Rage and Carnage in the Name of God

Religion in Nigeria makes for treacherous terrain, and Abiodun Alao's Rage and Carnage in the Name of God: Religious Violence in Nigeria invites a sobering reflection. Each society has its short fuses: the pressure points that, if pressed, prompt radical and at times, violent responses. With the profound violence of the Association of the People of the Sunnah for Preaching and Jihad (commonly named “Boko Haram” or “The [Western] Book is Forbidden”), Nigeria has received its share of press regarding religious violence. The story Alao presents does not lend toward cheerful reflection: religious difference comes through as the primary source of social divide and a frequent cause for loss of life. Yet Alao urges readers to consider religious violence outside the context of Boko Haram's acts of violence. No religious tradition is free of blame in Nigeria, Alao claims; the question is not whether they are culpable but rather what circumstances have conscripted religious forces into ongoing never-fully-won conflicts in the name of retaliation for historical grievances. Religion, of course, is notoriously challenging to articulate. How can it be communicated across culture—or for that matter, can it? For instance, using arusi to describe indigenous Igbo worship has a decided connotation versus using the traditional deity name of Chukwu—the former holds a negative connotation ascribed to it by Western missionaries and the latter, the flair of indigenous authenticity). But serious commentary requires parameters, and thus, we accept that “religion” is a meaningful, definable category for analysis. Alao offers a straightforward definition: “a position rooted in personal conviction” that invokes ritual, prayer, notions of moral ill, and a supposition of right thought or behavior (4).Alao's book makes an important contribution; discussions about religion and religious violence have too often reflected a myopic fixation on Salafism without highlighting scaffolding upon which the contest over religious supremacy rests. Alao argues that religious violence in Nigeria is, at its root, the product of “contradictions” or, one might say, discontinuities that shaped Nigeria as an extension of these contradictions. Virtually all major religious movements in Nigeria have succumbed to violence-driven agendas. These agendas tend to be rooted in local motives, even as they are enmeshed in global relationships—a case study par excellence in Roland Robertson's Fresnel-lit framework of “glocality.”1 Although its blurriness renders quantification vague, this framework acknowledges the sundry underpinnings of religious nature in Nigeria.Alao contends that religious violence was a decidedly postindependence problem with colonial foundations; although missionary rivalry with Islam proliferated during the precolonial and colonial periods, it was by and large “healthy” and carried out with “a measure of cooperation and toleration” (38). Moreover, colonialism came colonial attempts to manage, appropriate, and contain religious movements, which ensured that religious groups felt entitled to state-level privilege. Nigeria's national independence, however, provided protection neither against religious establishment nor for individual worship, with the Constitution containing the “non-adoption” clause and the free expression clause. Although this ambiguity is common coin in many constitutions, the ambiguity was layered on top of an existing social fracture exacerbated by competing colonial practices of Christian missionizing and colonial protection of and endorsement for Sokoto Islam (which extended well throughout the twentieth century). Once independence was actualized, the deck had been stacked for generations of religious conflict: the bitter fruit from “the vicissitudes of colonial division” that established a matrix for “zero-sum politics” (187, 224). The colonizers, he concludes, “stand accused” (231).Alao offers three chapters of case studies highlighting the role of Islam, Christianity, and indigenous religions in utilizing violence. Alao seeks to broaden the lens of analysis beyond exclusively Boko Haram-oriented violence to encapsulate the vast array of violent incidents associated with religious expression: the Maitatsine Riots and Kafanchan riot or the Tebligh Group; the Akhwat Akwop Christian militia of southern Kaduna; or the Oro worship group in Oyo State. Most could—and did—cite causes such as retribution, self-defense, or “desecration,” and the results were similar: burned down worship houses and massacred practitioners. By the end of three chapters, the impression is clear: all are complicit, and religion is rarely irrelevant. “Ethnicity, religion, and vocation,” as Alao observes in one of his many examples, “all rolled up into one” (172). Against this milieu, Alao places a higher priority on advocates for violence rather than toleration. The Igbo proverbs, I ma nke a; I ma nke ozo? and ihe kwulu ihe ekwudebe ya are frequently invoked to check those who are overly confident in their claims to knowledge, be it religious or otherwise (“You know this, but do you know that?” and “Where one thing stands, another thing stands beside it.”).Alao situates the violence of Boko Haram against this broader landscape of religious violence, both local and international: Boko Haram is not a particularly distinctive group, he argues; they bring together a concert of historical conditions into a single theater: the use of Salafi (trans. “The movement of pious predecessors”) revivalism, ethnic tensions, impoverishment, and allegations of corruption. Their attacks targeted not all Western education but rather what they considered to be the corrupted iteration of colonial Western-informed Muslim elites of the late twentieth century, showing a remarkable capacity to exploit the tensions between government elites and low-income workers—such as the motorcycle drivers targeted by government regulations who made up much of Boko Haram founder Muhammad Yusuf's early movement. The conflict has proven costly, providing avenues for exploitation rackets and procurement scandals: wars create markets, both for refugee camps and for arms dealers (203–206). Scholars are no less culpable; the abundance of written work on Boko Haram has become another form of “conflict profiteering” and “humanitarian pornography”—worth considering for anyone who assumes the responsibility to write about violence in Africa (238).This book offers a guidebook for a vexed terrain. Filled with a full range of examples, both prominent and lesser-known, Alao reveals to readers the full range of violence prevalent in modern Nigeria. His book is recommended for all interested in this subject

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