Banning religion from violent politics, from war making

Mistrust, faith, and power have fueled conflict in Nigeria. Visionary peace begins where religion is freed from violence. As self-coaching, it is enough to apply this rule to yourself.

Since 2009–2010, Northern Nigeria has become the center of global attention because of the Boko Haram conflict—the jihadist terror that has shaken the region. Yet this violence is part of a wider and older armed struggle between Muslims and Christians, a conflict I began reporting on during my stay in the region between 2005 and 2007.

I interpret the broader Nigerian conflict as the intersection of radical religious activism and long-standing political, economic, and cultural tensions—a struggle in which religion has become both the language and the weapon of deeper divisions.

How does violence begin?
It begins with mutual mistrust.

Whether or not the threats of a so-called Christian crusade against an Islamic jihad in Nigeria ever materialize, they continue to fuel a century-old sentiment among many northern Muslims: that Christianity was introduced to Nigeria in the early 20th century as a colonial appendage, part of the Western campaign of anti-Muslim repression — political, economic, cultural, and sometimes armed. In their eyes, Christianity became the popular face of an “Islamophobic policy” that would extend well into the 21st century.

Christians, on the other hand, often perceive northern Muslims as the heirs of the 19th-century jihad of Usman Dan Fodio (1754–1817), which transformed the region into an Islamic state that tolerated only the way of life of the so-called “pure Muslims.”

Since independence in 1960, religion has remained a political instrument—repeatedly used by Nigerian elites to sustain cycles of violence. Yet many Nigerians look upon this reality with sorrow, watching as religion continues to play too large and too tragic a role in national politics. They stand apart from the 21st-century war narrative that keeps Muslims and Christians bloodily opposed—and dream instead of a Nigeria freed from this inherited distrust.

True peace in Nigeria—as anywhere—will not come from the victory of one side over the other, but from the rebuilding of trust between people who have long lived in fear of one another. The work of peace begins where mistrust ends: in honest encounter, in the courage to listen, and in the humility to see humanity before creed.

For too long, both faith and ideology have been used as instruments of control rather than as paths to compassion. What Nigeria’s story teaches us is that religion must be banned from war-making—removed from the machinery of violence and restored to its place as a source of human dignity, empathy, and vision.

Peace is not the silence after war; it is the quiet revolution of minds and hearts that refuse to be enemies — the moment when faith serves life, not death.

— Thierry Limpens