Islamists Are Slaughtering Thousands of Christians But the Media Don’t Tell Us
If 16.2 million Muslims had been displaced in sub-Saharan Africa due to violence by Christians, what would be the level of coverage in a Western news outlet such as the BBC? One imagines it would be quite substantial.
Open Doors, a charity which supports persecuted Christians around the world, is trying to draw attention to the displacement of this number of Christians in the region by Islamist violence. But it faces an uphill task in generating interest in the mainstream Western media.
Open Doors has produced a film featuring Pastor Barnabas, who ministers to a Christian congregation in a displacement camp for Christians who have fled Islamist violence in Benue State in northern Nigeria. He is shown saying: “Millions of Christians are displaced, here in Nigeria. Millions of Christians are displaced in Africa. The news doesn’t care about it, politicians don’t talk about it, governments don’t talk about it, global politics don’t talk about it. Nobody talks about it.”
The film shows Pastor Barnabas stooping down and indicating the tent in which his family of eight has been living for nearly five years. Their home is made of palm leaves and mosquito nets with some cardboard evident. “It’s smaller than a double mattress,” he says.
Open Doors reports:
Last year, and for many years, more Christians were killed for their faith in Nigeria than the rest of the world combined. The same violent persecution is quickly spreading across other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, as Islamic extremist ideology spreads: as well as these murders, huge numbers of believers are injured, abducted, sexually assaulted or forced to flee from their homes.
Pastor Barnabas describes the attack by militant Muslim Fulani herdsmen on his family farm: “I was on the farm with my brother, Everen, and his wife, Friday. We heard shooting. We saw people running in different directions. We didn’t know what was happening.
“My brother was shot by the militants, and my brother’s wife was also shot and then macheted and killed by the militants.”
Earlier this month, Christian Today publicised a report by the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA) which says nearly 17,000 Nigerian Christians lost their lives because of violence between 2019 and 2023.
The reports says that over half the deaths (55%) were at the hands of radicalised Muslim Fulani herdsmen. “Islamist extremists enjoy relative freedom to carry out atrocities against civilians in large regions of Nigeria,” ORFA observed.
The study records that there were Muslim fatalities in the violence but the number of Christian victims (16,769) more than doubled the number of Muslims killed (6,235).
“In states where attacks occur, proportional loss to Christian communities is exceptionally high. In terms of state populations, 6.5 times as many Christians are being murdered as Muslims,” said ORFA.
Senior ORFA analyst Frans Vierhout said: “Millions of people are left undefended. For years, we’ve heard of calls for help being ignored, as terrorists attack vulnerable communities. Now the data tells its own story.”
The BBC does occasionally cover the violence in Nigeria. For example, in June 2022 BBC Verify did a feature on ‘Are attacks on Christians in Nigeria on the rise?‘
But it would appear that the general lack of journalistic interest in the current crisis in sub-Saharan Africa is down to the woke mind virus that has infected the Western media. If the story were about Muslims or LGBT people rather than about Christians, wouldn’t Western news organisations be putting a lot more resources into covering it?
Julian Mann, a former Church of England vicar, is an Evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.
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Why can’t you bring yourself to say Muslim violence instead of this weasel Islamist violence?
They do the same word play on GB News.
Yes Musulman never used. Jihad never used. Christophobia never used. 5000 Black Christians murdered every year by the Mahometan Jihad. Hundreds of women and girls raped and sex enslaved every year. 80 churches on average torched per year often with priests and laity inside.
Black Lives Do Not Matter if you are Christian.
Well said!
Islamist: “1850, “a Muslim,” from Islam + -ist. Later also “scholar of Islamic studies.” By 1962 specifically as “strict fundamentalist Sunni Muslim.” Islamism is attested from 1747 as “the religion of the Muslims, Islam.” Islamite “a Muslim” is from 1786 (1768 as an adjective); Islamize/Islamise (v.) is from 1849.”
