Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
This is very interesting. I've written many times about the witchcraft craze in parts of Africa and the resulting witchhunts that have ended the way witchhunts always do, with innocent people dead. The Center for Inquiry has launched a campaign to counter that danger and now is being sued in Nigerian court by one of that country's barbaric witch hunters.
CFI's man on the ground in Nigeria for this campaign is Leo Igwe and he's the one being sued by witch hunter Helen Ukpabio, pastor of the terribly misnamed Liberty Gospel Church in Nigeria.
The complaint filed by Ukpabio essentially alleges religious discrimination on the part of Igwe, who has been a tireless, vocal critic of Ukpabio's claim that many of Nigeria's children and women are witches. "Ukpabio has repeatedly targeted and persecuted the most vulnerable members of society. She is the one who should face justice and answer for her crimes," said Igwe. "She should be ready to pay damages to the thousands of children who have been tortured, traumatized, abused and abandoned as a result of her misguided ministry." Igwe said that many homes and households across Nigeria have been damaged by Ukpabio's witchcraft schemes and other questionable activities.The suit, scheduled for a hearing on Dec.17, is seeking an injunction preventing Igwe and other humanist groups from holding seminars or workshops aimed at raising consciousness about the dangers associated with the religious belief in witchcraft. The suit aims to erect a legal barrier against rationalist or humanist groups who might criticize, denounce or otherwise interfere with their practice of Christianity and their "deliverance" of people supposedly suffering from possession of an "evil or witchcraft spirit." The suit also seeks to prevent law enforcement from arresting or detaining any member of the Liberty Gospel Church for performing or engaging in what they say are constitutionally protected religious activities. These activities include the burning of three children, ages 3 through 6, with fire and hot water, as reported by James Ibor of the Basic Rights Counsel in Nigeria on August 24, 2009. The parents believed their children were witches.
Ukpabio is seeking damages of 200 billion Nigerian Naira, more than $1.3 billion, for supposedly unlawful and unconstitutional infringement on her rights to belief in "God, Satan, witchcraft, Heaven and Hell fire" and for the alleged unlawful and unconstitutional detention of two members of her church.
It almost makes you happy that our fundamentalists are only about half that insane.
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Comments
Sadly, half as insane is still insane. There's crazy everywhere.
Posted by: MikeMa | December 8, 2009 9:30 AM
Someone please tell me the Nigerian constitution doesn't really contain a right to burn children.
Posted by: Matty | December 8, 2009 9:33 AM
Posted by: kehrsam | December 8, 2009 9:33 AM
My part of the comment was,"Maybe our children wait until middle school to become witches?"
Preview is your friend
Preview is your friend
Preview is your friend
Preview is your friend
etc.
Posted by: kehrsam | December 8, 2009 9:36 AM
It almost makes you happy that our fundamentalists are only about half that insane.
Are you sure about that? I'm not, especially after Sarah Palin's sordid dalliance with just such a "witch hunter," and Rick Warren's apparent inability to find any voice to condemn that "gays must all die" legislation.
How many Christians in America are attacking this nonsense?
Posted by: Raging Bee | December 8, 2009 9:40 AM
The fundamentalists in Africa are not less crazed than our own, but less constrained by the influences of modernity and rationalism on the culture in which they practice.
Posted by: Russell | December 8, 2009 9:45 AM
That Sarah Palin's church invited a witch hunting Christian preacher from Africa (and that she let herself get 'blessed' by him) freaks me out. What influence would she have brought to the White House had she and McCain been elected and he blew a cranial gasket?
It also shows how far out, way out there, the wingnuts are going. What's next, auto da fe? Or is that already happening?
Posted by: Rodney | December 8, 2009 9:59 AM
Posted by: JThompson | December 8, 2009 10:15 AM
Dudes, in Romania (this is a country that is vastly more first-world than Nigeria) there are still people who believe in vampires.
Most people make pond scum look like Einstein.
Posted by: Katharine | December 8, 2009 10:25 AM
I think we ought to be a little more outrageous in our statements about this.
Helen Ukpabio, Rick Warren, and Sarah Palin are genocidal maniacs.
Posted by: Katharine | December 8, 2009 10:29 AM
Can we claim a freedom of belief clause for kicking fundamentalists in the crotch?
If Helen Ukpabio can claim her right to kill and mutilate children, by gum we can claim our right to beat the shit out of people such as her.
Posted by: Katharine | December 8, 2009 10:36 AM
re: our own version of crazy fundies: anybody read Jeff Sharlet's book "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power"? It's on my amazon xmas wish list.
Supposedly The Family is active in Uganda, especially in their horrible anti-gay legislation there.
Here's one of Sharlet's articles in Harpers, "Jesus plus nothing: Undercover among America's secret theocrats": "...[Jesus] was a real guy's guy. He would have made an excellent athlete", opines one young believer.
Posted by: marnk | December 8, 2009 10:36 AM
This lawsuit is a witch hunt!
Sorry, couldn't resist...
Posted by: James Sweet | December 8, 2009 11:28 AM
The plane of what is normal and what is extreme, stretching out in all directions from the accepted center is always shifting. There is a subset of people in the US who are Dominionists, and they seek to form the US into a Christian nation under Biblical law.
