Why Does No One Protest The Ongoing Slaughter Of Christians By Muslims In Nigeria?

January 09, 2024 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

What is it about Israel that inspires that special intense hatred and anger among the cadres of the left? “Anti-semitism” is a description of the phenomenon, and an appropriate one, but tells us nothing about the causes, and particularly does not explain why among all the conflicts in the world this one dispute should be the focus of all the left’s energy.

Yesterday it was more of same here in New York City. The New York Post reports this morning on well-organized protests yesterday that blocked various bridges and a tunnel that cross the rivers into Lower Manhattan. The headline is “Anti-Israel protesters create commuter chaos at three NYC bridges, Holland Tunnel — over 330 taken into custody.” Fortunately, I don’t have to navigate any of these crossings on a regular basis; but for those who do, it was a nightmare. Some of the protesters are Muslims of Middle Eastern origin, but most are not; they’re just run-of-the-mill everyday local leftists for whom being anti-Israel and anti-Jew has become the cause du jour. The Post has a list of some of the organizations behind the latest protests, which include “the Democratic Socialists of America, Jewish Voice for Peace and the Palestinian Youth Movement.” And of course, actress Susan Sarandon had to get into the act. From the Post: “Susan Sarandon . . . said at the protest, ‘There’s no place for genocide.’”

“Genocide”? I’m still struggling to understand how the treatment of Palestinians by Israelis at all fits the definition of that word. Meanwhile, there is no shortage in the world of behavior that does clearly fit the definition of the word genocide without any need to contort its meaning. But for some reason you won’t find the Democratic Socialists of America or Susan Sarandon or any other leftist group uttering a peep about these real genocides.

For Exhibit A, how about the ongoing slaughter of Christians by Muslims in Nigeria? Do you even know about that one? If you do, it’s not from reading the New York Times, or from watching CNN. To get any details, you will need to go to a specialized site that specifically covers this subject. I recommend the Gatestone Institute, and its frequent contributor, Raymond Ibrahim. Ibrahim’s most recent post (from January 7) on the ongoing genocide of Nigerian Christians at the hands of Muslims is “'A Gory Christmas': Christians Slaughtered in the Nigerian Genocide.”

The gist of the latest news is that Muslims in Central Nigeria used the occasion of the Christmas holidays, particularly December 24 and 25, to undertake a round of massacres against Christians. Ibrahim:

While around much of the world, the holiday was being celebrated with peace and joy, in Nigeria, starting on Christmas Eve and into Christmas Day, Muslims massacred nearly 200 Christians. During this holy time, "well-armed" Muslim Fulani tribesmen hacked, stabbed, riddled with bullets, and burned alive their Christian victims, many of whom were in the process of celebrating Christmas. . . . More than 300 Christians were also seriously wounded, 29,350 people displaced, and countless homes and churches — including 221 homes in just one village — torched during the jihadist raids.

Ibrahim then cites a source called the Christian Post, from December 30, with this quote:

"At least 25 communities across three Local Government Areas [in Plateau State] were targeted. Survivors recounted militia men attacking in large numbers, indiscriminately killing and destroying homes, vehicles, farmlands and other properties. About 37 individuals, primarily women, children and the disabled, were burned to death in their homes. Eight churches and parsonages were also destroyed..."

This was by no means a one-off event. Rather, it is part of an ongoing campaign of slaughter that has been going on for a decade and more. Ibrahim’s post has some of the history. The big picture is that the North of Nigeria is mostly Muslim, the South mostly Christian; and then there is a middle zone — including the current flashpoint, Plateau State — where the Muslims and Christians live in close proximity. There, the Muslims regularly slaughter the Christians. Excerpt:

Muslims are now openly committing genocide against Christians in Nigeria, as confirmed by international observers. According to one report, between just 2009 and April 10, 2023, 52,250 Christians "have been butchered or hacked to death" in Nigeria. Since then, that number has continued to grow -- not only due to the 200 slain on Christmas, but the many others who have been slaughtered since April 10, 2023, as documented in the monthly "Persecution of Christians" reports. Also since 2009, 18,000 churches and 2,200 Christian schools were attacked, many "destroyed in part or in whole including being razed or burned down."

