Zamfara Churches

Via Tacitus, I see that Nigeria's Zamfara state is preparing to destroy all churches. The excuse is that having churches is apparently a violation of Islamic law. That is bizarre, because there is no such idea in Islamic law whatsoever. In fact, the Christians in Zamfara would fall into the category of "dhimmi," the nisba form of the word "dhimma" meaning roughly "covenant of protection.' I've been reading the early medieval sources, where they are generally referred to as the "ahl al-dhimma," or "people of the covenant," which may refer either to the fact they had a covenant with God via written revelation or a covenant with the Muslims for protection in exchange for accepting Muslim rulers.

The BBC says merely that the Zamfaran government will close "unauthorized" places of worship. I'm not sure what that means. In theory, non-Muslims aren't supposed to build places of worship higher than mosques or build new ones, though the latter ws routinely ignored in Islamic history.

Another point that might be relevant here: Awhile back a friend sent me an Arabic poem about Iraq that is being widely circulated in the Arab world. It included churches along with mosques and citadels as places being attacked by the Americans. This suggests that destroying churches is not high on the priority list of large, politically aware Muslim populations. In general, I am only familiar with persecution of Christians in places where Islamic militants perceive themselves as fighting Christian Crusaders, such as parts of Egypt.