O Tempora, O Mores! (July, 2001)

Oldham Erupts

Over the weekend of May 26-28 Britain had a full-fledged race riot — the worst in 15 years. In the down-at-heel industrial town of Oldham, 190 miles northwest of London, hundreds of whites and Asians (in Britain this means Pakistanis, Indians, and Bangladeshis) battled each other and the police, burning cars, throwing “petrol bombs” (Molotov cocktails), and setting up barricades of burning tires to keep each other off their turf. There were no deaths but dozens of people were injured and police arrested about 50 young men.

Racial tension has been building so spectacularly in Oldham that news items about its violence and “no-go areas” for whites have appeared in three of the last four issues of AR (March, April, June). No one really knows what started the riot. Some people said it began with a fight between white and Asian schoolboys; others said it was name-calling outside a fish-and-chip shop. Tension has been so high anything could have set it off. By the evening of May 26, Oldham faced the very un-British spectacle of hundreds of police in riot gear, backed up by circling helicopters with searchlights, trying vainly to keep the peace. At one point there were an estimated 700 Asians gathered in the city center, smashing store windows, burning cars, and tossing petrol bombs.

Paul Barrow, owner of the ironically-named Live and Let Live pub, spent Saturday night barricaded inside together with 40 customers. The first sign of trouble came about 9:00 p.m. when a group of Asians stormed in, kicking and punching white patrons. More Asians returned just after 11:00, this time with bricks and petrol bombs. The attackers tried to drive a car through the door, but failed. They then pounded the windows with hammers, but could not break the pub’s half-inch laminated glass. “That glass saved a lot of people,” says Mr. Barrow. “I only had it put in five weeks ago after one of the other racist incidents in the town.” The police arrived but faced a pitched battle. “They [the Asians] were using everything they could get their hands on,” says Mr. Barrow, “pushing cars, using shopping trolleys to ram the police and hurling bricks.” He adds that “about 100-150 Asian youths came out from behind the trees throwing petrol bombs and stones at the police.”

Only a massive police presence, with hundreds of extra officers rushed in from surrounding areas, kept rioting from continuing into a third night.

The official reaction is that the disturbances were uncharacteristic and nothing to worry about. “I do not think it is typical of the state of race relations in Britain today,” explained Prime Minister Tony Blair. “I think the vast majority of people want to live together in peace and harmony with one another.” It is true that Oldham is not “typical.” In Britain as a whole only about five percent of the people are non-white; in Oldham 25 percent are non-white.

It was also common to blame the riots on “right-wing whites.” Indeed, the buildup of racial hostility has attracted the notice of the British National Party (BNP — see May issue), and the National Front. The BNP is running parliamentary candidates — one of whom is chairman Nick Griffin — in all three Oldham constituencies, and the National Front recently marched through town to protest attacks on whites. However, police reported that BNP campaign literature was perfectly legal and by no means promoted violence.

Even more telling, white Oldham residents do not blame outside agitators at all. For months they have complained of increasing hostility from Asians, and repeated racial attacks. Like the pub-owner who put up bullet-proof glass, they saw this riot coming a long way off. Local authorities also plan to build metal gates to prevent easy access from at least one Asian neighborhood into an adjoining white area. The gate separates locals; it does not keep out outside agitators.

The Oldham riots are only the most prominent — so far — in a series. Over the same weekend, 60 young Asians mixed it up with whites in the southern English town of Aylesbury. Police arrested 13 Asians and seven whites, but insisted there was no connection with what was happening in Oldham.

Just a week earlier there were smaller white-Asian riots in Bradford, as well as increasing tension between Indian Hindus and Pakistani Muslims. Hasmukh Shah, a Hindu, says that under cover of the rioting, Pakistanis burned down his pharmacy, causing a million dollars’ worth of damage. He says Muslims are driving Hindus out of Bradford: “This is really a demographic, systematic ethnic cleansing.”

On June 6, just nine days after the uneasy peace in Oldham, riots broke out in Leeds, just 40 miles away. Some 300 Asians, mostly Bangladeshis, battled police for seven straight hours, hijacking and burning cars, and throwing petrol bombs. “They were taking cars and rolling them downhill at police as they were trying to clear the riots,” one policeman said. Another said some of the rioting took the form of “a premeditated attack on police officers, who were drawn into the area.” Once again, it took circling helicopters and hundreds of officers called in from surrounding areas to put down the violence. As BNP chairman Nick Griffin pointed out during the Oldham riots, when towns were all white, “this kind of problem naturally didn’t arise.”

