More Than Met the Eye

The slaughter of 400 Nigerian Christians that I mentioned yesterday has more complex causes than mere Islamic aggression. A reader writes in my combox:

“It is a classic conflict between pastoralists and farmers, except that all the Fulani are Muslims and all the Berom are Christians,” said Archbishop John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan of Abuja to explain that “the violence was rooted not in religion but in social, economic and tribal differences” — Vatican condemns Nigerian slaughter.

Sadly, there will be Catholics who would prefer to ignore the above, and rather focus on the news that “200 people, most of them Christians, were slaughtered,” while forgetting the “sectarian killings in this region in January [that] left more than 300 dead, most of them Muslim” — Hundreds slaughtered in Nigeria religious violence.

Or, it could be that some of us are just not keeping track of the day to day happenings in Nigeria. Anyway, sorry for jumping to conclusions.