"'PURE GENOCIDE' IN NIGERIA - "CHRISTIANS UNDER ATTACK" - by John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera, Breakpoint.org, July 10, 2018; http://www.breakpoint.org/2018/07/breakpoint-pure-genocide-in-nigeria/ [AS I SEE IT: As we in the West go to our worship services each week, we take it for granted that we are safe from any threat. We cannot imagine what horrors our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world face regularly to express their faith such as those in the Middle East and places in Africa like Nigeria. But recently, my church was alerted by a threat made against it by someone and I was quite surprised to arrive one Sunday to find an off-duty police officer stationed inside the front door to offer security just in case. No, it's nothing like what those in this article face but sadly even we in the West can no longer assume we are completely safe when we gather for worship. At least the threats do not seem related to the faith we practice.- Stan]
It’s one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a Christian. What’s going on right now in Nigeria is “pure genocide.”
Recently on BreakPoint, I said that it took a lot of courage to be a Christian in Iraq. Just two years ago, the Obama administration called what ISIS was doing to Iraqi Christians “genocide.” Unfortunately, there are other places in the world where being a Christian requires a lot of courage as well, and, where the treatment of Christians merits the word “genocide.”
One such place: Nigeria. By most estimates, the population of Nigeria is almost evenly divided between Muslims and Christians. That religious split largely follows geographic lines: The northern part of the country is predominantly Muslim, the eastern and southern parts of the country heavily Christian. The middle, sometimes called the “Middle Belt,” is ethnically and religiously diverse.
Not surprisingly, what makes Nigeria so dangerous for Christians originates in the Islamic north. There, Christians have been on the receiving end of a campaign Open Doors calls “religious cleansing,” that is, an attempt “to eradicate Christianity” from the region.One of the most notorious Islamist terrorist groups in the world, Boko Haram, is responsible for killing thousands of Christians and displacing countless more in northern Nigeria. But Boko Haram isn’t the only group targeting Christians there.
In a statement released in late June, Christian leaders claimed that “over 6,000 persons—mostly children, women and the aged—have been maimed and killed in night raids by armed Fulani herdsmen.” The Fulani are an ethnic group who are overwhelmingly Muslim, and their raids are not always at night. In April, Fulani herdsman attacked a group of Christians during Sunday mass, killing two priests and seventeen parishioners. The same attackers then razed fifty homes belonging to Christians. In fact, earlier in the year, on New Year’s Day, 72 people died at the hands of a Fulani attack.
In their statement, Nigerian Christian leaders also complained about the “continuous abduction of under aged Christian girls by Muslim youths…” These girls “are forcefully converted to Islam and taken in for marriage without the consent of their parents.”
The language used by Christian leaders in Nigeria in their statement to describe what is happening, “pure genocide,” is hard to disagree with. As was the call, directed toward the national government to “stop this senseless … blood shedding… and avoid a state of complete anarchy where the people are forced to defend themselves.” Unfortunately, Nigerian officials are downplaying, if not outright denying, the religious dimension of what’s happening. Instead, they’re calling this a conflict over resources, in this case, over land.
Don’t believe it. For starters, the security forces are, in the words of the statement, “skewed to one religion and one region of the country,” that is, Islam and the Islamic north. What’s more, this idea conveniently glosses over the one-sided nature of the violence in the region: The Fulani are the hammer and the Christians are the nails. Finally, any student of the history of genocide or ethnic cleansing knows that conflicts over resources are often just the trigger that unleashes the sort of mass violence we’re currently seeing in the nation of Nigeria.
So, what can we do about this? First, we must pray, continually, for our brothers and sisters there. Second, we have to encourage the White House to continue pressing Nigeria about what’s happening in its Middle Belt, as it did during an April meeting with the Nigerian president.
President Trump called what’s happening then a “serious problem.” That’s an understatement. It’s past time to make sure that the response to the problem is equally as serious and not understated at all.
[italics and colored emphasis mine]
RESOURCES - We must continue to pray for the believers in Nigeria. Click on the links in our Resources section for information that will allow you to pray specifically for the plight of the Christians there.