Follow the links in that excerpt for much further detail.

By any objective standard, this ongoing slaughter ought to be big international news. But why do you have the sense that you have barely heard of it? It’s because our mainstream media flatly refuse to cover it. My Google search of the New York Times on the subject turns up one article from June 2022 about an attack on a church in a town called Owo (in the Southwest of the country, and thus not even in the central zone where most of the violence is occurring), and nothing else since 2012. To its partial credit, the Associated Press has had occasional coverage of the subject, including this December 26 piece about the Christmas 2023 massacres. But, as Ibrahim notes, the AP barely mentions that this is a matter of almost entirely unprovoked attacks by Muslims against Christinas, instead wildly attempting to spin the matter as somehow a dispute between “herders” (who are Muslims) and “farmers” (who are Christians) over resources like land and water. Ibrahim:

In its report on last Christmas's slaughter of nearly 200 Christians, for instance, the Associated Press (AP) failed to mention that the massacres occurred during Christmas, just as it failed to mention the identities of the attackers (Muslims) and their victims (Christians). Rather, it presented the conflict, as many commentators increasingly do, as a supposedly regrettable byproduct of climate change – which is, according to them, is forcing herdsmen (Muslims) to encroach on the lands of farmers (Christians).

This ongoing genocide is completely heinous. There is nothing unfair or improper about criticizing the perpetrators in the harshest terms available. They should be condemned. If there is to be a protest about “genocide,” why not this one? Call me “Islamophobic” if you want. I don’t even know what the term means. It is not a “phobia” to call out someone who is committing genocide for committing genocide.

The victims of this genocide are all black. Is that why the left has no interest? They will have to answer that question for themselves. I agree with this from Ibrahim:

[F]or the mainstream media and many politicians, black lives — well over 50,000 and counting — apparently do not matter. At least not when those lives are Christian and being slaughtered by Muslims.

As for the Democratic Socialists of America, Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestinian Youth Movement, Susan Sarandon, et al., I’ll believe you actually care about “genocide” when you protest real genocide. Until then, you are exposed for what you are, which is rank anti-semites.

Watchdog Rips State Dept. Decision to Give Nigeria, India a Pass on Religious Freedom, Again

Patrick Goodenough | December 5, 2022, Tags: 

 

The State Department’s decision to exclude Nigeria and India from a blacklist of countries where severe religious persecution is occurring has drawn a sharp rebuke from a statutory watchdog, which called the decision “inexplicable.”

In its second set of annual “country of particular concern” (CPC) designations under the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), the Biden State Department overruled the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recommendations on Nigeria and India.

“There is no justification for the State Department’s failure to recognize Nigeria or India as egregious violators of religious freedom, as they each clearly meet the legal standards for designation as CPCs,” said the commission’s chair Nury Turkel. 

He noted that the State Department’s own annual report on international religious freedom, published last June, included “numerous examples of particularly severe religious freedom violations in Nigeria and India.”...........To Read More.....

• State Dept. Explains Omission of India and Nigeria as Countries of Concern for Religious Freedom Violations

My Take - I guess all those dead bodies don't count in their assessment? 

The Unspoken Genocide of Christians in Nigeria

The black lives that don’t matter.

November 25, 2022 by Raymond Ibrahim 7 Comments

Did you know that, all throughout sub-Saharan Africa—in Nigeria, Mozambique, the Central African Republic, Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo—Muslims have for many years been terrorizing and slaughtering Christians? Nor is there any hope on the horizon: problems that cannot be honestly addressed are doomed to persist in perpetuity. Enter the so-called “mainstream media.” As far as they are concerned, the persecution of Christians in Africa is a byproduct of economic and territorial grievances.

One report, titled, “How poverty and corruption fuel terrorism across Africa,” is emblematic.  After citing  an incident where “jihadis” connected to the Islamic State slaughtered dozens, it insists that such terrorist attacks, which  “are on the rise across the African continent,” are “a consequence of poverty, domestic grievances new and old…”  This has been the mainstream media’s argument, and they’re sticking to it — no matter all the mountains of contradictory evidence.

