be joined, spiritually and materially, and will grow in intensity and impact. The U.S. may only have brute power and money to put into this conflict, but policymakers need to know that this is where they will be engaged. Still, as the U.S. enters the African theater with a permanent force command, it may find that it is seriously underpowered in the cultural and civilizational contests of the conflicting religious visions that will characterize Africa for decades to come.

  1. See “How to Steal an Election,” The Economist , April 16, 2007.
  2. See Omo Omoruyi, “An Appeal to President Obasanjo: Nigeria, neither a Christian nor an Islamic Country,” http://www.biafraland.com/Islamization%20of%20Nigeria.htm; the Emory School of Law’s Study of Legal Systems series article on Nigeria, http://www.law.emory.edu/IFL/legal/nigeria.htm; “Nigeria: Sharia update” Africa Action Africa E-Journal , http://www.africaaction.org/docs02/shar0204.htm; Edward Harris, “In Nigeria’s North, a Compromise between Islamic Law, Secular Culture,” Washington Post , April 15, 2007; and Robert Ruby and Timothy Shah, “Nigeria’s Presidential Election: The Christian-Muslim Divide,” Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, http://www.africaaction.org/docs02/shar0204.htm.
  3. See Stephen Schwartz, “Islamic Extremism on the Rise in Nigeria,” Global Terrorism Analysis , vol. 3, no. 20 (2005), http://jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2369814; Paul Marshall, “Nigeria: Shari’a in a Fragmented Country,” in Radical Islam’s Rules: The Worldwide Spread of Extreme Shari’a Law (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005); “Nigeria Christian/Muslim Conflict,” Global Security.Org , http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ world/war/nigeria-1.htm; Human Rights Watch, “Political Shari’a? Human Rights and Islamic Law in Northern Nigeria,” http://hrw.org/reports/2004/ nigeria0904/; Freedom House, “The Talibanization Of Nigeria: Radical Islam, Extremist Sharia Law and Religious Freedom,” 2001.
  4. U.S. Department of Defense, “D.O.D. briefing on Establishment of Africa Command,” February 7, 2007, http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript. aspx?transcriptid=3882.
  5. Dominic Green, Three Empires on the Nile: The Victorian Jihad 1869-1899 (New York: The Free Press, 2007).
  6. See Joseph Kenny, O.P., “The Spread of Islam in Nigeria, a Historical Survey,” http://www.diafrica.org/ nigeriaop/kenny/Sist.htm; and John Hunwick, “Africa and Islamic Revival: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives,” http://www.uga.edu/islam/hunwick. html.
  7. Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 90; and Philip Jenkins, The New Faces of Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
  8. Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1996), and The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2002); Lamin Sanneh and Joel Carpenter, eds., The Changing Face of Christianity: Africa, the West, and the World (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2005); Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion is Christianity? The Gospel beyond the West (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).
  9. Emory Studies of Legal Systems, http://www.law.emory.edu/IFL/legal/nigeria.htm.
  10. “Embrace Creed on Good Governance: C.A.N. President admonishes P.D.P. Presidential Candidate,” http://www.anglican-nig.org/main.php?k _j=12&d=29&p_t=main.php?k_j=34.
  11. U.S. Department of State country profile, Sudan , http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5424.htm.
  12. Robert S. Leiken and Steven Brooke, “The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 86, no. 2 (March/April 2007).
  13. John Kelsay, Islam and War (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox, 1993), 117.
  14. Abdulaziz Sachedina, The Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 24.
  15. Anthony T. Sullivan, “Islam, America, and the Political Economy of Liberty,” Modern Age , vol. 49, no. 2 (Spring 2007), 130-139.
  16. Graham Fuller, “The Future of Political Islam,” Foreign Affairs , vol. 81, no. 2 (March/April 2002), 52.
  17. John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 90
  18. James Turner Johnson, The Holy War Idea in Western and Islamic Traditions (State College: Penn State University Press, 1997). See also Sheikh Yusuf al- Qaradawi, “The Sacred Duty of Defending Jerusalem,” http://www.islamonline.net/fatwa/english/ FatwaDisplay.asp?hFatwaID=18372.
  19. See, for example, the excellent information sources available from the Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, http://www.isic-centre.org/; Voice of the Martyrs, http://www.persecution.com/; and Jihad Watch, http://www.jihadwatch.org/.
  20. See the excellent study by Dario Fernandez- Morera, “The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise,” Intercollegiate Review , vol. 41, no. 2 (Fall 20060, 23-31.
  21. Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).