Nigeria: Beauty and the Beast

aug 07

the Miss World contest that year had to be moved to London from Nigeria, where radical Islamists forced it to shut down in an episode the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka memorably referred to as a competition between "beauty and the beast."

2002: Riots force Miss World out of Nigeria

The Miss World contest is moving to London from Nigeria after riots by Muslim youths opposed to the show left more than 100 people dead and 500 injured in the city of Kaduna ...

Trouble had been brewing since the arrival of the contestants earlier this month. Many Nigerian Muslims were incensed that the event, already an affront to their conservative ideas about feminine modesty, would be held during the holy month of Ramadan.

At first the protests were confined to angry statements by Islamic leaders and religious scholars.

Then on 16 November when ThisDay, a Nigerian daily, published an article written by 21-year-old journalist Isioma Daniel in which she suggested the Prophet Mohammed might have married one of the contestants.

Many Muslims were deeply offended, and on 20 November youths in Kaduna sacked and burned a local office of the newspaper. Two days ago the fighting degenerated into a vicious round of sectarian bloodletting, as rival gangs of Muslims and Christians burned places of worship and attacked each other.

Troops and police responded in force, and yesterday the Red Cross said about 100 had been killed with the streets of Kaduna scattered with bodies.