Nigeria’s beauty pageant ends up ugly

Last week, 80 of the most beautiful women in the world arrived in Nigeria where they were… Last week, 80 of the most beautiful women in the world arrived in Nigeria where they were greeted with wide spread death and destruction on their behalf.

Nigeria hoped that hosting the 2002 Ms. World competition would boost tourism and change how the country is seen by the world. In light of the riots, the contest has been moved to London.

Weeks earlier, several of the contestants threatened to boycott the competition because an Islamic court in northern Nigeria sentenced a woman to be stoned for having a baby out of wedlock. Under the threat the woman was pardoned, but the controversy had just begun.

The Muslim population of Nigeria – about 50 percent – was vehemently opposed to the event. Lateef Adegbite, Secretary General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic affairs, told the Associated Press that the pageant was “a parade of nudity” disrespectful to the Islamic faith.

So, when given a trigger, the extremists took no delay acting. In ThisDay newspaper, Isioma Daniel wrote an article in which she commented on the pageant. She said, “What would Muhammad think? In all honesty, he would probably have chosen a wife from among them.”

The Muslim population saw this as slander against their prophet. They rose up and stormed through they streets of Kaduna. They burned the ThisDay office and several Christian churches. Christian mobs retaliated, killing Muslims as they went. The fighting lasted for four days.

Where were the police in all of this? Well, apparently they began to take sides. One policeman was cited pulling 15 Muslim men out of their homes, killing them and dumping their bodies in a river.

According to Reuters, when the riot ended; 22 churches and eight mosques were destroyed, more than 200 people were dead, more than 1,100 hospitalized, 12,000 left homeless and the 80 Ms. World contestants left.

The story is tragic and sadly generic nowadays. It’s hard to understand how violence is such an accessible protest for change in other parts of the world.

I wish I could explain all of this; how a beauty pageant and a paragraph in a daily newspaper could cause all this destruction. But even if I could understand that sort of religious perversion, I doubt I’d have the space for it here.

What I do understand is that seclusion and ignorance account for nearly all the hate in the world: seclusion from those who are different and ignorance as to who they really are.

Tolerance in the world will never come as long as Palestinians live in certain areas and Jews in others, Muslims live within certain borders and Christians within others, or whites in particular neighborhoods and blacks in others.

I wish I had a better answer than that. But I suppose that if I could figure all this out it wouldn’t be a problem anymore.

Last week Nigeria served as a microcosm for most of the violence present in the world. Christians did something to offend Muslims, the Muslims lashed out, the Christians retaliated, and then each side stopped to regroup and allow their hate to brew.

It will erupt again soon. More than 10,000 people have died in similar riots across Nigeria since 1999. The only reason this riot hit the press was because a beauty pageant was involved.

Will Minton can be reached at wminton@pittnews.com.