MEDIA SCOPE: A very public, and very global, clash of religion and media has been played out recently in Nigeria - with devastating results. Yesterday, the secretary general of Nigeria's highest Islamic body said he would study a "fatwa" or religious decree against the author of a controversial newspaper article that sparked riots in the northern Muslim city of Kaduna last week, leaving 220 people dead .

But Lateef Adegbite, secretary general of the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs in Nigeria, hinted that the order for the death of the Christian journalist, whose article on the Miss World pageant offended many Muslims, would be found inappropriate.

Muslims were enraged by the November 16th article which suggested the Prophet Mohammad would probably have married one of the contestants in the pageant, which has since been relocated from Nigeria to London because of the bloodshed.

Several contestants had previously pulled out of the pageant, protesting at a ruling of Nigeria's Sharia Supreme Council that a woman who bore a child out of wedlock be put to death by stoning. Miss Ireland was among a number of contestants who had planned to take part in the Lagos-based contest in the hope that they would lead the world's media to focus on the injustice of Islamic Sharia law as it is being applied in Nigeria. But the contest's own rules may seem similarly controlling. Miss World contestants are not allowed to be married. According to the Miss Ethiopia (World) website, Miss World "shall not become pregnant during the year that she is the reigning Miss Ethiopia World, without the permission of the president of the Ethiopian Life Foundation."