We Are Being Treated As Boko Haram Because Of Our Religion- Muslims Cry Out

Muslims in Nigeria have voiced concern about an apparent increase in religious "profiling" after hundreds of terror-related arrests in the country's Christian-majority south.

Last month some 300 traders from the Muslim
majority north of the country were detained in
southern Rivers State for allegedly belonging to the
banned Islamist group Boko Haram.

Most were later released.

Elsewhere, 84 apprentices were sent back to Katsina
State, also in the north, after being held on suspicion
of militant links as they undertook a training course in
Imo, southeastern Nigeria.

In January 2012, the police in south eastern Enugu
State arrested 25 hunters from northwestern Zamfara
state on an annual hunting expedition to the forests,
holding them for a month.

Again, they were suspected of Boko Haram links after
19 hunting rifles were found.

The insurgency by Boko Haram in Nigeria's north is
the country's top security issue, and there are fears in
the south that it could spread.

But an apparent rise in suspicions against all Muslims
has prompted warnings about splitting the country
further along religious and ethnic lines, as well as inter-
communal violence.

Solomon Dalung, a law lecturer at the University of
Jos in north central Nigeria, said the police and
security forces were "profiling… citizens from a
particular geo-political region".

Current events were "taking a pattern of pre-civil war
indices", he added, drawing parallels with the situation
before Nigeria's three-year civil war.

The 1967-70 conflict came after the attempted
secession of the mainly Christian Igbo in the southeast
and followed religious, ethnic, cultural and economic
tensions with northern Hausa Muslims.

Some one million people died in the fighting, mostly
from starvation and disease. Mutual suspicions and
resentment persist between north and south.



Source: Naij.com