I am currently reading Eliza Griswold’s The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam. The first half of the book is about Africa, and much of that is given to religious conflict in Nigeria. Africa’s most populous nation happens to be split down the middle religiously, with a Muslim north and a Christian south, meeting in the “Middle Belt” to contest. Griswold describes a very competitive religious marketplace.
One thing I was curious about though: are the religious conflicts in Nigeria simply due to coalitional fissures, or deep substantive divergences which track the religious differences? To illustrate, if Muslims and Christians share a village, then Christians who slaughter pigs in public places because pork is their primary protein source will likely have tensions with Muslims, who as a matter of substance object to pig slaughter which might pollute the landscape (this is a problem in parts of Southeast Asia where Muslims live downstream from Christians). In contrast, if you have economic difficulties in a region, and it is fractured ethnically or religiously, trivial tensions may quickly exploded into violence. In other words, in the second case religion is just a “quick & dirty” coalitional marker around which inevitable conflicts are going to swirl (in Mauritius Muslim Indo-Mauritians play a “wild card” role between Christian Creoles and Hindu Indo-Mauritians, despite greater substantive religious affinity with the Christians and greater cultural and racial affinity with the Hindus).
To answer this question I looked at the World Values Survey. For Nigeria there was data from 1995 and 2000, so I combined them to increase my sample size. Additionally, I wanted to focus on the Yoruba ethnic group, which is religiously divided between Muslims and Christians. In the WVS the religious categories actually break down further among the Christians, and I selected Pentecostals and Protestants for the Yoruba because of the large N for these groups, along with Muslims. Additionally, I selected Hausa Muslims as a comparison. The Hausa are an overwhelmingly Muslim northern ethnic group, while the Yoruba are a religiously pluralistic southern group (the Igbo of the southeast are as Christian as the Hausa are Muslim).
Please note that the survey was taken during a period of military rule by Hausa strongmen. I included only a subset of questions. You can follow to link to do your own queries.
Mus = Muslim, Pent = Pentecostal, Prot = Protestant. Some cells for Pentecostals are missing because for some questions all Protestants were aggregated together.
| Question | Hausa Mus | Yoruba Mus | Yoruba Pent | Yoruba Prot |
| % Lower Class | 51 | 34 | 22 | 23 |
| % Completed University | 6.5 | 12 | 36 | 23 |
| % No Children | 35 | 38 | 40 | 47 |
| % Married | 59 | 55 | 63 | 48 |
| % Male | 54 | 54 | 45 | 50 |
| % Politics Very Important | 39 | 20 | 12 | 21 |
| % Work Very Important | 89 | 94 | 96 | 91 |
| % Religion Very Important | 97 | 90 | 90 | 90 |
| % Would not like people of difference race as neighbors | 28 | 25 | 13 | 30 |
| % Would not like immigrants as neighbors | 28 | 20 | 12 | 15 |
| % Would not like Muslims as neighbors | 5.2 | 4 | 10 | 15 |
| % Would not like homosexuals as neighbors | 81 | 90 | 90 | 84 |
| % Would not like people of a different religion as neighbors | 36 | 14 | 20 | |
| % Totally satisfied with life (1-10 scale) | 22 | 8 | 14 | 8 |
| % Totally satisfied with financial situation (1-10 scale) | 16 | 6 | 6 | 5 |
| %Men should have more right to job than women | 74 | 60 | 47 | 54 |
| % Natives should have more right to job than immigrants | 87 | 87 | 87 | 84 |
