SIR: Although I single-out France, virtually the entire Europe was engulfed in religious intolerance in the 16th and 17th centuries. Catholic-Protestant rivalries were extremely bitter, resulting in street fights, inter-territorial wars and bloodbath. In those days, Protestant factions also clashed, and minorities naturally suffered severely. Some, such as the Anabaptists, including the Baptists had to run away to America, when faced with Catholic-Protestant coalition against them.
How did it all end in France? Richard Viladesau, in The Modern Catholic Encyclopedia (1994: 727) summarises it thus: “In 1562 began the French ‘Wars of Religion’ that lasted, with uneasy intervals of peace, until 1598. In that year King Henry IV proclaimed the Edict of Nantes, which conceded freedom of worship throughout France. Unlike the Peace of Augsburg, which allowed territorial rulers to determine the religion of their subjects, the edict gave freedom of conscience to all. It thus implied that the political unity of the nation was possible without religious unity.” Indeed what brought about the Edict of Nantes was the fact that “religious unity” (envisaged in the Augsburg edict) was unsustainable, and what was necessary was religious tolerance.
Currently, Nigeria’s Sultanate and Emirates are operating, so to say, the edict of Augsburg, “which allowed territorial rulers to determine the religion of their subjects”, and not the Edict of Nantes, “which conceded freedom of worship throughout France.” Within that framework, religious freedom has no meaning in the Muslim north, including Kwara State, where we are told by one preacher that the Qur’an forbids voting for a kafir, and political contestants have better chance if they are turbaned. Some decades ago, Prof. Babs (shortened) Babatunde Fafunwa, a Yoruba, was forced to exhume his Muslim name, Aliyu, to be appointed as Christianity and Islam are rival religions. Because they involve power and money, they can be very explosive. Europe and America had to adopt, so to say, France’s Edict of Nantes, to make religion a personal choice, and sustain social peace. Nigeria has done likewise in her constitutional secularity, but Christo-Islamic forces keep obstructing our own Edict of Nantes. Can President Muhammadu Buhari help to reinforce the Edict in Nigeria? Yes. Will he do it? I wish I knew; he’s bent on defeating Boko Haram!
• Pius Abioje,
University of Ilorin.
