Christian-Muslim Relations in the Shadow of Conflict
In February 2000, large-scale Christian-Muslim riots shook the Nigerian city of Kaduna, killing thousands of people and displacing tens of thousands more. Drawing on original survey data from a random sample of three hundred young men living in particularly conflict-prone neighborhoods in Kaduna, the chapter analyzes patterns of Christian-Muslim relations fifteen years after the February 2000 crisis. The author argues that local exposure to deadly intergroup violence continues to have profoundly negative effects on intergroup relations nearly two decades later. Kaduna residents on either side of the religious divide continue to exhibit high levels of mistrust and prejudice against members of the religious out-group, and demonstrate substantial out-group discrimination in behavioral games with real material stakes. The chapter highlights three interrelated consequences of exposure to large-scale episodes of intercommunal violence, each of which complicates post-conflict reconciliation: (1) the erosion of intergroup trust, (2) the tendency that the violence increases local residential segregation along communal lines, and (3) lasting psychological effects. The chapter offers micro-level evidence on each of these consequences from the Nigerian context, and cautions against expectations that post-conflict communities should quickly bounce back from large-scale interreligious violence.