Take the little-known genocide of Christians in Nigeria. According to an August 2021 report, since the Islamic insurgency began in earnest in July 2009, more than 60,000 Christians have either been murdered during raids or abducted, never to be seen again. During this same timeframe, approximately 20,000 churches and Christian schools were torched and destroyed by “Allahu Akbar” screaming Muslims.  According to the World Watch List’s latest reporting, 79 percent of all Christians killed for their faith were killed in Nigeria, for a total of 4,650.............

• 1: Muslim Fulani herdsmen hacked to death with machetes six Christians.
• 11: Muslims murdered a Christian while abducting a pastor and wounding his wife.
• 18: Muslim Fulani killed three Christians during a raid on a Christian village, “after slaughtering at least 22 others in the same area in the past three weeks.”
• 21: More machete-wielding Muslim herdsmen massacred 15 Christians in midnight raids on two Christian villages.
• 23: Muslim Fulani raided six predominantly Christian villages in the same region of Benue state. “These attacks by the herdsmen have left dozens of Christians dead and several more with gunshot injuries and machete attack wounds,” an area resident said.
• 17: During an all-night prayer vigil inside a church, Muslim Fulani broke in and abducted dozens of Christians. Less than one week earlier, 60 other Christians were abducted from the same denomination in another region of the country.
• 4: Gunmen kidnapped dozens of Christians from church, including the pastor’s son.

Responding to these and other attacks, a recent statement from the Southern Kaduna Peoples Union said, There is still no breathing space for Christian communities … as terrorists, jihadists, bandits and armed herdsmen have continued to plunder and wreck Christian communities…To Read More...

Nigeria and the Cost of Bad Government

October 16, 2022 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

In a recent column about Haiti, I cited a New York Times column and expressed puzzlement that the author could write about that nation’s poverty and barely mention the role of economic policy.

Today, we’re going to focus on Nigeria.

Just like two days ago, let’s start by laying out some facts about the quality (or lack thereof) of the country’s economic policy.

We’ll begin with some very bad numbers from the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom. As you can see, Nigeria ranks #124, with failing grades in many key area.

To be sure, ranking #124 is not as bad as being North Korea, which is in last place at #177. Or Venezuela, or Cuba, which are the next-to-last jurisdictions.

 

But we can safely say that Nigeria is a country with very little economic liberty.

And the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World tells a similar story. Nigeria is mired in the next-to-last quartile and ranks #92 (out of 165) in the world.

The country is especially bad on trade policy and the rule of law (legal system and property rights).

So why am I citing all this data?

Because I just read an article in Foreign Affairs about that nation’s economic misery and – just like the article about Haiti – it cries out for correction.

In this case, though, the article actually focuses on the role of economic policy, but from a very misguided perspective.

Authored by Amaka Anku, it tells readers that the problem in Nigeria is that government is not strong enough or active enough.

…despite having the world’s ninth- and tenth-largest natural gas and crude oil reserves, respectively; one of the world’s largest swaths of arable land; and a young and entrepreneurial population, Nigeria has fallen far behind peer countries such as Indonesia and South Korea when it comes to gross national income, GDP per capita, and industrial production. …the state is unable to stimulate broad-based economic growth. …the view that a strong and capable state is required to create the conditions for economic transformation is slowly gaining ground. …Nigeria must aspire to much more…to strengthen the federal government… A better resourced civil service…would make it easier to attract talent and help transform an inefficient bureaucracy into one that can stimulate and effectively regulate local industry. …

Ms. Anku makes several bold assertions, such as the value of “a strong and capable state” and a supposed need “to strengthen the federal government,” in part via “a better-resourced civil service.”

There is an attempt to justify the aforementioned statements.

She claims that nations such as Singapore are the role model. Or even the United States in the 1800s.

…although the role of a strong state in stimulating the economic transformation of newly industrializing countries such as China, Singapore, and South Korea is relatively well understood, ideological blinkers have prevented many Western scholars and policymakers from acknowledging that a strong central government played a similar role in the United States’ own economic takeoff. …Among the most important federal interventions—but by no means the only ones—were extensive subsidies for national transport infrastructure, strategic investments in emerging technologies, and strong support for fair labor and other redistributive policies that ensured a level playing field and improved worker productivity.

