Violence against Christians merits U.S. pressure on Nigeria’s government for strong countermeasures.
By Robert Royal
The world tends not to pay much attention to the persecution of Christians, even though Christians are attacked and repressed in more countries than any other religious group. But sometimes the persecution is so extreme that it gains, at least briefly, some purchase on public attention. The steady slaughter of Christians in the West African nation of Nigeria is one such case. In recent weeks, the violence has prompted Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to introduce legislation holding accountable Nigerian officials who facilitate Islamist jihadist attacks on Christians, and HBO talk-show host Bill Maher excoriated the news media and others for largely ignoring the bloody persecution of Christians.
According to a report issued in August by the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (Intersociety), an African nongovernmental group that documents human rights violations, in the first seven months of this year alone, more than 7,000 Christians were killed in Nigeria. Christians of various denominations and moderate Muslims regularly die at the hands of Boko Haram, Fulani militants and other violent actors. Numbers vary and are difficult to verify, but between 2009 and 2023 in Nigeria, Intersociety reports at least 52,000 Christians killed, 18,500 abducted and unlikely to have survived, and more than 20,000 churches and Christian schools attacked.
Mixed in with religious motives involved in these dire statistics, of course, are conflicts over land, abductions for ransom (especially of Catholic priests), and other points of conflict. But the specifically anti-Christian targeting in the great majority of these cases defies other explanation. Yet in March, amid U.S. congressional criticism, the Nigerian government said violence in the country was “not driven by religious bias or targeted against any particular religious group.”
Though officially there is no state religion, Nigeria is a member the Organization for Islamic Cooperation, which calls itself “the collective voice of the Muslim world.” And the government does little — often seemingly nothing — to protect Christians from Islamist militants. Which is why it is puzzling that in 2021 the Biden administration removed Nigeria from the list of Countries of Particular Concern over religious liberty. The Trump administration should, at a minimum, return Nigeria to the CPC list. In July, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom urged just such a move, which can carry with it significant economic and diplomatic consequences.
The Western coalition that brought pressure to bear on the Islamic State terrorists in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East shrank the group’s territory to virtually nothing by 2019. But ISIS affiliates such as Islamic State West Africa and Boko Haram have carried on the jihadist cause, in particular waging a campaign of persecution and slaughter against Christians across much of Africa. The problem is most serious in Nigeria, the most populous African nation, with about 242 million people, with Muslims a slim majority. Historically, Muslims were mostly concentrated in the northern half of the country — where 12 states have embraced sharia law — while Christians largely occupied the south.
Local police forces, in violation of federal law, harshly treat Christians for sharia violations, imposing punishments that include the death penalty, amputations and beatings. Police enforce on Christians sharia regulations about dress, public eating and drinking during Ramadan. As observers note, though, such treatment is not universal: In Nigeria’s west, where more-moderate Muslims dominate, Muslim-Christian relations are largely peaceful and toleration generally prevails.
According to Open Doors, a U.S. group that tracks Christian persecution, 82 percent of Christians killed around the world from October 2022 to September 2023 met their end in Nigeria. It is imperative that the United Nations and the European Union, and especially the United States, with its powerful leverage, apply pressure to Nigeria. If a such a large country, roughly divided evenly between Muslims and Christians, continues to be the scene of thousands of Christian deaths every year, without serious consequences, that not only enables a grave injustice but also suggests to Muslim extremists everywhere that they can act with impunity.
Robert Royal is the author of “The Martyrs of the New Millennium: The Global Persecution of Christians in the Twenty-First Century.”
