Report sent to the Journées Romaines Dominicaines
DOMINICANS AND MUSLIMS IN NIGERIA
September 1989The first Dominican establishment in Nigeria was a mission of St. Albert's Province, U.S.A., to Lagos in 1951. In 1953 responsibility was taken for the newly created Apostolic Prefecture of Sokoto, in the extreme northwest of the country, the heartland of Islam in Nigeria. Dominican sisters from Great Bend, Kansas, joined the brothers in this territory the following year.
The ministry of the brothers was primarily to southern Catholics working in the north and to primary evangelization of non-Muslim indigens. Yet there was constant contact with Muslims in day to day life, especially in dealing with authorities. The sisters had more direct contact through their medical work in hospitals and clinics.
In those early years the brothers and sisters established a reputation for being religious people, for competency and reliability in their service and for respect for the religious rights and sensibilities of Muslims. The Second Vatican Council was a stimulus to more direct dialogue with Muslims. Archbishop Pignedoli, then Apostolic Delegate to Nigeria, visited Sokoto and requested the Dominicans to get involved more deeply and to provide the Church with specialists in Islam. Msgr. Lawton turned to the Cairo brothers for help, and Fr. Jomier visited Nigeria in 1963 (the first of many visits) and recommended the training of some brothers and the beginning of a research library. The following year (the then) Bishop Lawton recruited Joseph Kenny to come to Nigeria for this purpose. In 1966 Kenny began studies in Rome, continuing in Tunis and Edinburgh, returning with a Ph.D. in Arabic and Islamic studies in 1970.
Kenny began working in sokoto with occasional teaching of Islamics in the seminaries at Ibadan and Jos. As Muslims kept aloof and the bishops of the North, outside Sokoto, stated that they saw no need for a full-time resource person, Kenny took up full time work in Ibadan, where he presently teaches Islam in the Department of Religious Studies, University of Ibadan.
In the meantime, a Nigerian Dominican, Igba Vishigh, also began Islamic studies in Rome in 1980. Returning with an M.A. in 1983, he became pastor of the parish in Gusau while simultaneously working on a Ph.D. from the University of Jos. His gifts for dealing with people have smoothed relations with Muslim officials and borne fruit in securing land for several new outstations and for founding a nursery-primary school in which the Dominican sisters teach and which has the full backing of important Muslims who confidently send their children there. apart from his Gusau responsibilities, Igba is a member of the Nigerian Bishops' Think-Tank, and of the commission for Muslim-Christian relations of the Association of Episcopal conferences of English-Speaking West Africa.
As is well known, Nigeria has gone through turbulent periods as far as Muslim-Christian relations are concerned. Before the outbreak of civil war in 1966 many churches in the North were sacked. This was repeated in Kano in 1982 and in many other places in March 1987 in the midst of an intense fundamentalist campaign to institutionalize Sharî`a at all levels of Nigerian life. Dialogue demands both positive friendly outreach to Muslims and resistance to encroachment that chokes the rights of Christians and Muslims alike. Muslims joined hands with Christians in opposing a fundamentalist bid for power in some of the northern local government elections in 1988. There is need also to help Christians in the North face the daily discrimination to which they are subjected.
Most of the involvement of Dominicans (by now mostly Africans) in relations with Muslims is at the level of quiet humble service. the sisters' work in rural development — family, literacy, preventative medicine, crafts etc. — touches Muslims tangentially, even while it is prudentially restricted to an integral evangelization thrust among the non-Muslim sector of the population. In pure medical work, however, over the years the sisters have been welcome angels of relief in the innermost recesses of Muslim society.
The brothers too have won innumerable friends among Muslims of every level of society by simple friendship, gracious reciprocal assistance in various ways, and the general comportment of their lives. Conversion from Islam to Christianity or vice versa is not common in Nigeria, but enough Muslims are becoming Christians to alarm certain quarters and heighten existing tensions. Yet tension is not a necessary result. Recently professed among the brothers is one who was brought up as a Muslim and can read the Qur'ân in Arabic. Initially opposed to his vocation, his father, and Alhaji, attended the vestition and profession and welcomed the brothers to his house to celebrate the event.