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29th October 2007

‘Islam enforces order’ - Nigerian bishop tells London audience

by Jenny Taylor

 

Bishop Ben Kwashi
Bishop Benjamin Kwashi

Islam is gaining ground because it ‘enforced order and put things right’, Bishop Benjamin Kwashi of Jos, Nigeria told a meeting of Anglicans in London on Friday.

Muslims dismissed the Christian God when they saw semi-naked women on advertising billboards and that children didn’t go to church with their parents.

‘It’s by our lives that Muslims will judge us.’ He added, ‘Islam will never change. We can pray for them, and get on with our mission to pagans, so that by the time Islam gets to them, they can stand firm.’

The Bishop, 52 and his wife Gloria were in London to thank Anglican supporters who raised money to replace possessions destroyed by raiders at the family home in Jos in July in the second attack in 18 months. Gloria was blinded  in the first attack during her husband’s absence abroad - but was healed and her sight fully restored, some say miraculously, four months later following surgery in the US.

Their assailants had never been brought to justice and their identities were not known. In the latest attack, ‘they had come with guns, knives, diggers and gloves’ intending to ‘dig the door out’ and then bury their victim. Amazingly, although much property was stolen, the Bishop, who was marched from his home into a field, was physically untouched, although his son was beaten.

Extraordinary footage of visiting military and civic dignitaries expressing their ‘shock’ after the raid was screened at the meeting - clearly an effort to throw a spotlight on a regime unable to protect its leading citizens.

Likely suspects are legion: it was the church that had ‘blown the whistle’ on the BCCI bank years before its collapse in 1991, in what was the world’s worst financial scandal. They had warned of corruption by the Bank’s then President, the Sultan of Sokotoland in northwestern Nigeria.

Relations between Christians and Muslims in Northern Nigeria are always on a knife-edge yet, said the Bishop, even the province’s ‘chief fanatic’, a TV newsreader, had insisted on a church school place for his child.

He reflected on what made witness to Muslims effective, in light of growing tension in UK.

  1. Muslims recognised when they saw children’s lives changed. 13 secondary schools and 21 primary schools built by the diocese insisted every child buy a catechism, a Bible and a hymnbook - ‘I don’t care what Western people say about that!’
  2. The church must be effective in transformation in education and health. ‘We must make this world a better place before we go to meet Jesus.’
  3. Preach the truth. ‘When the Bible says don’t - please don’t!’

 

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