I have a semi-friendly response to Anku’s article and a…well, let’s call it a skeptical reaction.

The sympathetic response is that it’s good to have a small-but-competent government. Indeed, that’s the argument made by “state-capacity libertarians” and others who argue that the U.S. had such a system in the 1800s.

Nowadays, Singapore often is a role model for these people. So if Anku is suggesting that Nigeria should copy Singapore (the world’s second-freest economy), I’ll be the first to applaud.

But I suspect that’s not what she has in mind. For instance, Ms. Anku expresses support for “redistributive policies.”

That’s not consistent with Singapore’s approach. And South Korea has a relatively small welfare state compared to other OECD nations. Heck, the United States had no welfare state back in the 1800s.

 

Sadly, I fear Ms. Anku’s concept of “a strong and capable state” is probably akin to what the IMF and other international bureaucracies are peddling.

In  other words, higher taxes and bigger government based on the anti-empirical notion that this will magically deliver prosperity.

Needless to say, that’s bunk.

P.S. I also can’t resist pointing out that it’s silly for Ms. Anku to equate China, Singapore, and South Korea. Singapore and South Korea are examples of “tiger” economies. But China lags well behind because it does not have the pro-market policies that enabled the other two nations (as well as places like Hong Kong and Taiwan) to become very rich very fast.

P.P.S. Trump also misinterpreted U.S. policy in the 1800s.

Editor's Note:  Dan is a really smart guy and a prolific writer, and usually has it right, although some of his views are .....well..... wrong.  Dan's a Libertarian and has this penchant for declaring tariffs evil, but there's a difference between the goal of Trump's tariffs and those of times past, the worldwide economic differences between then and now, and for some reason he seems to fail to understand that, or I should say refuses to understand that.  Otherwise...good article.  RK

 

Muslims Slaughter 20 Nigerian Christians in ‘Retaliation’ For Western Actions

The Islamic terrorist’s "blame game."

Raymond Ibrahim Jul 26, 2022 

 

Last May, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (“ISIS”) published a video of the execution of about 20 Christian civilians in Nigeria.  As with many other such ISIS-type videos, the terrorists stood behind their bound and kneeling victims, before knocking them over and carving their heads off to cries of “Allahu Akbar.”

Before doing so, one of the masked Muslims, speaking in the Hausa language, said that the execution of these Christians was “to avenge the killing of the group’s leaders in the Middle East earlier in 2022.”  This is apparently a reference to ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi—a man with a reputation for extreme brutality—who was killed last February during an airborne raid by U.S. and Kurdish forces in northwestern Syria.

The reader may be pondering how impoverished Christian civilians in Nigeria are connected to or responsible for the activities of U.S. and Kurdish forces in Syria.  The fact is, Muslim terrorists are notorious for offering any number of pretexts—many of which border on the absurd—to justify their cowardly targeting and murdering of the Christian minorities in their midst............Muslims Slaughter 20 Nigerian Christians

 

Nigeria: Muslims seek out and murder two Christians and two Muslims they didn’t think were Islamic enough

May 2, 2021 9:00 am By Robert Spencer

When jihadis kill fellow Muslims, Western analysts use the murders to argue that the jihadis aren’t really Islamic at all. The Islamic State West Africa Province, however, offers a different explanation for why it kills Muslims: “We are fighting unbelievers; Christians and any other person or group going against the teaching of Islam.............

Around 2,000 residents of Geidam fled their homes after members of Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) took control of the town, looting and burning stores. “Everybody is running away because the insurgents have started killing people who are Christians and those with Western education,” said a resident.  “So far they have killed two Christians and two Muslim school teachers. They went to their homes and slaughtered them,” said another local.......To Read More.....

•  Burkina Faso: Muslims murder three European journalists, injure six others in jihad attack 
• Hizballah accused of turning Lebanon into ‘drug smuggling, terrorism hub’ under ‘Iran occupation’
• Trinidad: Families plead with government to repatriate 70 children, 24 women from Islamic State camp in Syria

How the ‘Evil Called Barack Obama’ Enabled the Genocide of Nigerian Christians

April 21, 2020 By Raymond Ibrahim

Not only is Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari behind what several international observers are calling a “genocide” of Christians in his nation, but Barack Hussein Obama played a major role in the Muslim president’s rise to power. These two interconnected accusations are increasingly being made -- not by “xenophobic” Americans but Nigerians themselves, including several leaders and officials.