Nasser Hussein is the captain of the English national cricket team. He was born in India and lived on the subcontinent until age five, when he came to England. He says Pakistanis who grew up in Britain should cheer for the English team, even when it plays Pakistan. “I cannot really understand why those born here, or who came here at a very young age like me, cannot support or follow England,” he says. No doubt he can’t understand the riots either. [Bradford Intimidation Claims Denied, BBC News, May 15, 2001. Ed Cropley, Britain Blames Town’s Riots on Outside Racists, Reuters, May 28, 2001. Ed Johnson, Third Night of Violence in England, AP, May 29, 2001. Ed Cropley, UK Race Riots Highlight Asian Identity Struggle, Reuters, May 28, 2001. Dominic Kennedy, Backlash from Whites “Under Siege,’ Times (London), May 31, 2001. Police Dismiss Oldham Connection to Aylesbury Violence, Reuters, May 28, 2001. Asian Youths Again Battle British Riot Police, Reuters, June 6, 2001.]

‘Rapper Dentist Daddy’

Dr. Ronald Cunning, a white dentist who practices in Montclair, California (near Los Angeles), has found an unusual niche. Known as “Rapper Dentist Daddy,” he specializes in gold crowns and jeweled teeth. As he explains in his Hip Hop Dentistry Home Page: “Gold crowns can be made as part of your permanent smile, or in some cases a removable appliance can be made to cover your natural teeth when you want that “Hip Hop’ look. We use a special 22kt. dental alloy that is a rich deep yellow color, and high quality diamonds. The cost runs from $1,000 to $1,500 per tooth which includes the gemstones.” Dr. Cunning apparently expects a national and even international clientele. His web page includes information on air travel to Montclair, accommodations, and tourist attractions in the area.

Blacks Go Too Far?

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is one of the most liberal papers in the country. There is very little blacks say or do of which it disapproves, so it was with some astonishment that we read the editorial excerpted below:

Tonight, the Atlanta City Council seems poised to give final approval to a map of its voting districts that features at least one district drawn on the basis of race and race alone. If that map is adopted, black politicians in a majority black city will have used their political power to limit minority white representation.

The editorial points out that the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down such districts when whites drew them for their own benefit, and continues:

The potential for erosion of black voting strength in this city is slim. Though Atlanta has more whites than it did in 1980 or 1990, the city is still 61 percent black, and the minority that needs protection now happens to be white.

Yet in a public meeting a few weeks ago, person after person stood up and invoked the race issue as the reason to adopt a redistricting map presented by council member Sherry Dorsey. Several speakers at the meeting, recorded and shown on television, said outright that white people had no business moving into black neighborhoods, and that blacks should be represented by blacks and whites by whites . . .

The chief advantage of the map she drew seemed to be keeping a nearly 80 percent black majority to assure her re-election. Since she has alienated the whites in her district, she hardly expects them to support her.

Liz Coyle, [white] president of the Atkins Park neighborhood near Virginia-Highland, has contacted the Justice Department to urge officials there to look closely at Atlanta’s map when it comes in. She said that after attending the April 30 council meeting where the Dorsey map was introduced, ‘I was afraid to walk to my car, the tone was so threatening.’ [Atlanta Voters of All Races Need Their Rights Protected, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 21, 2001.]

‘A Choice to be Whole’

Middle-class blacks in the Atlanta area are increasingly turning their backs on integration and living in self-segregated suburbs in southwest Atlanta and nearby southeast DeKalb County. “It’s not a separatist thing,” says sociologist Robert Bullard of Clark Atlanta University. “It’s a choice to be whole.” He says his people are finally discovering the costs of desegregation: “Blacks lost some of their identity. They lost their businesses. They saw predominantly black neighborhoods get worse. Now many of them, they want to build something on their own terms.”

Resegregation has been good for Eddie Long. As bishop of New Birth Missionary Church in southeast DeKalb County, he has seen his congregation go from 300 in 1987 to 22,000 today. He calls this largely-black part of the county the “promised land,” explaining that “quite a few of our members moved out from the city because they wanted their children to grow up in a nurturing black community.”

