Massacres of Christians by Islamic Extremists the “Norm” in Nigeria

Extremists threaten Christian-Islamic harmony in Nigeria, cardinal says
ICC Note:
With the violence in Nigeria, most of which is by Muslim Extremists against Christians, massacres of believers has become the norm. Catholic Cardinal, John Onaiyekan, says that “If you are thinking of a future world where the two big religions, Christianity and Islam, must accept one another and live in peace then we have lessons to teach the rest of the world.”
By Sandro Contenta
2/07/2013 Nigeria (TS)- In Nigeria, cross-country funeral processions are a sign of terrible times.
Massacres of Christians by Islamic extremists in the country’s north produce a steady procession of bodies carried to ancestral burial grounds in the largely Christian south, says John Onaiyekan, a Roman Catholic cardinal from Nigeria.
“Everybody buries their dead and they’re crying and weeping and the news spreads that these Muslims have killed us,” Onaiyekan said in an interview during a Toronto visit this week.
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Violence sparked by the group, including intercommunal killings and crackdowns by government security forces, has resulted in more than 3,000 deaths since 2009, according to a January report by Human Rights Watch.
Some observers believe it may be linked to Al Qaeda. It has launched gun or bomb attacks against churches, schools, police stations, military facilities, newspaper offices and the United Nations building in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital. It uses suicide bombers, raids Christian homes to demand conversion or death, and assassinates Muslim clerics who publicly denounce it.
The rampage has fuelled concerns about the stability of some North and West African countries. The French military continues to hunt Islamist extremists who had occupied northern Mali for a year, while last month a splinter group of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb killed 37 foreigners at a gas plant in southern Algeria.
Onaiyekan says these groups feed off rampant poverty and corruption, using them to recruit and justify violence.
“Bad government is an environment that promotes and makes it possible,” said Onaiyekan, 69, who is also Archbishop of Abuja and president of the conference of bishops for English-speaking West Africa.
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“We are the greatest Islamo-Christian nation in the world,” he said. “That we have survived 50 years in relative peace is an achievement that the world has refused to sufficiently acknowledge.
“If you are thinking of a future world where the two big religions, Christianity and Islam, must accept one another and live in peace then we have lessons to teach the rest of the world.”
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