The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches From the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam by Eliza Griswold Page A
Authors: Eliza Griswold
Tags: Religión, General, Islam, Political Science, Christianity, Comparative Religion, Religion; Politics & State, Relations, Islam - Relations - Christianity, Christianity and Other Religions - Islam, Christianity and Other Religions
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beatof a butterfly’s wings—may create chaos seven thousand miles away in North America. 4 A terrible flood season in the catastrophe zone can mean that the United States and Caribbean will face a horrific hurricane season.
The twin plagues of advancing desert (desertification) and flash flooding mean that for the first time in history there may be as many people fleeing from the weather as from war.By 2050, by one estimate, as many as one billion people will be displaced from their homes by environmental factors. 5 Every year, an average of ten million people are forced from their homes in the Sahel, according to Professor Norman Myers of Oxford University. 6 These numbers are speculative, and critics point out that it is difficult to determine why people move, and harder still to documentsuch migrations. And no one knows for sure if the changing weather will lead to more or fewer insect-borne illnesses—malaria, yellow fever, dengue, and sleeping sickness. Scientists also disagree as to whether the rising temperature of the ocean, or of the land, will determine the weather’s future, and whether floods or deserts will prevail. 7
4
DROUGHT
From deluge to desert, there wasno balance. In August 2007, I met Dr. Amin al-Amin, an ecologist in his forties and a member of a royal Muslim family from the north. He had started a nongovernmental organization called Nature Trust International, to address the perils of desertification in Nigeria and eight other West African countries. However, al-Amin (which means “the trusted one” in Arabic, one of Mohammed’s nicknames) wasnot simply interested in the environmental aspects of the desert’s southern spread; he was concerned with the ensuing social crisis as well.
“The line of latitude ten degrees to the north of the equator across Africa marks the beginning of a fragile ecosystem in terms of climate change, in terms of population growth, in terms of religious conflict,” al-Amin told me. He thinks and speaks in termsof latitude, and referred to the tenth parallel as “latitude ten.” As the Sahara Desert advances south and leaves former farms and grazing lands consumed by dunes, the northern Muslims must move south with their livestock to survive. Pushing south, the nomads enter settled areas and collide with farming communities, many of which are Christian. Such was the case in Sudan, and also in Nigeria,where for more than a decade al-Amin, along with other scientists, has studied the geographic coordinates of desertification, and the social problems between the two groups, which are fomented by a drastic lack of education and services.
Although the Middle Belt’s high plateau is temperate, most of Nigeria is overwhelmingly hot, and even the late summer rainy season offers little relief. Theair is just as warm as before, only wetter. On one smothering August afternoon, a few days after I had left the flood-devastated Wase, al-Amin picked me up in his green Mercedes SUV at a hotel in the Nigeriancapital of Abuja—a boring, ordered city architecturally akin to Washington, D.C.—to show me firsthand how the dynamics of environmental migration were interwoven with religion. We were goingto drive north of Abuja to visit a community of several hundred children who had migrated south about three hundred miles, from latitude fourteen. Their village to the north could no longer support their farms or grazing for their cows, so everyone was moving south, beginning with the children, al-Amin explained. He shouted over the air conditioner’s full-tilt roar. The vehicle was a curious choicefor an environmentalist, but not perhaps for the scion of one of Nigeria’s Muslim royal families. “My great-grandfather was very close with Uthman dan Fodio,” he said, invoking the name of the famous Sufi reformer and Nigerian hero. Al-Amin was wearing a fine-gauge white linen suit, through which he was sweating despite the air-conditioning. Driving made him nervous, he
The twin plagues of advancing desert (desertification) and flash flooding mean that for the first time in history there may be as many people fleeing from the weather as from war.By 2050, by one estimate, as many as one billion people will be displaced from their homes by environmental factors. 5 Every year, an average of ten million people are forced from their homes in the Sahel, according to Professor Norman Myers of Oxford University. 6 These numbers are speculative, and critics point out that it is difficult to determine why people move, and harder still to documentsuch migrations. And no one knows for sure if the changing weather will lead to more or fewer insect-borne illnesses—malaria, yellow fever, dengue, and sleeping sickness. Scientists also disagree as to whether the rising temperature of the ocean, or of the land, will determine the weather’s future, and whether floods or deserts will prevail. 7
4
DROUGHT
From deluge to desert, there wasno balance. In August 2007, I met Dr. Amin al-Amin, an ecologist in his forties and a member of a royal Muslim family from the north. He had started a nongovernmental organization called Nature Trust International, to address the perils of desertification in Nigeria and eight other West African countries. However, al-Amin (which means “the trusted one” in Arabic, one of Mohammed’s nicknames) wasnot simply interested in the environmental aspects of the desert’s southern spread; he was concerned with the ensuing social crisis as well.
“The line of latitude ten degrees to the north of the equator across Africa marks the beginning of a fragile ecosystem in terms of climate change, in terms of population growth, in terms of religious conflict,” al-Amin told me. He thinks and speaks in termsof latitude, and referred to the tenth parallel as “latitude ten.” As the Sahara Desert advances south and leaves former farms and grazing lands consumed by dunes, the northern Muslims must move south with their livestock to survive. Pushing south, the nomads enter settled areas and collide with farming communities, many of which are Christian. Such was the case in Sudan, and also in Nigeria,where for more than a decade al-Amin, along with other scientists, has studied the geographic coordinates of desertification, and the social problems between the two groups, which are fomented by a drastic lack of education and services.
Although the Middle Belt’s high plateau is temperate, most of Nigeria is overwhelmingly hot, and even the late summer rainy season offers little relief. Theair is just as warm as before, only wetter. On one smothering August afternoon, a few days after I had left the flood-devastated Wase, al-Amin picked me up in his green Mercedes SUV at a hotel in the Nigeriancapital of Abuja—a boring, ordered city architecturally akin to Washington, D.C.—to show me firsthand how the dynamics of environmental migration were interwoven with religion. We were goingto drive north of Abuja to visit a community of several hundred children who had migrated south about three hundred miles, from latitude fourteen. Their village to the north could no longer support their farms or grazing for their cows, so everyone was moving south, beginning with the children, al-Amin explained. He shouted over the air conditioner’s full-tilt roar. The vehicle was a curious choicefor an environmentalist, but not perhaps for the scion of one of Nigeria’s Muslim royal families. “My great-grandfather was very close with Uthman dan Fodio,” he said, invoking the name of the famous Sufi reformer and Nigerian hero. Al-Amin was wearing a fine-gauge white linen suit, through which he was sweating despite the air-conditioning. Driving made him nervous, he
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