Reuters (thanks to LGF) reports that "Islamic militants burned to the ground thirteen churches and several houses in a remote northern Nigerian town after a Christian student was accused of blasphemy, police said on Thursday.
"Irate youths torched churches, houses and shops late on Tuesday in Kazaure, some 80 km (50 miles) north of Kano, a northern provincial capital where hundreds have died in religious clashes in the past three years.
"The dispute began when a Christian student was accused of insulting the Prophet Mohammad and a group of Muslims were not satisfied with the response of school authorities.
"Abubakar Sale, police commissioner in the northern Jigawa state, told Reuters that the rioters attempted to invade the school but were repelled by police.
"'The hoodlums then mobilised and went into town where they started looting and burning people's property,' Sale said by phone from Dutse, the state capital.
"'Thirteen churches were burnt, several houses and shops were torched, but there were no deaths,' said Keirian Dudari, assistant inspector general of police in Kano.
"Police said the town was calm on Thursday after reinforcements were deployed to quell the riots.
"The violence came after three students were killed and more than 30 injured in fighting between Muslims and Christians at a university in northeastern city of Maiduguri earlier this month.
"More than 5,000 people have been killed in religious violence in northern Nigeria in the past four years since the introduction of Islamic sharia law in 12 states."
"religious violence" is a misnomer here. That would imply that there are two religions at odds. What we have here is a religion, Christianity, being targeted for extermination by a cult of death, a philosophy of mayhem, an anti-social disaster of satanic proportions.
They couldn't even wait a year (6 churches were burned in last year's Muslim riot in Nigeria):
Reuters
November 24, 2002
Nigerian Miss World Riots Kill 175 - Red Cross
LAGOS, NIGERIA -- The death toll in Nigerian ethnic violence sparked by the Miss World beauty pageant has risen to 175 from 105 on Friday morning, the President of the Nigerian Red Cross said on Sunday.
Emmanuel Ijewere said that violence continued on Sunday, despite a decision on Saturday to move the finale of the pageant from the Nigerian capital Abuja to London.
"The papers are reporting 200 dead, but our estimate would be slightly less than that. We are talking of about 175," said Ijewere.
About 12,000 people have so far been made homeless and the number of injured in hospital is between 1,100 and 1,200, he said.
The violence began on Wednesday when Muslims reacted angrily to comments on the Miss World beauty pageant in a national newspaper.
I just love the way Reuters plays the moral relativism game: "fighting between Christians and Muslims" is their way of saying "Christians defending themselves from islamists." Goes right along with that Israeli-Palestinian "cycle of violence" laugher.