FaithWorld

(The Mecca Clock Tower overlooks the Grand Mosque during the Muslim month of Ramadan in the holy city of Mecca August 4, 2012. REUTERS/Hassan Ali )

Nigeria has suspended flights to Saudi Arabia for the annual haj pilgrimage, following a diplomatic spat over the detention of hundreds of female pilgrims for arriving unaccompanied by men.

Saudi authorities have deported more than 600 female Nigerian pilgrims and detained hundreds for trying to visit the holy city of Mecca without male relatives.

Aminu Tambuwal, Nigeria’s parliament speaker and the second most powerful Muslim in the government, was due to visit Saudi Arabia on Friday to try to resolve the spat.

“The airlift operations have been temporary stopped … It does not make sense to airlift people to be detained on landing. We will resume when all outstanding issues are resolved,” Uba Mana, spokesman of National Hajj Commission, said by telephone.

(Muslim pilgrims circle the Kaaba at the Grand mosque, on the last days of the annual haj pilgrimage, in Mecca November 8, 2011. REUTERS/Ammar Awad)

Saudi authorities have deported 150 female Nigerian pilgrims and detained another 1,000 because they came unaccompanied by men, Nigeria’s government announced on Wednesday.

Mohammed Bello, chairman of Nigeria’s national haj, or Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, said 150 women on one flight had been stopped at the airport for “lack of … lawful male accompanying pilgrim”.

(Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan speaks during an interview with Reuters in New York, September 26, 2012.  REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz )

Nigeria’s “robust” approach to neutralizing a threat posed by Islamist sect Boko Haram using military force, holding indirect talks with the group and improving education in the north is paying off, the Nigerian president said on Wednesday.

Boko Haram, which wants to carve out an Islamic state in northern Nigeria, has been blamed for more than 1,000 deaths since its insurgency intensified in 2010. The United States has designated three of Boko Haram’s senior members as terrorists.

(Pope Benedict XVI waves to the faithful from his Pope-mobile upon his arrival to conduct an open-air mass service at Beirut City Center Waterfront September 16, 2012. REUTERS/ Stefano Rellandini)

Whenever he travels abroad, Pope Benedict delivers a series of speeches that journalists scan for their relevance to the situation in the country he’s visiting. This aspect has been especially important here in Lebanon, a multi-faith country that suffered through a 15-year-long civil war (1975-1990) fought along sectarian lines and now watches nervously as Syria’s bloody civil war unfolds along sectarian lines only 50 km (30 miles) from Beirut. So the majority of our stories have focused on his calls for an end to the violence in Syria and greater efforts to promote peace and religious co-existence in the region.

Another part of the story is the enthusiastic welcome Christians and some Muslims have given the pope as a messenger of peace. We’ve quoted several of them in our news stories. But our journalists, especially Erika Solomon, an Arabic-speaking American, have gathered so many of these quotes that I wanted to post a large selection of them here. They give more of the human flavour of the visit and what it means for the Christians who hear the pope’s message.

(A roadblock burns after a bombing at St. Finbarr's Catholic Church in the Rayfield suburb of the Nigerian city of Jos March 11, 2012. REUTERS/Stringer)

Poverty, inequality and injustice are threatening to trigger a broad sectarian conflict in Nigeria, an international Christian-Muslim task force said on Wednesday.

Clashes between Nigerian Christians and Muslims have already killed hundreds of people this year alone. But although the violence is the worst between members of the two faiths since the Bosnian war of 1992-1995, the root causes go far beyond religion, the group’s report said.

(A victim of a bombing at Shalom Church awaits treatment in a hospital, in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna June 17, 2012. REUTERS/Stringer )

Explosions at three churches in Nigeria’s northern Kaduna state killed 19 people on Sunday. Here is a look at attacks against Christian targets in Nigeria.

* OVERVIEW:

- The Islamist group Boko Haram, which says it is fighting to reinstate an Islamic caliphate in mostly Muslim northern Nigeria, has stepped up deadly bombings and shootings against Christian places of worship this year.

(Onlookers gather near the bomb-damaged Shalom Church in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna June 17, 2012. REUTERS/Stringer)

Suicide car bombers attacked three churches in northern Nigeria on Sunday, killing at least 19 people, wounding dozens and triggering retaliatory attacks by Christian youths who dragged Muslims from cars and killed them, witnesses said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombings but just one week ago Islamist group Boko Haram claimed responsibility for deadly church attacks.

(People stand by the wreckage from a car bomb explosion at a church in Yelwa on the outskirts of the northern Nigerian city of Bauchi, June 3, 2012. REUTERS/Stringer)

Islamist militant group Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing of a church in northern Nigeria that killed 12 people. A suicide bomber drove a car full of explosives into a church during a Sunday serving in Yelwa, on the outskirts of the city of Bauchi, forcing his car through a checkpoint.

“We thank God for giving us victory. We successfully carried out a suicide bombing on a church at Yelwa in Bauchi state,” an emailed statement from Boko Haram spokesman Abu Qaqa said on Monday. The email address was the same the sect always uses.

(Burnt newspaper copies are seen in the rubble of a destroyed This Day newspaper building in Abuja April 28, 2012. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde)

Islamist group Boko Haram released a video late on Tuesday celebrating its bombing of a Nigerian newspaper and warning of more attacks on local and foreign media if they published reports that were biased to the sect or insulting to Islam.  Suicide car bombers targeted the offices of This Day in the capital, Abuja, and northern city of Kaduna last Thursday, killing at least five people in apparently coordinated strikes.

Boko Haram has been fighting a low-level insurgency for more than two years and has become the main security threat facing Africa’s top oil producer, although most attacks have been in the largely Muslim north, far from southern oil fields. The sect, which wants to impose an Islamic state on Nigeria’s more or less evenly mixed population of Muslim and Christians, has been blamed for hundreds of killings since its uprising against the government in 2009.

(People watch as boy scouts carry the coffins of the victims of the Christmas day bombing at St Theresa Catholic Church Madalla, during a mass funeral for the victims, outside Nigeria's capital Abuja February 1, 2012. Islamist sect Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the bombing of St. Theresa Catholic Church in Madalla, on the outskirts of Abuja, which killed 37 people and wounded 57, the deadliest of a series of a attacks on Christmas Day in 2011. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde)

Nigeria’s government has in the last week held its first indirect peace talks with Islamist sect Boko Haram, meeting mediators to discuss a possible ceasefire, political and diplomatic sources have told Reuters.

Two people close to Boko Haram have been carrying messages back and forth between the sect’s self-proclaimed leader Abubakar Shekau and government officials, the sources, who asked not to be named, said.