Nigeria is Africa's most populous nation, and nearly half of its people are
Christians. They are often in conflict,
sometimes violent conflict, with Muslims.
I travel to the Middle East at least once each year, often visiting
multiple countries. I belong to an evangelical-Muslim discussion group
which meets annually, and the participants include pious, brilliant,
generous Muslim scholars whom I count as my friends. When a topic like
"Islamophobic America" comes up, I share intense personal e-mails with
them. But I came away from my trip to the Middle East this past summer with some new concerns.
It was not what was predicted by mainstream sociologists who followed in the footsteps of Karl Marx, Max Weber and Émile Durkheim, but it has happened. Instead of slowly withering away or lodging itself quietly into the privacy of worshipers’ hearts, religion has emerged as an important player on the national and international scenes.
The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation, by R. Scott Appleby Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence, by Mark Juergensmeyer
