I came across this recently.
Source: http://www.punchng.com/opinion/the-muslim-is-not-your-enemy/

A few years ago, I served as a pastor of a Methodist Church in a sub-urban neighbourhood in Portland Oregon, in the United States. I was young and just graduated from seminary. I was then the first black pastor of what was then an all-white church. The church had historical significance in the region for it was said to be the first church built by the pioneers as they moved west in what was then called the Oregon territory. It was the beginning of fall season and the women were getting ready for the annual church bazaar. I had settled in that fall morning and was going over the day’s expectations with my secretary when the chair of the women fellowship came in. She did not look happy and it was apparent that something was wrong. I told Estelle, the secretary, to leave us for a moment and closed the door behind her.

“Pastor”, Mrs. Smith began, “someone is bringing filth into the church and you must do something to stop this”. I was at a loss with what she was referring to and after calming her down I asked what the matter was.

“Come, let me show you”, she said and stood up and stomped towards the door. I stood up and followed her and stopped briefly at Estelle’s office to ask her to hold all my telephone calls. As we made our way to the storage area where the women were sorting out the donations for the bazaar, Mrs. Smith rushed to the area where books were stored and held out a book with the title: The Gift of Sex. I was familiar with this text having studied sex and sexuality as part of my graduate training in family social work.

“This is what I’m talking about”, she exclaimed with all the righteousness of someone whose faith has been wounded. “Someone brought this filth into the church, what is this world coming to?”, she asked with an air of begging me to join in the condescension. “I want all this bad books thrown out of here for we will not accept books like this” she concluded.

I told her that there was nothing wrong with the book as it was written for Christian couples. Looking back at this incident now with the benefit of time, I must have shocked Mrs. Smith because I told her that if we were to throw out all the books that mention sex from the church building and church library, then we also would throw away the Bible because it has stories with sex in it.

As I read the reactions of Nigerians and the outrage following the bombing of the church on Christmas Day by the radical Islamic sect, Boko Haram, I am reminded of the encounter I had with my parishioner. We tend to want everyone to believe the way we do and when others see the world differently, we fume. My fellow Christians have tended to see the bombing as an act of Muslim conspiracy against Christians rather than an action of a radical murderous sect that is not speaking for all Muslims. One writer on the Internet even went as far as quoting the Quran pointing out that Islam sanctions the killing of Christians. This murderous group, it should be recalled also unleashed its mayhem during the Muslim celebration of Eid el Kabir a month earlier in Jos. Religious fundamentalism is found in all religions and is not peculiar to Islam alone.

Are you ready for stories of violence in the Bible? The fact is that all revealed religions are just that “revealed” and therefore, open to interpretations by the adherents. It is the reason we have so many denominations in Christianity because we do not all agree on the meaning of a particular passage of our scripture. Yes, Islam has a history of violence and so does Christianity. Do the crusades come to mind? How about wars and killings in Ireland and Uganda? I am not defending Islam nor do I advocate for Christianity to be seen as the religion of the “civilised”. The fact remains that religion remains a source of conflict in the modern world because of ethnocentrism. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu eloquently stated in his new book, “God is not a Christian”, we belong and practise a particular religion because of the accident of our birth.

If our parents were born in Saudi Arabia instead of southern Nigeria, chances are that you and I will be Muslims today and how we practise that religion would depend on our level of education and socio-economic status. We have this tendency to evangelise and see our culture and religion as “the way” and all others as savages. No one religion has a monopoly on fundamentalism; it is a function of how we see the world. To many, religion may be the only way of making sense of the world and so everything else is filtered through such lenses. The French sociologist, Emile Durkheim, had taught the world that the primitive form of the religious life forces those who know nothing else to see the world exclusively through the workings of the supernatural. It is when we defy the gods and ask questions that we can escape the grip of the primitive as the British writer, Salman Rushdie, noted. Rather than blame Islam as a religion, religious fundamentalism should be seen as a symptom of what is wrong in the society and our educational system. As a social scientist, I do not like simple answers because the world is too complex for finger pointing. The Boko Haram menace and religious fundamentalism in Nigeria depend on the ability to recruit the poor and those who are not educated. Religious violence depends on the ability to convince those who cannot read and write that one interpretation of an ancient text holds the key to liberation from poverty and suffering. Ability to convince people to look past human emotions and the sacredness of human life depends on that ancient and primitive reasoning that the individual is serving a higher purpose by being non-human. In the end, it is the human being who thinks that he or she is serving the divine by killing others that is evil. Religion in itself is not bad, it is we who are bad; it is what we make of it that is bad.

I condemn inflammatory essays that are lining up neighbour against neighbour. Islam is not bad. Fundamentalism is found in all religions. We who call ourselves Christians have had our fair share of religious fundamentalism and there are entire libraries of stories of atrocities committed in the name of the Bible. To pick verses in isolation and out of context in order to vilify one religion is to make oneself look good and return to the old civilisation debate. We human beings are complex beings and the world is a complicated place, let us try to see problems beyond black and white.