Most recently, Femi Fani-Kayode, Nigeria’s former minister of culture and tourism, wrote in a Facebook post:

What Obama, John Kerry and Hilary Clinton did to Nigeria by funding and supporting Buhari in the 2015 presidential election and helping Boko Haram in 2014/2015 was sheer wickedness and the blood of all those killed by the Buhari administration, his Fulani herdsmen and Boko Haram over the last 5 years are on their hands.

Kerry’s and Clinton’s appeasement of Boko Haram -- an Islamic terror organization notorious for massacring, enslaving, and raping Christians, and bombing and burning their churches -- is apparently what connects them to this “sheer wickedness.”.........


Fani-Kayode and Barlow are not alone in accusing Obama of “heavily supporting” and “actually funding” a presidential candidate who, since becoming president, has been increasingly accused of turning a blind eye to -- when not giving active support, which included jet fighters -- the worsening slaughter of Christians at the hands of Muslims in his nation. In 2018, former president Jonathan revealed,..........

Based on all these developments, statistics and accusations, it seems clear that the Muslim president is behind the unfolding genocide of Christians in Nigeria -- and Obama helped......To Read More.... 

A Libertarian Paradise in…Nigeria?!?

September 24, 2017 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

(Editor's Note:  I think this Nigeria account is a bit strange since it's clear Nigeria is a failed state  with massive government corruption, incompetent bureaucracy (that's redundant of course), crumbling infrastructure, lack of legitimate jurisprudence, stunningly high infant and maternal mortality and high levels of violence and crime the government is unable to control,  so it's hard to believe there can be an enclave of sanity in the chaos.  But I decided it was thought provoking enough to post anyway.  RK)
 

Whenever someone accuses me of being too dogmatically opposed to government, I tell them that I only got 94 out of 160 possible points when I took Professor Bryan Caplan’s Libertarian Purity Quiz.

That’s barely 70 percent, which makes it seem like I’m some sort of squishy moderate even though I have a nice list of government departments and agencies I want to abolish.

And whenever someone accuses me of being insufficiently opposed to government, I point out that my score on Professor Caplan’s quiz is good enough – albeit just barely – for me to be categorized as a hard-core libertarian.

 

So does this mean I’m a principled moderate, if such a creature even exists?

Actually, it simply means that I’m not an “anarcho-capitalist,” which is the term for people who think all government can be abolished (sort of like the “more libertarian than thou” character in this amusing list of the 24 types of libertarians). If you want to get a perfect score on the Libertarian Purity Quiz, you have to favor abolishing the Department of Defense, the court system, and every other vestige of government.

That being said, I like that there are people pushing the envelope for more liberty. And I tell my anarcho-capitalist friends that we should all work together to get rid of 90 percent of government and then we can quibble over the rest.

Moreover, when I spoke earlier this year at the conference celebrating the 2nd-anniversary of Liberland, I pointed out that there are plenty of examples of how the private sector successfully carries out functions that most people think can only be handled by government.

Which leads me to the focus of today’s column. The U.K.-based Guardian has a fascinating story about a very successful Nigerian church.

The Redeemed Christian Church of God’s international headquarters in Ogun state has been transformed from a mere megachurch to an entire neighbourhood, with departments anticipating its members’ every practical as well as spiritual need. A 25-megawatt power plant with gas piped in from the Nigerian capital serves the 5,000 private homes on site, 500 of them built by the church’s construction company. New housing estates are springing up every few months where thick palm forests grew just a few years ago.

To most people, this story is probably interesting because of what it says about Nigeria and religion.



But since I’m a wonky libertarian, what grabbed my attention was the fact that the church – for all intents and purposes – was building an anarcho-capitalist society.

Education is provided, from creche to university level. The Redemption Camp health centre has an emergency unit and a maternity ward. …“If you wait for the government, it won’t get done,” says Olubiyi. So the camp relies on the government for very little – it builds its own roads, collects its own rubbish, and organises its own sewerage systems. And being well out of Lagos, like the other megachurches’ camps, means that it has little to do with municipal authorities. …according to the head of the power plant, the government sends the technicians running its own stations to learn from them. …the camp’s security is mostly provided by its small army of private guards in blue uniforms.