| Mean, Ideal # of children | 5.8 | 4.5 | 4 | 4 |
| % A woman needs children to be fulfilled | 81 | 93 | 96 | 93 |
| % Disapprove of woman has single parent | 89 | 76 | 92 | 77 |
| % One should enjoy sexual freedom | 23 | 16 | 9 | 11 |
| % Marriage is outdated | 18 | 19 | 11 | 13 |
| % Agree strongly that men make better political leaders | 63 | 56 | 44 | 51 |
| % Agree strongly that university is more important for boy | 46 | 22 | 12 | 21 |
| % Very important that a woman is educated | 80 | 76 | 82 | |
| % We need radical change in society | 27 | 32 | 28 | 38 |
| % Need larger income differences as incentives (1-10 scale) | 21 | 25 | 41 | 15 |
| % Gov. ownership of business should be increased (1-10 scale) | 31 | 21 | 21 | 9 |
| % The gov. should take more responsible (1-10 scale) | 31 | 40 | 44 | 27 |
| % Competition is harmful (1-10 scale) | 7.2 | 8.2 | 1.8 | 14 |
| % success is matter of luck and connections (1-10 scale) | 12 | 13 | 4 | 13 |
| % Wealth grows so there’s enough for everyone (1-10 scale) | 28 | 17 | 29 | 28 |
| % A great deal of confidence in armed forces | 47 | 14 | 8 | 12 |
| % A great deal of confidence in police | 40 | 10 | 4 | 10 |
| % A great deal of confidence in government | 41 | 6 | 2 | 12 |
| % A great deal of confidence in justice system | 36 | 11 | 10 | 8 |
| % A great deal of confidence in women’s movement | 30 | 17 | 18 | 18 |
| Mean, self position Left-Right (1-10) | 6 | 4.9 | 5.5 | 4.7 |
| Mean, rating of political system (1-10) | 3.8 | 2.8 | 2.3 | 2.3 |
| % Very satisfied with how democracy develops | 28 | 13 | 15 | |
| % Favors open borders for immigrants | 19 | 33 | 14 | 32 |
| % Willing to fight for country | 83 | 60 | 55 | 38 |
| % There is a lot of respect for individual human rights | 25 | 14 | 12 | |
| % Scientific advances will help | 84 | 85 | 79 | 88 |
| % A religious person | 97 | 97 | 98 | 95 |
| % God is very important in life (1-10) | 88 | 92 | 93 | 86 |
| % Get comfort and strength from religion | 99 | 99 | 98 | |
| % Attend religious services more than once a week | 72 | 85 | 58 | 60 |
| % Raised religiously | 97 | 97 | 93 | 90 |
| % Believe in God | 100 | 99 | 100 | 100 |
| % Believe in Life After Death | 87 | 80 | 86 | 86 |
| % Believe in Hell | 91 | 93 | 98 | 95 |
| % Believe in Sin | 85 | 97 | 98 | 95 |
| % Believe in Devil | 96 | 98 | 99 | 100 |
| % Religious institutions give moral answers | 85 | 69 | 71 | |
| % Agree strongly people atheists are unfit for public office | 65 | 63 | 58 | |
| % Homosexuality never justifiable (1-10) | 81 | 84 | 91 | 81 |
| % Cheating on taxes never justifiable (1-10) | 66 | 69 | 79 | 60 |
| % Prostitution never justifiable (1-10) | 77 | 85 | 90 | 79 |
| % Abortion never justifiable (1-10) | 78 | 83 | 82 | 72 |
| % Divorce never justifiable (1-10) | 55 | 64 | 74 | 56 |
| % Very proud of nationality | 78 | 66 | 57 | 60 |
And here’s a correlation matrix:
| Hausa Mus | Yoruba Mus | Yoruba Pent | Yoruba Prot | |
| Hausa Mus | * | 0.94 | 0.9 | 0.93 |
| Yoruba Mus | * | * | 0.97 | 0.98 |
| Yoruba Pent | * | * | * | 0.97 |
The Yoruba and Hausa have a high degree of agreement irrespective of religion, but there does seem to be a tendency for the Yoruba to agree across the religious divide. On the political questions I think the historical context is important. Additionally, it seems that the Pentecostals are the most religiously conservative and enthusiastic of these groups. Because the Hausa tend to be culturally Muslim (though there are a large minority of Hausa Christians in the sample) as a matter of course I was not totally surprised that they were not as zealous as one presumes Muslims to be.