“When the early missionaries and the Colonial masters visited the land,” says Rev. Abare Kallah, of the Christian Association of Nigeria, “there were a lot of things they told us not to do, but they didn’t tell us why not to do those things.”  In this the first in our series “In Context” Rev. Kallah explains how an alliance between missionaries and the British Colonizers set up a systemic divide between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria.

Extremism, which sometimes yields to violence and terrorism is not only, but often, a religious problem. Despite the US government’s best efforts, military solutions such as drone wars (US dropped 20,144 drone-bombs in 2015) frequently result in killing innocent people, and in turn, breed more terrorists. Traditional diplomacy does not necessarily reach to the ground where extremists may already be plotting their next moves, but religious communities may be ideally situated to be the instruments for countering violent extremism.  Read how IMPACT is working to train religious leaders to counter violent extremism around the world.