To be sure, it’s not a purely anarcho-capitalist society. The Nigerian government still has ultimate power to enforce laws.

But from a practical, day-to-day perspective, the church has set up a private city governed by private contract and voluntary cooperation. Sort of a Nigerian version of Galt’s Gulch.

And it’s definitely worth pointing out that it is far more successful than traditional Nigerian cities (and it sounds like it works better than many American cities!).

P.S. Anarcho-capitalism is susceptible to satire, as you can see from this clever video about Somalia and this ad for libertarian breakfast cereal.

 

Observations From the Back Row, 4-8-11

By Rich Kozlovich

Nigeria: Varsity Don Discovers Way to Eradicate Malaria

A breakthrough in malaria control and eradication has been achieved at Covenant University, Ota, where researchers led by Professor Ezekiel Femi Adebiyi have developed tools among which is an evolution - proof insecticide designed to be equipped with the effective capability of DDT but to target only malaria infected mosquitoes. This way, notwithstanding several breeding area, after deployment, Nigeria will soon have mosquitoes free of malaria.......our first targeted product (from project 1), a cuisine of anti-malaria drugs (design and production cost is expected to be cheap, to enhance national large scale usage possibility, for example, should be embedded into the household salt) is to allow rapid cure of malaria in humans.......The second targeted product (from project 11), an advanced but human friendly pesticide DDT (a cocktail of agents) is to help delete rapidly all malaria infected mosquitoes." He assured that the expected result of the successful execution and ...

My Take - This "erudite scholar" seems to have the problem clearly outlined and has now done something the world has been unable to do.....solve it without getting anyone upset. He is going to provide a "cuisine" of "inexpensive" new anti-malaria drugs, with an inexpensive mass distribution system along with a "cocktail" of some whole new form of pesticide that will not upset the greenies. Apparently it is also going to be inexpensive.  As I read this I was wondering if the word "erudite" now means "con artist", but it sounds like a great pitch for grant money.

After all “EPA has awarded five grants totaling $550,000 for bedbug education, outreach and environmental justice projects. The projects supported through these grants will be designed to build broad, results-oriented partnerships for education and outreach programs to reduce bed bug infestations in communities disproportionately exposed to environmental risks. In addition, these awards are intended to support a diverse set of outreach and education projects designed to provide models and examples of outreach and education programs that can be used by other communities in their fight against bed bugs.”

If the real reason for this plague of bed bugs is a lack of “outreach” and not a lack of adequate chemistry, I suppose we should conclude that the whole problem with malaria in Africa has really been a lack of outreach. That and brand new "cuisines and cocktails" of unnamed drugs and pesticides (apparently a whole new pesticide category also) that will only work on malaria infected mosquitoes. All done inexpensively. Amazing!

Genetically Modified Fungus Could Fight Malaria, Reduce DDT Use

In a cramped London laboratory filled with test tubes, bacteria and mosquitoes, scientists are trying to engineer a new weapon in the battle against malaria: a mutant fungus.  For years, Angray Kang at Westminster University and colleagues have been testing whether they could genetically tweak a fungus to kill the malaria parasite carried by mosquitoes.

Now they've found that in lab experiments, mosquitoes exposed to the fungus show a sharp drop in levels of the parasite. If it works that way in the wild, that should make it harder for the disease to infect people. Kang said the mutant fungus could be sprayed onto walls and bednets like insecticides and could be made for a comparable cost.

My Take - Does anyone really believe the greenies won't go absolutely nuts over this? I will guarantee that if this ever becomes reality you will see the greenies demanding studies that show that this doesn’t impact lions, bears, and OH My....anything else they can think of.  And make no mistake about this. They will claim that it causes or exacerbates every known ailment mankind has ever been plagued with, and it kills, deforms or upsets some exotic rare species of frog in some remote jungle or swamp.   Especially if it works! To be green is to be irrational and misanthropic.  They believe that to save the environment people have to die. When are we going to "get it"?