Marlon Tyler, a telecommunications engineer who lives in a nearby black suburb, is happy to have found “a strong black community.” “There is a lot of love here,” he explains. [Kirk Kicklighter, Many Middle-Class Blacks Prefer Own Communities, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 6, 2001, p. A16.]

More Choices to be Whole

Researchers at the State University of New York at Albany report that although black/white segregation among adults decreased during the 1990s, segregation of children increased. This means childless and single people are more willing to live in integrated urban areas than are families with children.

Segregation is measured by what is called the “segregation index,” which runs from 0 to 100. The score indicates the percentage of people who would have to move, in order to have neighborhood residential patterns that appear racially random. Zero means complete integration and 100 means complete segregation, with any number over 60 considered “highly segregated.”

The Albany researchers found that the national segregation index decreased during the 1990s from 69.4 to 65.1, but the segregation index for children increased from 65.5 to 68.3. Of the 50 largest cities, the 10 most segregated for children were, in order: Detroit, Milwaukee, New York, Newark, Chicago, Cleveland, Miami, Cincinnati, Birmingham, Ala., and St. Louis. Segregation indices ranged from 86 in Detroit to 77 in St. Louis.

The 10 least segregated areas for black and white children were, in order: Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif.; Norfolk, Va.; Charleston, S.C.; Augusta, Ga.; Greenville, S.C.; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Columbia, S.C.; San Diego, and Sacramento. The segregation indices ranged from Riverside’s 47 to Sacramento’s 58. Children are most likely to be integrated in cities located near large military bases. [Eric Schmitt, Segregation Growing Among U.S. Children, New York Times, May 6, 2001.]

Europe Cast(e)s a Shadow

A study has found that members of the higher castes in India are genetically close to Europeans while lower-caste Indians are more similar to Asians. Researchers from the University of Utah found that while maternally-inherited DNA of high-caste Indians was similar to that of Asians, paternally-inherited DNA was much closer to that of East Europeans. The higher the caste, the stronger the European genetic link. This study supports the view that European invaders of some 5,000 years ago took Indian wives, and created the caste system with themselves at the top. The genetic differences have survived because the caste system — which works as an elaborate, religiously-based anti-miscegenation scheme — forbids intermarriage between castes. [Ananova.com, Indian Caste Shows Link to Europeans, May 14, 2001, reporting on Michael Bamshad, Toomas Kivisild, et. al., Genetic Evidence on the Origin of Indian Caste Populations, Genome Research Journal, May 8, 2001.]

Pachacutic Returns

Only 18 percent of the population of Peru is white, but this mostly Spanish-descended elite has long run the country. On June 3, the other 82 percent — Indians and mestizos — elected one of their own as president. Alejandro Toledo, who waved the rainbow flag of the Incas at political rallies and calls himself a cholo (Peruvian of mixed ancestry), is certainly the first person to become a Latin American head of state by appealing to Indian pride. Short and dark, he repeatedly described himself as “a stubborn Indian rebel with a cause.” He swept the inland areas with large Indian populations, and lost the coast, where whites live. The evening after what foreign observers say is the cleanest election the country has ever had, tens of thousands of supporters poured into Lima shouting “Pachacutic returns” — a reference to a great Inca king whom Mr. Toledo is said to resemble. He promised his followers he would hold a second inauguration at Machu Pichu, the long-lost Andean city of the Incas.

Mr. Toledo’s opponent was Alan Garcia, a 6-foot 3-inch former president who looks every inch a Spaniard. His five years in office from 1985 to 1990 were marked by corruption, guerrilla violence, food shortages, and runaway inflation, but Mr. Toledo is no boy scout either. He told many lies during the campaign — falsely claiming, for example, that his mother died in an earthquake — and has had to battle charges of philandering and wife-beating.

In a field of poor candidates, race appears to have triumphed. “It’s a source of pride that for the first time in my life I’ll have someone of Indian race governing me,” says a 62-year-old Indian migrant from the Ayacucho highlands. It remains to be seen what the new regime will mean for whites. “This is a very racist society,” says Mr. Toledo. “The elitist leadership still has trouble digesting the possibility that someone like us could come to govern.” [Niko Price, Toledo Wins Peru Presidential Vote, AP, June 4, 2001. Anthony Faiola, Peru Elects Indian as President, Washington Post, June 4, 2001, p. 1A.]

