November 25, 2002
Religious violence rocks Nigeria
The arrival of dozens of beauty queens in London Sunday closed the troubled Nigerian chapter on this year's Miss World contest. They leave in their wake a Nigeria gripped by increasing social and political tensions that find expression between religious and ethnic groups. Violence that started last week in response to the contest, and continued into the weekend, left as many as 200 people dead.
What we can look after this violence is the very stupidity of intolerance. May be some of you think that you're very tolerance people, you live in very populous communities, and very tolerance. But, after reading such kind articles by ThisDay magazine that insult the Prophet Muhammad, we just realise there were just many people live in very dumb head thinking in their own world. We must now think our spirituality life is our very personal thoughts, our very sensitive means. Instead to persuade those insulting words, we just easily keep in mind what our religion means to be, and not offend the others, by any menas and any contexts. Of course, every muslim will be very resentful by the statement about the Prophet, either it will of any Christian if Jesus do by the same ways (by any people). We now life in the most liberated era, but it seem religion matters still closed area, and we happily realise that.
Related news:
- Religious violence rocks Nigeria - CSMonitor
- The beauty myth - Guardian
- Miss World pageant goes to London; newspaper editor arrested - eTaiwan
- Nigerian governor warns rioters will be shot on sight - Star Tibune
A nice comment from Guardian:
The riots in Nigeria were ultimately triggered, not by the contest itself but by a piece in a local paper claiming the prophet himself might have chosen a wife from these beauties. The Nigeria debacle shows how naive people are about this divide between cultures, especially in a post-September 11 world. A culture where a woman can be stoned to death for adultery clearly contains elements that will not be entranced by a parade of female flesh or the "modernity" it promises. To hold the contest during Ramadan compounds the insult.This is the same cultural naivety exposed by the bombing of the Sari club in Bali. The consolation some clubbers exchanged after the outrage betrays this same sense that the world is a playground where the true human (western) values can be paraded. Because no harm is meant, no offence should be taken. One clubber mourned the passing of the club on a website, saying "it was the United Nations of decadence" without any sense that this is what made it a target.
This new era of Muslim fundamentalism has changed the world but few in the west seem to realise this. Before September 11, casual imperialism caused offence when the west paraded its interests and values as self-evidently desirable. Now the reluctance to attack representatives of western values has disappeared even among those with no involvement in extremist organisations. Those rioting on the streets of Kaduna were not members of al-Qaida but they had no hesitation in attacking what they see as western values.
Posted at November 25, 2002 12:03 PM | World
