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Early in September 2001, I prayed desperately for the safety of friends in a city just attacked by Islamic extremists. I mean not New York City—which was attacked only four days later—but Jos, the capital of Plateau state, central Nigeria, where I had spent three summers. The Twin Towers were not jihad's only targets that month.

On September 7, a Christian woman supposedly crossed a street Muslims had blocked off for their prayers. That became "sufficient" pretext for an explosion of violence, in which Muslims began slaughtering unprepared Christians. Two of my friends were under siege in a church for two days with a corpse and no water. Some Christians armed with sticks managed to capture attackers who carried automatic weapons. According to reliable sources, these attackers were mercenaries from Chad and Niger.

Although the Muslims were better armed at the time, Christians outnumbered them in Jos and some retaliated. In some neighborhoods, Christians were killed; in others, Muslims; in still others, Christian and Muslim neighbors protected each other from the madness. Nigeria has many tolerant Muslims, even in the Muslim-dominated north. Unfortunately, some of them became innocent victims of "Christian" retaliation.

In the following months, my friends continued to send disheartening e-mails. The fighting shifted to other parts of Plateau state during the next year, according to some estimates, killing more than 5,000 people. Foreign terrorists targeted Christian areas at night, killing hundreds and driving perhaps hundreds of thousands from their homes. Two years later, displaced thousands remain, most living in related tribal lands, unacknowledged by the world.

The unexpected appearance of automatic weapons and mercenaries led some to suspect that the attacks were premeditated, a suspicion I find plausible. During my first trip to Nigeria, I listened intently as a local minister whom I will call Adamu recounted his experience during an anti-Christian riot in Zaria in 1987. Although the riots supposedly erupted spontaneously, the riot's leaders apparently had the city mapped out. Protestors moved from block to block, systematically killing pastors. They began hurling stones through Adamu's windows as he, his American wife, and their baby took shelter beneath a table. Adamu and his family survived only because a moderate Muslim neighbor admonished the crowd to go on to the next street.

This conflict is not new, nor did it originally involve Christians. For centuries before British rule, the Hausa-Fulani emirs regularly raided central Nigeria for their slave trade, but the local peoples successfully resisted their conquest.

Later, the British, who practiced indirect rule, placed non-Muslim central Nigeria under these emirs. During this period, Hausa became the trade language, leading to outsiders' faulty identification of all northerners with Hausa Muslims.

Meanwhile, Christianity began to take root there (often despite colonial objections). After colonialism ended, Christianity became dominant in many states in the nation's middle section with large minorities even in most northern states.

During my travels in rural Plateau state, I saw churches almost everywhere. In many villages, most residents attend early morning prayer. On one evening I prepared to lecture to what I expected would be 20 to 30 Christian high school students. Instead, close to a thousand showed up with their lanterns (in case the lights failed), and many were singing before I arrived.

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November 2004, Vol. 48, No. 11