{"id":1923,"date":"2018-09-15T22:01:11","date_gmt":"2018-09-16T02:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1923"},"modified":"2018-09-15T22:01:11","modified_gmt":"2018-09-16T02:01:11","slug":"islam-christian-murder-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2018\/09\/islam-christian-murder-africa.html","title":{"rendered":"Islam-on-Christian Murder in Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the election of President Trump and the rise of nationalist parties across the Western world, leftists in America and beyond are having a blast self-styling as \u201cresistors\u201d to \u201cfascism.\u201d<\/p>\n

They are specifically outraged over the \u201cIslamophobia\u201d of the President\u2019s so-called \u201ctravel ban.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet the perpetually indignant, unsurprisingly, are utterly silent regarding the massive slaughter and persecution by Muslims <\/em>of Christians<\/em> throughout Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.<\/p>\n

For example, how many people are aware of the fact that just last month, over a span of four days, militant Islamic Fulani herdsmen embarked on a murder spree that reduced a dozen Nigerian villages to dust and claimed the lives of at least<\/em> 200 Christian men, women, and children?<\/p>\n

The villages constitute Nigeria\u2019s Plateau State, an area, according to Open Doors<\/a>, widely recognized as \u201cthe epicenter of Christianity in northern Nigeria\u2019s Middle Belt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Open Doors, an organization dedicated to serving persecuted Christians throughout the world, has tried piecing together the events of this gruesome attack.<\/p>\n

Evidently, about 120 villagers were on their way home from the funeral of an elderly villager when they were set upon and hacked <\/em>to death by machete-wielding Muslims.<\/p>\n

In Gana Rop village, a Christian pastor, the Reverend Musa Choji, was murdered along with his wife and son.<\/p>\n

In Gidin Akwati, the entire community was burned to the ground.\u00a0 It is believed that some of those who were forced to flee their homes have been hiding in the Bush, remaining ever vulnerable to future attacks.<\/p>\n

Another Christian pastor who, for obvious reasons, wished to remain anonymous, reported that on one Saturday night in late June, \u201cmore than 50 heavily armed Fulani herdsmen\u201d laid waste to his whole village via fire and murdered 100 of his neighbors. Not only were all of the residences ruined, but so too were a couple of churches abolished. A few people managed to escape.<\/p>\n

This pastor\u2019s wife\u2019s family was \u201cdecimated.\u201d His wife\u2019s family\u2019s residence was home to 15 people, as well as 13 others who were visiting.\u00a0 Of these 28 people, all except the pastor\u2019s brother-in-law, who escaped through the ceiling, lost their lives.<\/p>\n

According to World Watch Monitor, two soldiers and one police officer were present in the village of Nghar when the attack occurred, but they are said to have fled when the Islamic militants invaded.<\/p>\n

Although the violence appears to have reached its climax during this one weekend near the end of June, apparently it had been culminating for months. Pastor Steve Kwol, chairman of the Pentecostal Federation of Nigeria for Plateau North, shares details:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been living peacefully\u201d with the Fulani herdsmen, he begins. \u201cSince this crisis started in Plateau in recent months, our people have not killed one Fulani man.\u201d However, \u201cthey have been killing our people one by one.\u00a0 We just buried them and carried on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Continuing, Pastor Kwol states that as a consequence of \u201cthe ongoing insecurity, there are places where people can no longer go farm,\u201d for when they do, \u201cthe Fulani will come and take their cows, or attack them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pastor proceeds to reveal the tragedy that he personally suffered:<\/p>\n

\u201cJust two weeks ago, they shot my wife\u2019s young brother. But he survived. He was discharged on Wednesday and had returned home on Thursday, only to get killed in the last attack, on Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Open Doors, locals insist that these attacks are part of \u201ca grand plan to Islamize Nigeria.\u201d According to a Dr. Soja Bewarang, the murders are \u201cno longer farmer and herder clashes\u201d but, rather, a \u201cdeliberate attempt to conquer and occupy the land of the people\u2019s ancestral heritage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reverend Gideon Para-Mallam maintains that the violence, constituting as it does a steady pattern, is \u201canother Boko Haram in disguise.\u201d<\/p>\n

And speaking of Boko Haram, though the terrorist organization remains alive and well, no one, least of all \u201cthe Resistance\u201d and \u201cMeToo\u201d crowd, has shown the inclination to utter a peep about it.<\/p>\n

Yet in addition to engaging in the destruction of villages and churches and the perpetration of mass murder, from 2009 to the present, Boko Haram has kidnapped as many as 3,000 women and girls. There are concerns<\/a> that it is spreading throughout Southeast Africa.<\/p>\n

In predominantly Christian Mozambique, throughout the month of June, the members of a Sunni Muslim sect visited a reign of terror upon the residents of the villages that they targeted. Armed with AK-47s and machetes, groups of Muslim men destroyed hundreds of homes and murdered several people\u2014all while loudly reading Arabic words from the Quran.<\/p>\n

The terrorists found one elderly man who tried in vain to make a run for it.\u00a0 They caught him and beheaded him in front of horrified bystanders.<\/p>\n

A woman named Anshia relays her account of the horror that she endured.<\/p>\n

She was asleep when she was awaken to the sound of gunfire. \u201cI was running behind my husband and my three older children, when I remembered that I had left the baby in my room. I went back.\u201d<\/p>\n

At this point, the thugs had already set her home ablaze. One of them \u201cgrabbed my hand and slapped me in the face,\u201d knocking her to the floor. It was at this point that she was able to escape.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, she successfully retrieved her unharmed child.<\/p>\n

We shouldn\u2019t expect to hear about any of this by the self-avowed enemies of \u201cfascisim\u201d and \u201cIslamophobia\u201d in the West.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the election of President Trump and the rise of nationalist parties across the Western world, leftists in America and beyond are having a blast self-styling as \u201cresistors\u201d to \u201cfascism.\u201d They are specifically outraged over the \u201cIslamophobia\u201d of the President\u2019s so-called \u201ctravel ban.\u201d Yet the perpetually indignant, unsurprisingly, are utterly silent regarding the massive slaughter…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nIslam-on-Christian Murder in Africa<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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