In July 2011, Norwegian, Anders Behring Breivik, shot indiscriminately at people in Utøya Island injuring 151 people and killing 77 others. 

In a 1,500 page manifesto he released earlier, he identified himself as a “Christian crusader” and accused immigrants of undermining Norway’s traditional Christian values.

Although his motives also displayed non-religious, right-wing beliefs, this terrorist attack has fuelled debate on the rising wave of ‘Christian terrorism’ as an emerging security threat.

Christian fundamentalism in Africa predates the September 11, terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, America. But decades of attacks by Islamic extremists is rapidly radicalising Christian militias now involved in “retaliatory terrorism” within the Continent’s hotspots.  

In Africa as elsewhere, ‘Christian terrorism’ is taking the form of terrorist acts largely by militias which invoke Christian motivations or goals for their actions. 

As such, Christian extremists in Africa are also relying on interpretation of the Bible, often citing Old Testament and New Testament scriptures to justify violence and killing.

“Christian terrorism” in Africa is identified with Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army, a quasi-a cult guerrilla and religious movement that blended its own brand of spiritualism with some features of Christian beliefs, that has engaged in a protracted armed rebellion against the government of Yoweri Museveni.

LRA leader, Joseph Kony, has proclaimed himself the spokesperson of God and a spirit medium, particularly the “Holy Spirit” which some of his Acholi people believe can represent itself in many forms.

The cult’s guerrilla fighters put on rosaries and recite passages from the Bible before battle.

Even then, the LRA is a widely considered a ‘terrorist movement’ and its leaders indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) because of using child soldiers and committing numerous crimes against humanity, including massacres, abductions, mutilation, torture, rape, and forced child labour as soldiers, porters and sex slaves.

But the radicalisation of the Christian faith is a growing phenomenon in Africa’s internecine wars, particularly in what has been referred to as “the arc of insecurity” stretching from Somalia to Mauritania.

However, Christian “revenge terrorism” has reached fever pitch in the current political crisis in the Central Africa Republic. 

Setting the stage for retaliatory violence by Christian militias was the overthrow of President François Bozizé in March 2013 by a mostly Muslim rebel coalition known as Séléka.

The rebel coalition installed its leader, Michel Djotodia, as Central Africa Republic’s (CAR) first Muslim president.

READ: 'Catastrophe of unspeakable proportions' in Central Africa - UNHCR

Although Djotodia announced the dissolution of the Séléka in September 2013, the militia refused to disband and engaged in an orgy of violence.

In response, CAR Christians organised themselves into militias known as anti-balaka, which means “anti-machete” or “anti-sword” in the local Sango and Mandja languages, with Patrice Edouard Ngaissona as its better known leader.

The two groups spurred a cycle of militia violence. The UN warned of “genocide” prompting the controversial intervention force by MISCA. Unable to control the situation Djotodia resigned, replaced by a neutral leader, Catherine Samba-Panza, as President.

But anti-balaka militias have continued sectarian violence against Muslim civilians, forcing thousands of them to flee the country. Research by Human rights groups has revealed that the anti-balaka Christian vigilantes are perpetrating massacres and targeted killings against Muslim civilians.

Out-numbered and out-gunned, the Muslims (15 per cent of the population) have been forced to flee in hordes. 

On March 7, UN Emergency relief co-ordinator Valerie Amos announced that less than 1 per cent of the city’s Muslim inhabitants who number around 100,000 remained in Bangui.

Most Muslims are retreating further to the predominantly Muslim North. Chad, one of the neighbouring countries has seen a huge refugee influx with upto 70,000 refugees coming into the country fleeing from Bangui.

The border town of Sido, controlled by Seleka rebels has received up to 35,000 refugees mostly Muslims over half of whom have crossed onto Chad. In less magnitude, Christian response to Islamic extremism has taken on a radicalised form.

For the first time, Christian religious extremism has played out in such scale and intensity in Eastern Africa.

Gun ownership

In Kenya, the radicalisation of the Christian population is more subtle. During the constitutional referendum debate in Kenya in 2010, a sizeable proportion of Christian church leaders, whose followers make up to 70 per cent of the population, protested the inclusion of the Kadhi Courts into the Constitution.

The Kadhi courts, hitherto in the Kenyan Constitution since independence, were designed to mediate on matters of marriage and inheritance for the religious minority group.

