Introduction

In Chapter 1, this volume began with the admonition that narratives and representations of northern Nigeria's interfaith encounter feed into the real everyday interactions of Muslims, Christians, and other believers and non-believers throughout this region. Breaking through the stylized representation of Christian-Muslim confrontation, the volume's chapters have presented a mosaic of different interfaith encounters: from the constructive accommodation of informal market interactions to the full-blown insurgency of Boko Haram. This concluding chapter highlights three key arguments about northern Nigerian interfaith relations that resonate with the empirical material presented in the preceding analyses. In doing so, it hopes to outline fertile and important avenues for further research, as well as possible entry points for policy approaches.

Firstly, we will reiterate that, since the 1980s, religious confrontations between Muslims and Christians have intensified. The material presented in the various chapters of this volume highlight the religious violence connected to this confrontation, including around the declaration of full Sharia law, Boko Haram, and the series of crises in urban Jos and its hinterland. These developments support the contention by Marshall (2009, 214) that greater religious polarization is resulting from ‘competing theocratic projects’ in Nigeria. However, the chapters also demonstrate that this polarization, and its recurrent violent confrontations, are not a product of inherent antipathies between the faiths, but of a particular mix of historical, economic, social and, in particular, political processes. These processes can be the target of public policy if there is a will to change the situation.

Secondly, the argument is made that, despite religious polarization, there may still be common grounds for transcending the zero-sum logic of religious intolerance and engendering traditions of friendly competition, compromise and cooperation. There is nothing inevitable about the violence and fear that have characterized the religious encounter in more recent years and, in fact, most Muslims and Christians live together rather harmoniously. In this vein, Dowd (2015, 96) warns that we should be mindful of the conclusions we draw because while ‘religious diversity appears to lead to intense religious competition that results in extremism in Nigeria, it is important to remember that appearances may be deceiving’.