Two decades ago, they were foes who led rival militias. Their followers battled in Kaduna, a Nigerian city quivering on a fault line between Christianity and Islam. Today the two men are allies. And they're offering Americans strategies to combat religious prejudice and hate.
"Over the years, we were programmed to hate one another by our so-called religious leaders and politicians who have told us that the other is our enemy," says Pastor James Movel Wuye. "A journalist ... brought us together and said 'Pastor, imam, talk.'"
That was in 1995. Now Wuye jointly directs Kaduna's Interfaith Mediation Centre with Imam Muhammad Nurayn Ashafa. And Ashafa has a message for his US counterparts.
"First and foremost, I feel this is a time for American Muslims to wake up and explain what Islam really is," he says. "It's time for religion leaders around the world to raise up their voices and say 'No! That is not us and that cannot be us!"
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