The National Assembly has not taken the security and unity of the country seriously and different administrations in Nigeria have stubbornly clanged to the post 1966 unitary police system despite the high level of insecurity in the country. The police system in the country is a joke and groups like Boko Haram are able to plan and execute murderous mayhem with impunity because our antiquated police system is powerless. If states could police their territories and the federal police simply lend their expertise, perhaps we could have been able to deal effectively with these criminals. There is no law against hate on the basis of religion or origin in the country despite sectarian killings and violence. States still have their Sabongari sections for “strangers” who ironically are fellow Nigerians. Rather than deal with the immediate problems that are confronting the nation, the Senate has chosen to pursue illusions like making law against same-sex marriages as if that is the most important problem confronting Nigerians.

Until the National Assembly takes its responsibility seriously, the benefits of democracy will remain an illusion.

•Prof. Ette is a professor of social work and community development at the Northwest Nazarane University, Nampa Idaho, USA.

frosbel:
GOMBE, Nigeria (AP) — A pastor says gunmen have attacked a church in northeast Nigeria, killing at least three people and wounding others.
Johnson Jauro of the Deeper Life Church in Gombe, the capital of Gombe state, said the attack happened around 7 p.m. Thursday. Jauro said he heard gunfire everywhere and lost his wife in the assault on the church.

Police confirmed the attack happened in Gombe, but declined to offer any details.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

The assault came as northeast Nigeria has been facing attacks from a radical Muslim sect known as Boko Haram. It wants strict Shariah law to be implemented across Nigeria, a multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5icOaICJSf4PHbRyzPfmhHMHln2Vw?docId=5314b56f39354a5ba23611adc7793c8

i agree, muslims are not the enemy I am Xtian with plenty of Yoruba Muslim friends, I tend to trust my muslim friends more than my Xtian friends including the Hausa Muslims But the problem in Nigeria now is that the Hausa/Fulanis are domineering in nature, they believe in lording their culture, their way of live on everybody They want everybody to go their way by force: you must speak their language, do their religion and they want to rule you That is what they have done to the Yorubas at Ilorin, and they want to do same in Plateau (Jos) and infact they are to same trough BokoHaram in the whole of Nigeria

Nice article to read this shoild be move to religion section and probably made the front page.

cogitoErgo:

i agree, muslims are not the enemy I am Xtian with plenty of Yoruba Muslim friends, I tend to trust my muslim friends more than my Xtian friends including the Hausa Muslims But the problem in Nigeria now is that the Hausa/Fulanis are domineering in nature, they believe in lording their culture, their way of live on everybody They want everybody to go their way by force: you must speak their language, do their religion and they want to rule you That is what they have done to the Yorubas at Ilorin, and they want to do same in Plateau (Jos) and infact they are to same trough BokoHaram in the whole of Nigeria

Both Islam and Christianity preach one thing "PEACE" both unfortunately human being allow their culture to influence their religion rather the other way round. Some group have culture of patience nad tolerance unfortunatel others do not.
Untill we are able to seperate ethnic and religion sentiments in our judgement then we will know clearly what exactly is the problem.

It has been moved to the religion section, i hope Seun and co. will consider moving it to the frong page for a lot of people to read.
Thank you guys.

Sho yo rite.
It is the Christians I can't stand!
Don't have any muslim friends. . .just work with them.
Don't have any Christian friends either.
Thank my God!

cogitoErgo:

i agree, muslims are not the enemy I am Xtian with plenty of Yoruba Muslim friends, I tend to trust my muslim friends more than my Xtian friends including the Hausa Muslims But the problem in Nigeria now is that the Hausa/Fulanis are domineering in nature, they believe in lording their culture, their way of live on everybody They want everybody to go their way by force: you must speak their language, do their religion and they want to rule you That is what they have done to the Yorubas at Ilorin, and they want to do same in Plateau (Jos) and infact they are to same trough BokoHaram in the whole of Nigeria

Excuse me, Yoruba muslims and Hausa muslims are two completely different species. I'd like to know who the Northern Muslims really worships; surely it cant be the same allah Yoruba's worship.

Ileke-IdI:

Excuse me, Yoruba muslims and Hausa muslims are two completely different species. I'd like to know who the Northern Muslims really worships; surely it cant be the same allah Yoruba's worship.

sister dats totaly false, muslims are muslims and worship same allah.
@poster, wonderful post, i just hope both muslims and christains learn from it.

@OP;
I disagree. Consider this example of the typical mindset of the Northern Hausa/Fulani/Kanuri Muslim. A lot of them are full of murderous hate.

A source in the family told the Nigerian Tribune that, “[size=14pt]we are Christians and their children have been telling our wards that some day, they are going to slaughter all of us.[/size] We never took them seriously because we never thought they could be so mean as to perpetrate such evil.

http://tribune.com.ng/index.php/front-page-news/33957-boko-haram-bombs-maiduguri-damaturu-again-kills-2-jtf-kills-2-sect-members

^^^^

TIV man can we say it is the samed muderous hate your people have against the jukuns?

^^
I am not Tiv. You are mistaken.

He is Igala, if I remember correctly.

^ lol