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The day after Christmas, Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah rushed to a special children’s Mass early in the morning, unaware that his diocese of Sokoto in northwest Nigeria had been struck by missiles during the night.
He glanced at his phone after the Mass ended and found a text from a friend at the Vatican. It said, the Americans have bombed Sokoto. His heart raced.
The city of Sokoto is in a region that has been overwhelmingly Muslim since the 19th century, when it was a Muslim caliphate. The bishop was aware that President Trump had been loudly blaming Muslims for what the president called a “Christian genocide” in Nigeria.
Bishop Kukah feared that his small Roman Catholic flock in this Muslim region was ground zero for a U.S. war on Islam. He worried that all his work building bridges between the faiths had gone to waste.
“When you say Sokoto has been bombed in an environment that is already so hysterically charged, it means you have declared war against the Muslims,” he said, sitting at the breakfast table in his quiet compound in Sokoto. “This is their headquarters.”
Several hours later it became clear that missiles had struck miles outside the city of Sokoto, aimed at Islamist extremists in their hide-outs. Bishop Kukah was relieved. The targets were the criminals causing the real problems in Nigeria, he said.