In this BBC article vaguely commemorating the 9/11 terrorist attacks, plus the article it links to, not one mention of the word “terrorist” appears. Rather they are referred to as “Islamist suicide attackers”. Or “hijackers”. This is an outrage, as it appears today, on the anniversary!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyw8wqndgvo
They also mentioned it on the World Service propaganda channel on the radio this morning; probably using the same script. I can remember the early coverage of it quite well. When it happened it was early days for media access for lots of us at work, and I did not have any external access at the time on my own kit, but close by, the project manager I worked under did have www access, and he had the habit of watching the BBC output around lunchtime, most days. It was via him that I learnt about 9/11, quite early. It was a bit surreal to me, as I have in the past been up one of the World Trade Center towers, back in 1994. One of them had a floor which catered for the tourists, which is where I was on a visit. Not only that, but around the same time in 1994, I went on a sight seeing helicopter ride around Manhattan, at roughly the top height of those towers. They don’t do things like that anymore (not just because the building is no longer there), but then, in those days, security was lax c.f. modern standards. Back then,… Read more »
Islam ruins everything. And I mean… everything.
Even Muslims.
Yes there is a general lack of journalistic interest, but it’s always been this way, as if the horrors experienced across Africa and also the Middle East by jihadists, and the human rights abuses due to Islamic countries living under Sharia are mere white noise now. I think one obvious reason for that is that the MSM, the government’s propaganda mouthpiece, doesn’t want people to know the real threat level that importing so many barbaric death cult followers will have on our Western societies, but it would seem we’re all finally realising that reality for ourselves, whether we like it or not. The reality cannot be suppressed forever. For instance, all those people who attended the ‘Festival of Diversity’ in Solingen, Germany were of the ”Refugees Welcome” type, and look where that got them. Psycho jihadists don’t discriminate and being a ‘useful idiot’ will not save you. This article focuses on the horrendous things going on in Burkina Faso, perpetrated by possible future ‘Dinghy People’. After all, it’s just a numbers game. The more you import from these areas of the world and from this particular religion, the more terrorists and dangerous psychopaths will inevitably slip through the net. We… Read more »
Here are our friends from our favourite religion doing a bit of dechristianining Africa https://kaotic.com/video/0becd562_20240906045154_t
God Almighty.
I feckin hate the Ropers.
The contents of the Quran and the Hadiths would make the KKK and Goebbels blush. And yet we have imported millions of zombie followers of this repellent creed into the West. Isn’t it time a brave group of lawyers got together and had the whole horrendous volume and its diseased appendix officially decreed as ‘Hate Speech’ across Europe? I would happily contribute to the crowdfunding effort.
Religions are very useful for elites in population control. I am beginning to think that the current elite are deliberately promoting islam and supressing all other religions in order to more easily to set up their new world order. Islam does after all mean submission – or so we are told over and over.
People using all sorts of crazy justifications to go around killing people.
Not exactly news, is it? These people kill indiscriminately. It’s mindless violence.
You are right, however I would challenge anybody to find a single sentence in the New Testament that calls for the killing or subjugation of non-Chistians.
In contrast…
I’m an Old Testament kinda guy. And there is to be found plenty of vengeance.
Or rather, not being of a religious persuasion, I see Old and New as two parts of the same thing.
Anyway, Jesus was Jewish. And my thinking happens to align more closely with that of the Jews: that Jesus was a real man, nothing godly about him, who very successfully challenged the status quo and got killed for it. He didn’t rise again. He thus became a martyr (a sort of resurrection) and became even stronger in death than the Jews and Romans ever feared he would become in life.
I always thought of him as like a Derren Brown, Dynamo, street magician-type character. All that turning water into wine etc. Not sure if he ever levitated ( not that I believe David Blaine, he was a bit of a weirdo too ) or anything but if they didn’t have decks of cards back then he’d have to make do with whatever he could find. Shame, I can see Jesus doing a bit of ”pick a card, any card”, or ”look into my eyes, look into my eyes, not around my eyes…” and then the authorities catch wind of him being super popular and influential then cue maximum persecution..
The Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, is the Bible Jesus of Nazareth would have known. The God in it would have been the God He would have known. How could Jesus have become stronger in death when the manner of His death – on the Roman cross – was the one reserved for the most despised criminals? Moreover, Saul of Tarsus, the Apostle Paul, was both a man and a Jew. His preaching only provoked riots in the synagogues. Consequently, there came a point when the followers of Jesus were separated from the synagogue congregations. It was Paul’s theology that provided the basis for much of what developed later. And Paul, a man and a Jew, believed in Jesus’s resurrection from the dead quite literally. Paul was no superstitious peasant, but both highly educated and a member of one of the groups who provided some of the members of the ruling council of the nation. Paul initially opposed the followers of Jesus. Why should he have changed his mind when this lead to so much trouble for him – stoning almost to death, rejection, being robbed by bandits, a life constantly travelling, sometimes in territory that is still difficult to… Read more »
Yes, I have lots of experience of “highly educated” people…
“How could Jesus have become stronger in death when the manner of His death – on the Roman cross – was the one reserved for the most despised criminals?”
In the same way that John Lennon (of Beatles fame) would have become an annoying, ignored nobody, spouting politically correct nonsense on Twitter if he hadn’t been shot dead. As it is, “He” is revered as a god by many.
Well, we are all free to make up our minds.
I didn’t have a religious upbringing. But I spent about 40 years thinking about it and… no, I don’t think Jesus was just some “magician and social influencer”, as the BBC would put it. No, there is something about the Man on the cross, far-far more and deeper than that. The more I think about it, the more I know it.
Funny, cos I know the more I think about things like this, the less I think I know. I’m happy I’ll never know if there’s a god, so I focus on this life. Let the afterlife look after itself.
I don’t believe Jesus was a magician, either. All those “miracles” are other people’s poetic licence. I think Jesus was very wise and smart, and found himself on an irreversible path of truth, regardless how dangerous it was for him. I respect the man that he was. But he’s dead, and if he were to come back to life, he’d be dismayed and angry that so many turned him into a god – precisely what he told them NOT to do. He told them to be free, to have faith in themselves, and not to place their faith in imaginary beings, false gods.
Humans are weird, always looking for light to shine on them. No – seek the light that shines from within you. Light the darkness yourself. I need to know no god. It’s liberating and terrifying in equal measure. If I meet him/her/they I’ll shake their hand heartily.
My holiday in Madagascar where it is mostly Christian & Catholic, with very few Muslims is a vibrant place on a Sunday with people and kids dressed up in their best clothes, and Church bells ringing all over the place. As a non religious person, despite my dad being from the clergy, to me it was quite welcome. A bit like the UK before all the self-hating and importation of Islam became the norm.
And where are the millions of Jews who had lived peacefully in North Africa and through the missle east for generations. Driven out by the religion of peace.
“Millions of Christians are displaced, here in Nigeria”, he says.
Funny how none of the millions of Nigerian immigrants to Britain are ever bothered about this, especially the wealthy Nigerians who have been inserted into positions of power here.
Never mentioned by Nigerian Catholic convert Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke in any of her speeches trying to become leader of the Tory Party on her way to illegally occupy No. 10.
It seems that everything bad that has ever happened in the world is entirely the fault of the White Man, and sorting out Third World problems is entirely the White Man’s Problem… (???)
Thank you Julian Mann for this shocking information.
Most people do not realise that all the land surrounding the Mediterranean sea was Europe.
The Moors conquered half of Europe and Europeans never regained the lost territory on the South and East coasts of the Med.
Spain and Portugal became a Caliphate and remained Islamic territory for centuries after being conquered in 711.
The infidels were given the choice of conversion or to be put to the sword.
I’m sure Black Lives Matter is doing everything it can to highlight this black-on-black Muslim violence.
Perhaps Keir Stalin could take a knee for the Christians being slaughtered by Muslims in Nigeria?
I doubt if it is “woke mind virus”. The subject simply doesn’t sell newspapers and never would. IWHT a vicar would know this.When Jesus Christ was crucified, who spoke up for Him? Afterwards the apostles did, q.v., but not at the time.
Thank you Julian & the DS for highlighting this disgracefully ignored tragedy. Even the conservative journals ignore it – the Spectator for instance, gives little more than a token articles every Easter. It highlights so much the disgusting hypocrisy of our establishment. Please make this a regular feature.