‘Kill Whitey’

Last month we reported that a 20-year-old white man was the first person to be charged with a hate crime in connection with the April riots in Cincinnati. Now a black has finally been indicted for what in Ohio is called “ethnic intimidation.” At the beginning of the riots, a 15-year-old black — whose name has not been released — tried to steal a white man’s truck, and got into a fight with the driver, Robert Stearns. A crowd of approximately 20 blacks surrounded Mr. Stearns, shouting “Kill the white man. Kill whitey.” “The more they yelled, the more they beat me,” says Mr. Stearns. “Why they wanted to kill me, I don’t know.” The attack, in which Mr. Stearns feared for his life, was caught on video tape. Police are studying more footage and expect to make more hate crime indictments.

Some black leaders say the best way to promote racial “healing” in Cincinnati is to declare an amnesty for crimes committed during the riots. Hamilton County prosecutor Michael Allen has refused. “The quickest way to allow this kind of stupidity to happen again is to grant amnesty,” he says. [Steve Miller, Black Teen Charged in Cincinnati Hate Crime, Washington Times, May 31, 2001.]

High-School Harassment

Confidential surveys conducted in 1995 and 1999 asked Seattle high school students: “Has anyone ever made racial comments or attacked you based on race or ethnicity, at school or on your way to or from school?” In 1995, 48 percent of whites but only 36 percent of blacks said “yes.” In 1999, 32 percent of whites and 26 percent of blacks reported racial harassment. Seattle school system program manager Pamela Hillard, who directed the surveys, literally has nothing to say about the fact that whites reported more racial incidents than blacks: “I don’t have a particular take on it. It surprises a lot of people. It doesn’t surprise other people. I don’t have anything in particular to say.”

White students had plenty to say. “Sometimes other people and myself are harassed because we are white. People of other races seem to have an unprovoked problem with white people,” wrote one student. Another wrote, “I don’t see any white kids harassing black kids, but I do see it the other way around. No racial comments, but they’ll jump in the faces of white kids, trying to scare them. Then they laugh about it.” [Phil Campbell, The Skin Game: White High-School Kids Complain of Racial Harassment, TheStranger.com, May 17, 2001.]

Drugs for Blacks

In May, we reported on a new drug called BiDil that has essentially no effect on whites but reduces mortality in black heart-failure patients by a remarkable 66 percent. It appears to work by increasing the level of nitric oxide in the blood, which dilates blood vessels. Many blacks are deficient in nitric oxide, and are twice as likely as whites to suffer heart failure. The drug has been designed exclusively for blacks and requires one more, blacks-only clinical test to get approval from the FDA. BiDil has the support of the Association of Black Cardiologists.

“Anti-racist” scientists who claim race is biologically meaningless oppose both the drug and the study. “It is disturbing to see reputable scientists and physicians even categorizing things in terms of race,” says Dr. J. Craig Venter of Celera Genomics, the company that recently completed mapping the human genome. “Having medicine based on what somebody looks like coming into a physician’s office is totally scientifically unsound,” he adds. Dr. Venter would presumably prefer people went untreated rather than admit that race is biological.

Jay Cohn of University of Minnesota, who holds the patent for BiDil, appears to understand the irony of such criticism: “Here we have the black community accepting the concept that African-Americans need to be studied as a group, and then we have the scientific community claiming that race is dead,” he says. “It seems to me absolutely ludicrous to suggest that this prominent characteristic that we all recognize when we look at people should not be looked at.” [Victoria Griffith, FDA Paves the Way for First “Ethnic’ Drug, Financial Times (London), March 8, 2001. Sheryl Gay-Stolberg, Skin Deep: Shouldn’t a Pill be Colorblind?, New York Times, May 13, 2001.]

Too White, Too Few

In the 1990s, Iowa grew by only five percent — not enough for Governor Tom Vilsack (D), who fears there could be labor shortages. He wants more immigrants, not only to fill jobs but leaven his 94-percent-white state with much-needed diversity. Many of his constituents like things the way they are. A Des Moines Register poll of the capital area found that 67 percent of respondents want no more diversity. “No, we don’t need more,” says Linda Reynolds, an accountant. “We aren’t ready for what we have.” De Moines’ black mayor, Preston Daniels, takes the governor’s side: “We have to continue to indicate to the public that our community can and should be more diverse and that it will add significantly to the dynamics of our city and our state.”

