Items of Interest June 11, 2012 Issue

Christians and Muslims working together

Frederick Nzwili

Excerpted with permission from “What African Evangelicals think of Florida’s Quran-burning preacher.”  The Christian Science Monitor (CSMonitor.com). April 25, 2012.

Much media reporting seems to focus on divisions and antagonism among religious people. This blog, by a contributor to The Christian Science Monitor, offers a view in which brotherly love transcends differences. 

In northern Nigeria, where an Islamist group called Boko Haram started burning Christian churches, some Muslims volunteered to act as guards for Christians as they prayed. Christians returned the good gesture and protected Muslims during their prayers.

In Libya, at the height of the war to oust the late dictator, Muammar Qaddafi, the head of Libya’s tiny Roman Catholic Church, Bishop Giovanni Martinelli, turned to his Muslim “brothers” to protect the Christian community. Catholics have run several medical and social centers in Libya for years, activities that had endeared them to Libyans. Despite anger among Qaddafi’s followers toward Europeans, whose NATO bombers were used against Qaddafi’s forces, there were no attacks against Christian churches during the war.

Fredrick Nzwili 

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