ANO, Nigeria, — After Friday Prayers recently, hundreds of Muslims gathered in front of the emir's palace here and held a peaceful demonstration against the American campaign in Afghanistan. But the peace in this ancient Muslim city, already tense from a recent surge in religious clashes elsewhere in this West African nation, did not hold.
Within hours, residents recalled, youths trooped out of poor Muslim neighborhoods, where posters of Osama bin Laden have become hugely popular. They invaded the Christian quarter, whose residents fought back with arms, waving T-shirts emblazoned with American flags and shouting pro-American slogans.
A three-day riot ensued and at least 100 people died, according to the Red Cross, yet another addition to some 5,000 Nigerians killed in religious clashes since military rulers handed over power in 1999. Most of these conflicts stem from the rise of Islam as a political force and the stunning spread of hard-line Islamic law from one small Nigerian state in 1999 to a third of the country's 36 states today.
Islam in sub-Saharan Africa, an often overlooked member of the world's Muslim community, is growing in size and influence. Statistics on religious affiliation are difficult to come by, and are too sensitive a topic for governments with mixed populations. But most experts agree that Islam is spreading faster than any other faith in East and West Africa.
Norimitsu Onishi/The New York Times
In the northern city of Kano, Nigeria's largest Muslim city, posters and information about Osama bin Laden are big sellers.
The Force of Islam
This is the first article in a series about the ascendancy of Islam, whose influence has grown as people in societies of booming populations and blocked political systems turn to it for inspiration. There are more than a billion Muslims, and political Islam is a growing force.
Later articles will examine the role of Islam in Saudi Arabia, Islam and women, the place of Islam in the secular and democratic state of Turkey, the Taliban, the concept of jihad, or holy war,and the spread of Islam in Europe.
In Africa it is not difficult to see why. Islamic values have much in common with traditional African life: its emphasis on communal living, its clear roles for men and women, its tolerance of polygamy. Christianity, Muslims argue, was alien to most Africans. Today, while Islam embraces the poor, they add, Christian churches are more interested in making money — a criticism that is widely shared by many African Christians.
Other Western values like democracy have been a disappointment here, often producing sham elections, continued misrule and deep poverty. Muslims have become an angry, organized force in several important African countries, and it often comes with a wariness of the West — especially the United States.
"The Muslims are winning — they have won," said the Rev. Benjamin Kwashi, 46, the Anglican bishop of Jos, a city in central Nigeria where at least 500 people were killed in clashes between Muslims and Christians in September. "Islam is growing very fast. For many Africans, it makes more sense to reject America and Europe's secular values, a culture of selfishness and half-naked women, by embracing Islam."
Uneasy Religious Neighbors
Islam came to sub-Saharan Africa on camel caravans that crossed the Sahara and boats that crossed the Indian Ocean; Christianity arrived from Europe on the coasts of West Africa and in much of central and southern Africa. Today, northern Africa is predominantly Muslim and the south is Christian. In between, the two religions rub shoulders uneasily.
In East Africa, in Kenya and Tanzania, where American embassies were bombed in 1998, Muslims have long been shut out of power. That has given rise there, as well as in Uganda, to the emergence of radical Islam. Radicals have organized themselves politically and some have received military help from the Islamist government of Sudan.
In turn, the governments of Kenya and Uganda have supported rebels opposed to the Sudanese government. In the Horn of Africa, governmental collapse in Somalia in the last decade led to a rigid application of Islamic law. In Sudan and Chad, Muslim northerners have long dominated Christians in the south, and new oil wealth is likely to tip the balance more in their favor. Sudan's Islamic government has sharpened its war against the Christians In the last year; Chad's Islamic government is likely to face opposition once it starts pumping oil in the Christian south in a few years.
In West Africa, Ivory Coast has seen its Muslim population grow politically unified. In a country that was once a model of tolerance, successive Christian leaders in the last decade have sidelined Muslims, who have come to identify themselves as Muslims, first, Ivorians, second. Even in countries with near- total Muslim populations, like Mali or Niger, Islamic clerics have begun agitating and challenging their governments.
But it is in Nigeria, Africa's most populated country, that the rise of Islam as a political force has been most explosive and violent. It began shortly after the country emerged from nearly 16 years of ruinous military rule. The 120 million inhabitants were living in a society where almost everything had collapsed. Their leaders were above laws and preyed on ordinary people.
Perhaps sensing this void, the leaders of a small northern state called Zamfara introduced Islamic law, or Shariah, in late 1999. The move proved wildly popular.
Crime has reportedly dropped in some of the states with Shariah, with all of them banning alcohol and prostitution. Women are pressed to cover their hair; girls are separated from boys at school, if they are schooled at all.
Cow thieves have had their hands cut off. A teenage girl was given 100 cane strokes for premarital sex; another woman has just been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery.
Soon northern politicians encouraged the spread of Shariah, partly to challenge their new Christian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, who was its military ruler until the late 1970's.
But the real push for Shariah came from the ground. Ordinary people moved to Zamfara to live under the laws. Politicians who resisted initially, fearing a loss of power, gave in.
When Shariah was introduced last year in the northern city of Kano, Nigeria's biggest Muslim city, hundreds of thousands celebrated downtown. No one had ever seen such a crowd. Kano has been a center of a new generation of radical Islamic preachers who have been spreading anti-Western messages here and pressing the government to impose Shariah.
In Fagge, one of the biggest Muslim neighborhoods in Kano, a place where children and goats share dirt roads and open sewers, Osama bin Laden posters are plastered on many walls and stickers on many vehicles.
On a recent evening, a group of boys and young men were sitting on a cement floor on a street in Fagge, waiting to hear a lecture by one of the most popular preachers, Umar Sani Fagge.
A reporter was told on this occasion and on two other visits that Mr. Fagge was unavailable and was asked to leave.
Tapes of Mr. Fagge's sermons have sold well among young Muslim men for 75 cents each, a significant sum here.
The best seller now is a lecture on Afghanistan by Mr. Fagge and another popular young preacher, Yahaya Farouk Chedi, and two others.