Lagos, Nigeria ? Angry mobs stabbed and set fire to bystanders in rioting that erupted Thursday after a newspaper suggested Islam’s founding prophet would have approved of the Miss World beauty pageant.

At least 50 people were killed and 200 injured, Nigeria’s Red Cross president said.

The violent demonstrators in the northern city of Kaduna burned churches and rampaged through the streets until hundreds of soldiers were deployed to restore calm and enforce a dusk-to-dawn curfew.

“A lot of people died. We don’t know yet exactly how many : more than 50,” said Emmanuel Ijewere, the president of the Nigerian Red Cross.

Street demonstrations began Wednesday with the burning of an office of ThisDay newspaper in Kaduna after it published an article questioning Muslim groups that have condemned the Miss World pageant, which will be staged Dec. 7 in the Nigerian capital, Abuja. Muslim groups say the pageant promotes sexual promiscuity and indecency.

“What would (the prophet) Muhammad think? In all honesty, he would probably have chosen a wife from among them (the contestants),” Isioma Daniel wrote in Saturday’s article.

The newspaper ran a brief front-page apology Monday, followed by a more lengthy retraction Thursday, saying the offending passage had run by mistake.

In Thursday’s rioting, more than 50 people were stabbed, bludgeoned or burned to death and 200 were seriously injured, Ijewere said. At least four churches were destroyed, he said.

Most of the bodies were taken by Red Cross workers and other volunteers to local mortuaries. Many people remained inside homes that were set afire by the demonstrators, Ijewere said.

Schools and shops hurriedly closed as hordes of young men, shouting “Allahu Akhbar,” or “God is great,” ignited makeshift street barricades made of tires and garbage, sending plumes of black smoke rising above the city. Others were heard chanting, “Down with beauty” and “Miss World is sin.”