Seeing as they hold the Bible, KJ thank-you very much, as their central document of truth and guidance and that witchcraft is condemned in this Bible that there will be people actively seeking out witches and chastising them if these Donimionists have their way.
The difference between Nigeria and the USofA is not that great. Just a matter of a few elections where Domininists take over, a quick rewrite of the laws, and a gradual slide away from liberal thinking that says that it doesn't matter what your 2000 year old tome says; torturing children and killing people because you think they might be witches is wrong.
If you don't think it can't happen here your not paying attention.
Posted by: Art | December 8, 2009 11:57 AM
It almost sounds like Helen Ukpabio has her congregation under a spell. Maybe she's actually a witch and is just looking to show up her competition.
Posted by: Jeremy Shaffer | December 8, 2009 11:58 AM
So if she wins, that means we can burn her at the stake as heretic and be protected?
Posted by: Mu | December 8, 2009 12:06 PM
"Dudes, in Romania (this is a country that is vastly more first-world than Nigeria) there are still people who believe in vampires."
And Iceland has fairies. As long as the Romanians don't go around staking innocent people, I don't care.
Posted by: Jon H | December 8, 2009 12:45 PM
Here is the core of the insanity:
...criticize, denounce or otherwise interfere...
Once again, we poor "militant" atheists earn the title merely by speaking. Criticizing and denouncing are NOT interfering. Blocking doorways, passing legislation barring said behavior, assaulting proponents, those are examples of interfering. Making words with one's mouth only qualifies as interfering if you believe in magic.
Shit.
Posted by: Science Avenger | December 8, 2009 12:49 PM
This is exactly the sort of situation I use when I argue with believers that the theocracy they want is not a good thing. Yet none of them has said a word against their fellow believers/child killers.
Is spectral evidence allowed in court in Uganda?
Posted by: Rob Jase | December 8, 2009 1:07 PM
I have a close friend who believes that Obama and most other elected Democrats are all just puppets of the same masters who pull the strings of Sarah Palin and her ilk. Sometimes I am tempted to agree. But the fact remains: even if every action of our government simply serves the corporate elite, I *STILL* want to make sure that the witch-hunting, gay-bashing, woman-hating godbots don't get a monopoly on power. They want me and my friends dead.
Posted by: xebecs | December 8, 2009 1:19 PM
If the people being hunted, harassed, ostracized and killed by people like Ukpabio really WERE witches, shouldn't they be able to sue her for "religious discrimination?"
But of course, they're NOT really "witches," in any sense of that word, and these pogroms aren't really about religion anyway, so that question is kinda moot.
Posted by: Raging Bee | December 8, 2009 1:30 PM
Dear Journalists:
Please ask Palin about witches and her friend Muthee.
Thank you.
Posted by: Physicalist | December 8, 2009 1:30 PM
So, just to get this straight...
Killing alleged "witches" = OK
Criticizing the above = religious discrimination
Maybe it's not considered discrimination if you kill them...
Posted by: pough | December 8, 2009 2:20 PM
Much of the religious insanity that is infecting Africa comes from the reactionary biblical teachings of The Family, Rick Warren, and other U.S. zealots. Conservative Christians often complain that not enough Muslims oppose the violence of extremist Muslims. Yet why are so few conservative Christians speaking out against witch hunts and biblically based homophobia?
Posted by: NORM R. ALLEN JR. | December 8, 2009 3:01 PM
I have friends who are witches, as are some of their children (by choice, not indoctrination). I don't suggest these people try it anywhere were I can find them.
Anyone tries to burn a kid alive is going to discover the rationale behind the US 2nd Amendment.
That's the main difference between the US and other most other countries.
Posted by: OgreMkV | December 8, 2009 3:39 PM
But if they stick to their "irreducible complexity" line of thought, shouldn't they poof themselves out of existence in a fit of paradox? A set of insanities as complex as our fundamentalists have cultivated couldn't function if you suddenly took half of it away; as you've done by comparing it to the stiff-peaked lather they've got themselves worked up into in Nigeria.
I'm just saying, the fundamentalists here should play by their own rules and disappear into a puff of logic.
Posted by: Bone Oboe | December 8, 2009 5:11 PM
Anyone tries to burn a kid alive is going to discover the rationale behind the US 2nd Amendment. That's the main difference between the US and other most other countries.
What, you think guns aren't easily available in Africa? They are. And so far, I've seen no evidence that it's helping the alleged witches in any noticeable way. (That could be because the witch-hunters and their supporters can get guns too, and may have more cash to spare to arm themselves.)
Posted by: Raging Bee | December 8, 2009 5:15 PM
What a piece of work is Man...
Posted by: Phobos | December 8, 2009 9:14 PM
"I have of late (but wherefore I know not) lost all my mirth..." :( - DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | December 8, 2009 9:40 PM
Re: #14....
Robert A. Heinlein..."Future History"...Nehemiah Scudder...2012... Need I say more?
Posted by: W. H. Heydt | December 9, 2009 2:13 AM
Faith In Humanity: -20 and dropping
Posted by: WMDKitty | December 9, 2009 5:41 AM
In a country where the impending law allows JAIL TIME for simply DEFENDING a gay person, I think Mr. Igwe's chance in this suit is not good.
Posted by: jay | December 9, 2009 4:14 PM