Diversity opponents point to the meat-packing town of Storm Lake. In 1987 it had only a few non-whites. Today, a third of its 10,000 residents are minorities — mostly Hispanics. In the entire decade of the 1980s there was one murder; in the 1990s there were ten, all non-whites killing other non-whites. The school system is swarming with Spanish-speaking children, and recently got a $10 million federal grant to help cope with them. Mae Greene undoubtedly speaks for the majority when she says: “This is Iowa, not Miami or Southern California. Why would we want to turn Iowa into something it is not? Let those people go somewhere else.”

If the governor has his way it will be Storm Lake’s first Hispanic town councilman who has the last word. “We are the faces of Iowa to come,” says Hector Velez. [E.A. Torriero, Immigration Drive Tests Iowa, Chicago Tribune, May 4, 2001. Thomas Beaumont and John McCormack, Area Diverse Enough, Most Say, Des Moines Register, May 13, 2001.]

Glacial Bias

The state of Michigan awards $2,500 scholarships to students who get top scores on the Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) test. Blacks are 14 percent of the state population but get only seven percent of the scholarships, so the ACLU is suing, claiming MEAP is biased. Blacks were particularly likely to get the following question wrong:

What formed the basins now occupied by the Great Lakes? (a) glaciers, (b) earthquakes, (c) meteors striking the earth, (d) ocean bays being surrounded by water. The correct answer is (a).

Ernest Bauer, a consultant reviewing the test, doubts there is bias. “The reason I’m not comfortable calling it a bias is, when you read the items, there’s no obvious reason for the differences,” he says. Walter Edwards, a professor at Wayne State University who specializes in African-American vernacular English, claims to have found the bias: “The average African-American lives in an urban area or a metropolitan area. They don’t have the experience with their kids of going to the north or seeing glaciers.” [Peggy Walsh-Sanecki, Race Plays a Big Role in MEAP Scores, Detroit Free Press, May 17, 2001, p. 1.]

No Loans for Keisha

Keisha Hardeman is valedictorian of Miller High School in Corpus Christi, Texas. News reports do not indicate her SAT scores, but she is black. Miss Hardeman has been offered admission to MIT, Harvard, Columbia and more than 20 other universities, and has amassed $1.3 million in scholarship offers. She will go to Texas A&M, which will pay all her expenses, including a semester abroad. Miss Hardeman’s parents were willing to take out loans to pay for college but, she says, “I didn’t think that was fair.” The Miller High student with the next-highest total in scholarship offers is James Garza with $331.500. [Paula Caballero, A Texas High School Valedictorian Racks up $1.3 Million in Scholarship Offers, Scripps Howard News Service, June 1, 2001.]

Clever Lobbying

Ever since the killing of James Byrd, the black man whites dragged to death in 1998, the Texas legislature has been wrestling with “hate crime” bills. The Democrat-controlled House passed them but they stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate. This spring the exercise was repeated, with a bill stuck in the Senate despite considerable media clamor.

On the night of May 2, someone painted white swastikas and other racial graffiti on one of Dallas’ most prominent black churches, St. Luke Community United Methodist. Several black elected officials are members, and the pastor, Zan Holmes, is a prominent racial ambulance-chaser. The bellowing that followed was enough to push the “James Byrd” hate crimes bill through the Senate, and Gov. Rick Perry signed it on May 11.

Now it appears that a church member probably painted the swastikas. The choir practiced until 10:20 p.m. that night, and shortly afterwards a white couple driving by noticed a black man painting something on the outside of the church. Until the media eruption that followed, they thought he was taking part in a youth program, so did not report the incident until several days later. Police discovered that the swastikas were painted with white latex, which was the type of paint used recently to renovate a church office.

Needless to say, Pastor Holmes is indignant about the police investigation: “I consider that to be a worse attack than the attack of the painting, the defacing of the building, for people to deface our personalities, the integrity of this church.” [Hugh Aynesworth, Black Implicated in Desecration Case, Washington Times, May 28, 2001.]

