Edition: U.S. / Global

2 Religions Clashing in Ivory Coast

Published: November 6, 2000

Up a winding street here in a sprawling, working-class neighborhood, a mosque, a Roman Catholic church and a Protestant church have long stood close to one another -- symbols of the religious and ethnic tolerance that made this country the envy of other Africans.

But after a popular revolt that began against a military dictator on Oct. 24 quickly degenerated into deadly political clashes, Christians attacked the Aisha Niangon Mosque, in this neighborhood, Yopougon. The walls surrounding the building are pockmarked with holes the assailants used as toeholds to clamber over. In the courtyard, the burned-out skeleton of the imam's car lay not too far from a palm tree that had also been set on fire.

And yet the destruction paled before what awaited inside.

''No need to take off your shoes,'' said Anzoumana Cisse, 57, a retired teacher and one of the mosque's elders. ''Everything inside has already been profaned.''

Scorched copies of the Koran lay scattered on the staircase in the muezzin's tower. The remains of burned-out tires littered the floor. The flames from the tires had blackened the walls, consumed the ceiling and warped the ceiling fans' metal blades, which now droop, like dying plants, from the roof's charred beams.

Ivory Coast's recent political upheaval gave something new to Africa as tens of thousands of unarmed citizens overthrew a military ruler, Gen. Robert Guei, who tried to annul an election he lost. But it also brought something new here, perhaps more lasting and dangerous: clear, bitter divisions between the Christians in the south and the Muslims in the north over political power.

In West Africa, Muslims tend to live in the north. The Arabs crossed the Sahara by camel caravan to bring Islam. Christians dominate along the Atlantic Coast, where Europeans came looking for mineral riches, slaves and religious converts.

In countries where the division exists internally, one group has sometimes dominated. In Nigeria, Muslim northerners ruled for most of its post-independence history over predominantly Christian southerners. Since President Olusegun Obasanjo, a Christian, was elected in May 1999, northerners have urged the spread of the Islamic legal code, Shariah, to challenge his government.

Here in Ivory Coast, the religious divide was smoothed over by Felix Houphouet-Boigny, an autocrat who led the country from independence until his death in 1993. A Roman Catholic, he nevertheless encouraged immigration -- mostly by Muslims -- from neighboring countries; he appointed many Muslims to prominent positions, including Alassane D. Ouattara, the main opposition leader today.

But after Mr. Houphouet-Boigny's death, his successors, all of them Christian, adopted ethnocentric messages to rally southerners against northerners as they tried to check Mr. Ouattara. A few years ago, the president at the time, Henri Konan Bedie, came up with a concept called ''ivoirite,'' or Ivoirianness, that was supposed to distinguish so-called pure Ivoirians from immigrants or people with only one native parent.

The core of the message was later embraced by General Guei, who toppled Mr. Bedie last December, as well as by Laurent Gbagbo, who became president last month and who then spoke of reconciliation.

But less than a year and a half ago -- when Mr. Ouattara announced his plans to step down as deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund and return to Ivory Coast to run for president -- the Christians in power drummed up their xenophobic campaigns.

The first targets were mostly Muslim immigrants from Mali and Burkina Faso. Many had worked for decades here as fishermen or farmers, but two years ago they found themselves being expelled by Ivoirians, who said they were reclaiming their waters or land.

Eventually, people from the Muslim north became targets of official harassment.

''It's the politicians who spoiled our relations,'' said Ibrahim Toure, 38, a Muslim businessman in Yopougon. ''We lived together. We played together. There were never any problems. When they had their ceremonies, we attended. And when we had ours, they came.''

But in the last year, subtle changes occurred in daily interactions.

''Whenever we would meet in the market,'' said Moustafa Sangare, a 30-year-old Muslim merchant, ''they started acting arrogantly, raising their voices at our women.'' Mr. Toure and Mr. Sangare spoke on Monday morning outside the great mosque of Yopougon, another mosque that was attacked and partly burned on Oct. 26.

Police officers began stopping Muslims, about 40 percent of the country's population, checking their national identity cards and sometimes confiscating them. That was just one of the many increasing forms of official discrimination.

''That kind of discrimination never occurred in the past,'' said Mr. Cisse, the retired teacher. ''It didn't even occur to anyone to do it.''

The rising tension culminated in the events of Oct. 26, a day after the popular revolt against General Guei. Candidates of two of the country's major parties, including Mr. Ouattara, had been eliminated from the recent presidential election, and so his supporters took to the streets demanding a new election. Supporters of Mr. Gbagbo, who won the election, opposed any such move.

The two sides clashed, and the violence immediately assumed religious and ethnic dimensions. Several mosques in Yopougon and in other neighborhoods were attacked; one church was also struck.

The security forces, who sided with Mr. Gbagbo after General Guei's fall, could be seen backing Mr. Gbagbo's supporters. Mr. Toure and Mr. Sangare, as well as several other members of the great mosque, said that it was Mr. Gbagbo's supporters who attacked their building -- with official backing.

''We called our young men and were able to push them back,'' said Founba Toure, 45, the mosque's security guard. ''But after the gendarmes arrived and helped them, we couldn't do anything. We had to flee.''

Mosque members said the paramilitary gendarmes fired on them and then threw tear gas on the roof, igniting the fire. At the Aisha Niangon Mosque, members said that anti-riot police officers helped the Christian assailants start the fire.

Mr. Ouattara's party calculates that 155 people were killed in the violence surrounding the revolt, most of them Muslim northerners. What is more, 57 of those bodies were discovered two days after General Guei fled in a forest clearing on the city's outskirts. Two men introduced to journalists by Mr. Ouattara's party who said they survived the mass killing accused the gendarmes of the massacre.

The new government said it was too soon to point fingers. A government investigation into the 57 deaths has begun, but Mr. Ouattara has called for an international investigation.

Whatever the inquiry's findings, the people of Yopougon will probably find it hard to live in the same kind of harmony as before.

''I am counting on our political leaders for words of appeasement,'' said Mr. Sangare, the member of the great mosque of Yopougon. ''Otherwise, the people will easily become inflamed from now on.''

Photo: Anzoumana Cisse, 57, recounted the recent Christian gutting of his local mosque in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. (Toru Morimoto for The New York Times)