CAN ISHMAEL BE TAMED? RE-READING GALATIANS 4:21-31 (THE SEMIOTIC OF ISAAC AND ISHMAEL) AS A BIBLICAL THEOLOGICAL RECIPE FOR ISLAMIC TERRORISM IN NIGERIA

Abstract

No one doubts, as the contemporary socio-political events indicates that Africa, and Nigeria in particular is in the throes of religious crisis. The continent has become the theatre of war that is a washed with blood shed by multifarious Islamic terrorist sects whose Quranic source of ideology has often been adjudged faulty. This paper adopts the socio-critical method as represented in the studies of recent African Biblical scholars, which seek to interpret Gal 4:21-31 from the perspectives of contemporary African and Nigerian socio-political contexts. It attempts to engage the re-reading of this experience and writing of St Paul as he confronts his opponents in Gala 4:21-31, as one of the various theological conflicts that Christianity will ever confront. It involves the exploration of the semiotic of Ishmael and Isaac in the text and the understanding engendered which will serve as a theological recipe in the deliberate and precautionary steps for the interrelationship between Christianity and Islam, which can effect a positive socio political development of Nigeria.