the Federal Medical Center in the town of Keffi, in the central state of Nasarawa, unless they stop conducting Christian worship services, a Christian news agency reported Thursday, October 14.
Compass Direct news agency qouted an undated letter received by the hospital’s chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Nurses (FCN) as saying: "We have made it abundantly clear that our thirst for your heads/blood is mounting daily if you continue with your worship services in the hospital unabated.”
The letter carried no names and was simply endorsed by a group calling itself “Islamic fundamentalists”, the news agency said.
These latest developments have underscored growing tensions between Nigeria’s Muslim hardliners and Christians, who refuse to accept Shari’ah penal code. Nigeria’s central government has been struggling to regain control in Muslim dominated areas.
On August 11 nurses sacked from their jobs in Bauchi State, Nigeria for refusing to exchange their nurse’s uniform for the Islamic dress of trousers and veil, were however reinstated by the federal government, human rights watchdog Christian Solidarity Worldwide said.
ISLAMIC COURT
However the government and Christians have been unable to inervene in Islamic court decisions elsewhere in the northern Nigerian state, where on Thursday, October 14, a 29-year-old divorcee was sentenced to be stoned to death for falling pregnant outside wedlock, a local state government spokesman told the French News Agency (AFP).
Mohammed Abdullahi, a spokesman for Bauchi State, was qouted as saying that Hajara Ibrahim had been convicted of having had sex outside marriage, a capital offence under Muslim Sharia law, by Bauchi city’s Upper Sharia Court.
Sharia’s harsh punishments, adulterers are to be stoned and thieves to lose their hands, have reportedly angered Nigerian and international rights activists and the north’s Christian minority, which fears the region’s "Islamisation".
SEVERAL SENTENCED
More than a dozen people, mainly women, have so far been sentenced to death for extramarital sex. Some have been freed on appeal and others await news of their fate, AFP reported.
It has added to tensions in the troubled African nations where violence between Muslims and Christians in central Nigeria over the last three years has left more than 53,000 people dead, government officials say.
A government-appointed committee said 53,787 people had died in Plateau state alone between September 2001 and May 2004.
Most of the casualties have been Christians killed in riots and militia attacks carried out by radical Muslim groups. Evidence is emerging that shows the Muslim militias receive foreign funding to purchase weapons and material.
The militias often mount attacks from neighboring countries, such as Niger and Chad, which have large Muslim populations, said Compass Direct, which has close ties with persecuted Christians.
WITH AUTHOR: STEFAN J. BOS