Nevertheless, Christians opposed its inclusion in the draft constitution arguing that the recognition of courts was against the principle of religious diversity.

Further, the opponents argued that giving Kadhi courts jurisdiction would present a loophole for the establishment of Sharia law in the country, which might trigger religious strife. Thus, religious intolerance coloured debates during the referendum campaign period.

The Westgate Mall terrorist attack in September last year renewed the debate on gun ownership in a country where over 85 per cent of the population is Christian.  

This debate was fuelled by the way only a handful of civilians licensed to bear guns put up a strong show beside the few policemen who were first to arrive on the scene. 

Reportedly, there has since been an increase in demand for licences to bear arms, a fact directly attributed to the terrorism scare. 

The debate on gun ownership has taken a stridently religious turn following intensified violence against Christians in the Coast region in October last year. Sections of the Kenyan clergy called on government to arm them. 

This followed the killing by radicalised Muslim youth of two evangelical church clergymen: Pastor Charles Mathole (41) who was killed while praying inside his Vikwatani Redeemed Gospel Church and East African Pentecostal Church pastor Ibrahim Kithaka who was found dead in Kilifi. 

“Our many churches are not under any protection. They do not have walls or gates. The government should issue AK-47 rifles to every church so that we can stop them from being burnt, our property from being looted and our pastors and Christians from being killed,” said Lambert Mbela, a pastor at Mathole’s church, Mombasa.

The alms to arms debate has divided the Christian church in Kenya, but it reveals the intense radicalisation of the Christian leadership as well as the rank and file in the face of the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. 

Kenya’s southern neighbour, Tanzania, has not fared any better. Despite its socialist orientation and expression of brotherhood and equality, Tanzania is having serious undercurrents of religious fissures pitting Christians against Muslims.

The Zanzibar archipelago (consisting of Ugunja and Pemba) which comprise 97 per cent Muslims is the main theatre of an incipient religious conflict.

On Friday, September 13, 2013, Rev Joseph Anselmo Mwagamba had acid thrown on his face as he stepped outside a café he used to frequent in Zanzibar city.

The priest was transferred to Tanzania mainland’s Muhimbili National Hospital in Dar es Salaam in critical condition where he eventually stabilised. Security forces arrested 15 people and recovered up to 29 litres of acid from youth suspected to be members of Somalia extremist group, Al Shabaab.

However, this is not the first attack on Christians by radicalised Zanzibari Muslims. The list of violent attacks on Christians in Zanzibar has grown steadily.

On February 17, 2013, a 56 year old Roman Catholic priest, Fr Evaristus Mushi, was shot dead by suspected Muslim extremists outside Zanzibar city. And in July 2013, two men on motorbike poured acid on two young British women in Zanzibar. 

A separatist group Uamsho (Awakening in Kiswahili) for Association of Muslim Mobilisation and propagation has issued threats to the Christian population on the archipelago since 2012. 

While Tanzania’s population on average is divided as 34.2 per cent Muslim and 54 per cent Christian, the Zanzibar archipelago is 97 per cent Muslim, explaining the higher levels of intolerance. 

But the increasing attacks on Christians and destruction of churches is not limited to the Islands. The recent bombing of a Roman Catholic Church in Arusha and destruction of churches in Dar es Salaam and Kigoma all point to an increasing religious intolerance in Tanzania.

In view of the growing tensions, the issue of the relationship between the Zanzibar archipelago and the mainland has dominated the on-going debate on Tanzania’s new constitution.

Zanzibar’s Muslim extremists have erroneously turned the constitution making moment into a debate on the state of the Union with Tanganyika with a view to seeking autonomy.

This has also radicalised opinion among the mainlanders who view Zanzibar as a pampered and unduly privileged part of the Union. Response to acts of terrorism in Eastern Africa as elsewhere havetaken a distinctly legal form.

In East Africa, Tanzania was the first to pass the Prevention of Terrorism Act in 2002 followed by Uganda, which passed the Anti-Terrorism Act in 2002.

Kenya followed a decade later when President Mwai Kibaki approved the Prevention of Terrorist Act 2012, Kenya’s first piece of anti-terrorist legislation to be passed, on October 2, 2012. Obviously, these legislations were directed against Islamic fundamentalism.

As the tide of Christian extremism rises, this orientation of the law may change.

Professor Peter Kagwanja is the Chief Executive of the Africa Policy Institute. This article is part of the Institute’s Citizen Security Project.