"Christians flee growing persecution in Africa and Middle East" - Harriet Sherwood | The Guardian | January 12, 2016; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/13/christians-flee-growing-persecution-africa-middle-east
"Statement by church leaders in Plateau State" - CSW.org | June 29, 2018; https://www.csw.org.uk/2018/06/29/news/4017/article.htm
"Benue killings: Mass burial held for dozens killed in New Year's day attacks" - Bukola Adebayo and Stephanie Busari | CNN.com | January 11, 2018; https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/11/africa/benue-killings-mass-burial/index.html
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"4-DAY KILLING SPREE BY FULANI MILITANTS TAKES THE LIVES OF 200 CHRISTIANS IN NIGERIA" - Open Doors, July 9, 2018,
https://www.opendoorsusa.org/videos/killing-spree-fulani-herdsmen-christians-nigeria-jos
Recently on BreakPoint, I said that it took a lot of courage to be a Christian in Iraq. Just two years ago, the Obama administration called what ISIS was doing to Iraqi Christians “genocide.” Unfortunately, there are other places in the world where being a Christian requires a lot of courage as well, and, where the treatment of Christians merits the word “genocide.”
One such place: Nigeria. By most estimates, the population of Nigeria is almost evenly divided between Muslims and Christians. That religious split largely follows geographic lines: The northern part of the country is predominantly Muslim, the eastern and southern parts of the country heavily Christian. The middle, sometimes called the “Middle Belt,” is ethnically and religiously diverse.
Not surprisingly, what makes Nigeria so dangerous for Christians originates in the Islamic north. There, Christians have been on the receiving end of a campaign Open Doors calls “religious cleansing,” that is, an attempt “to eradicate Christianity” from the region.One of the most notorious Islamist terrorist groups in the world, Boko Haram, is responsible for killing thousands of Christians and displacing countless more in northern Nigeria. But Boko Haram isn’t the only group targeting Christians there.
In a statement released in late June, Christian leaders claimed that “over 6,000 persons—mostly children, women and the aged—have been maimed and killed in night raids by armed Fulani herdsmen.” The Fulani are an ethnic group who are overwhelmingly Muslim, and their raids are not always at night. In April, Fulani herdsman attacked a group of Christians during Sunday mass, killing two priests and seventeen parishioners. The same attackers then razed fifty homes belonging to Christians. In fact, earlier in the year, on New Year’s Day, 72 people died at the hands of a Fulani attack.
In their statement, Nigerian Christian leaders also complained about the “continuous abduction of under aged Christian girls by Muslim youths…” These girls “are forcefully converted to Islam and taken in for marriage without the consent of their parents.”
The language used by Christian leaders in Nigeria in their statement to describe what is happening, “pure genocide,” is hard to disagree with. As was the call, directed toward the national government to “stop this senseless … blood shedding… and avoid a state of complete anarchy where the people are forced to defend themselves.” Unfortunately, Nigerian officials are downplaying, if not outright denying, the religious dimension of what’s happening. Instead, they’re calling this a conflict over resources, in this case, over land.
Don’t believe it. For starters, the security forces are, in the words of the statement, “skewed to one religion and one region of the country,” that is, Islam and the Islamic north. What’s more, this idea conveniently glosses over the one-sided nature of the violence in the region: The Fulani are the hammer and the Christians are the nails. Finally, any student of the history of genocide or ethnic cleansing knows that conflicts over resources are often just the trigger that unleashes the sort of mass violence we’re currently seeing in the nation of Nigeria.
So, what can we do about this? First, we must pray, continually, for our brothers and sisters there. Second, we have to encourage the White House to continue pressing Nigeria about what’s happening in its Middle Belt, as it did during an April meeting with the Nigerian president.
President Trump called what’s happening then a “serious problem.” That’s an understatement. It’s past time to make sure that the response to the problem is equally as serious and not understated at all.
[italics and colored emphasis mine]
RESOURCES - We must continue to pray for the believers in Nigeria. Click on the links in our Resources section for information that will allow you to pray specifically for the plight of the Christians there.
"Christians flee growing persecution in Africa and Middle East" - Harriet Sherwood | The Guardian | January 12, 2016; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/13/christians-flee-growing-persecution-africa-middle-east
"Statement by church leaders in Plateau State" - CSW.org | June 29, 2018; https://www.csw.org.uk/2018/06/29/news/4017/article.htm
"Benue killings: Mass burial held for dozens killed in New Year's day attacks" - Bukola Adebayo and Stephanie Busari | CNN.com | January 11, 2018; https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/11/africa/benue-killings-mass-burial/index.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"4-DAY KILLING SPREE BY FULANI MILITANTS TAKES THE LIVES OF 200 CHRISTIANS IN NIGERIA" - Open Doors, July 9, 2018,
https://www.opendoorsusa.org/videos/killing-spree-fulani-herdsmen-christians-nigeria-jos
I appreciate how this article provides background behind the conflict and genocide in Nigeria, from the ethnic makeup of the country to the suffering of Christians. Justice and deliverance are so desperately needed, but prayer most importantly.
ReplyDelete-herb