Suicide With a Smile

John Sharp is a former Texas Comptroller and Senator, and possible candidate for Lieutenant Governor of the state. On June 9, 2000, he addressed the Democratic Hispanic Caucus at the Texas Democratic Convention. He began by saying that his “greatest regret” was that his grandfather had not changed the family name to a Spanish one. He then went on to say:

It is time for the Democratic party and for all of us to work harder than we ever did before and make sure that there is a Hispanic surname at the very top of the ballot in 2002. And if that means that some of us gringos are going to have to give up some life-long dreams, then we’ve got to do that.

Stark Racial Divide

Last year, the Chicago City Council voted 46-1 to urge Congress to consider some form of compensation for slavery. In May, a survey of 898 Illinois voters found strong opposition among whites to the idea. Only five percent thought the government should pay reparations, while 84 percent thought it should not. Among blacks, 66 percent favored reparations and only 15 percent were opposed. [Gary Washburn and Celeste Garrett, Very Few Whites, Most Blacks Want Slavery Redress, Chicago Tribune, May 20, 2001.]

Quis Custodiet

It is the job of the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) to keep Canada free of prejudice, discrimination, and insensitivity. Apparently, it can’t keep itself free of these scourges. An internal report found deep dissatisfaction among the CHRC’s 230 employees, who complained of spiteful managers, sexual discrimination, and a “poisoned work environment.” Forty percent of the staff quit in the last 12 months, and 37 percent of those who remain are hoping to quit soon. [Ian Hunter, Equality’s Bloated Bureaucracy, Globe and Mail (Toronto), May 23, 2001.]

Disunited Nations

The UN is gearing up for a much-ballyhooed meeting to be held this summer in South Africa on “Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.” It is supposed to come up with a comprehensive action plan to rid the world of wickedness, and the regional conferences held to prepare for the grand finale have duly degenerated into Third-World attacks on the West. The Asian group kicked out Australia and New Zealand, which ended up in the European group. The Africans insisted on making the trans-Atlantic slave trade the centerpiece of the conference, and are demanding that it be declared a crime against humanity. They also want reparations.

In a rare display of backbone, the Americans and Europeans have refused, saying they will not call the slave trade a crime against humanity because that would be an admission of guilt that could lead to legal claims. The Bush administration and some European governments have even said if slavery of more than 100 years ago is the central theme rather than abuses of today, they will not attend the conference. Some Africans say the conference would be better off without them. [Stumbles Galore in Walk-Up to U.N. Racism Conference, Foxnews. com, May 22, 2001.]

Hail, Cesar

Hispanics are now the largest ethnic group in Dallas, Texas, accounting for 36 percent of the population. It now appears that the City Council will do away with the Presidents Day holiday — observed on the third Monday of February — and replace it with César Chávez Day, to be celebrated on March 31. “It is time that we start recognizing the contributions of people of color,” council member John Loza explains. Dallas is therefore poised to be the first Texas city to make a holiday for the Mexican farm-worker organizer. Tarrant County and El Paso County already give their employees a holiday on Chávez Day. [Dave Michaels, Chávez Holiday Likely: Dallas Would Cut Presidents Day, Dallas Morning News, May 17, 2001.]

La Vida Loca

Twenty-seven percent of whites, 16 percent of blacks, and only 11 percent of Hispanics own firearms. An anti-gun group called the Violence Policy Center finds that despite their low gun-ownership rates, Hispanics are second only to blacks in rates of firearm injury and death. On a per capita basis Hispanics are three times more likely than whites to be hurt or killed with a gun, and their assailants are overwhelmingly other Hispanics. [Karen Brock, Gun Violence Research Overlooks Hispanics, Buffalo News, May 27, 2001.]

No Penis, No Peace

Police in Nigeria have been dealing with a case of mass hysteria that has resulted in at least twelve people being “necklaced” (burned to death by setting fire to a gasoline-filled tire put around their necks) for making people’s genitals disappear. The killing began in the town of Ilesa, where a Christian evangelical sect calling itself the Brotherhood of the Cross had gathered for its annual convention. While members of the sect were preaching door-to-door, someone claimed they had made his penis disappear. An angry mob attacked the Brotherhood, burning eight of them to death, along with two buses and a car. There have been similar incidents in the Nigerian state of Oyo, where six people were burnt to death in March. [Mannir Dan-Ali, “Missing’ Penis Sparks Mob Lynching, BBC, April 12, 2001.]