If “religion got us into these messes,” as The Globe and Mail’s Ken Wiwa writes, “can it get us out?”

“In Africa, like anywhere, the best time to imagine the world at peace with itself is just before dawn. At that time of the morning, the world is still heavy with darkness; the air is still and, in the silence, you can almost contemplate what it must have been like on the morning of creation day.

“Yesterday, I lay awake in that twilight zone and found myself thinking about the fighting in Najaf and Darfur. I guess it was the spiritual hour — but I wondered: Why is it that, when land and religion are mixed, hellfires break out?

“…If you know your African history, then you will have come across the old adage that before the European came, Africans had the land and Europeans the Bible. Now the Europeans have the land and Africans the Bible.”