As leftists all over the globe have been constantly calling for the “genocide” in Gaza to end, they have been completely silent on a genuine genocide taking place in Nigeria. The main reason for this blatant blind eye, aside from the fact that they can’t blame the Jews, is that Christians are being killed. In leftist land, if they can’t blame the Jews, and it doesn’t fit their narrative of “Islam is a peaceful religion,” then there’s nothing to see here. In fact, Christianity, not Islam, is the most persecuted religion in the world today.
When even a devout atheist like Bill Maher is talking about the massacre of Christians in Nigeria, you know it’s a problem. “If you don’t know what’s going on in Nigeria, your media sources suck,” he argued. “You are in a bubble. And again, I’m not a Christian, but they are systematically killing the Christians in Nigeria.”
“This is so much more of a genocide attempt than what’s going on in Gaza,” said Maher. “They are literally attempting to wipe out the Christian population of an entire country. Where are the kids protesting this?”
Sadly, this is not a new phenomenon for Nigeria. As early as 2014, Boko Haram was reported to have killed over 10,000 Nigerians, and for the last decade, over 50,000 men, women, and children, predominantly Christian, have been murdered. As our Louis DeBroux wrote in 2020, “Heavily armed jihadis suddenly appear in the dead of night. They attack house after house, breaking down doors, shouting Allahu akbar. They shoot the elderly and able-bodied men. They rape, mutilate, and murder women. They kidnap young boys and girls. They torch houses, schools, and churches.”
Radical Islamist violence in Nigeria is getting renewed attention from the West as more reports come out. As World magazine’s article on the plight of Christians in that country recounts, “This year, Nigerian Christians have faced increasing attacks from jihadist groups. According to the Nigeria-based nonprofit InterSociety, Islamists murdered more than 7,000 Christians — and kidnapped 7,800 — in the country between January and August. This latest violence has refocused international attention on Nigeria over the ongoing attacks and persecution.”
These atrocities have rightly triggered responses from those on the Right who have been trying to get Nigeria back on the list of “Countries of Particular Concern” after Joe Biden removed it.
Last month, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz introduced the Nigeria Religious Freedom Accountability Act of 2025, which advocates for Nigeria to be designated as a “Country of Particular Concern” to implement sanctions on Nigerian officials who enable jihadist violence or enforce blasphemy laws. Of course, this angered top Nigerian officials, who then obfuscated and euphemized the situation by describing Cruz’s legislation as “a mischaracterization of Nigeria’s complex security and religious freedom landscape” that is “based on incomplete and de-contextualized assessments.” The chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Oluwole Oke, insisted, “Nigeria is a very tolerant country.” I think the 100,000 dead Christians and the 16 million who have been driven from their homes and their land as a result of jihadist violence beg to differ.
Open Doors, a Christian charity that reports on persecution of Christians around the world, says the number of martyred Nigerian Christians exceeds the number of Christian murders in the rest of the world combined.
It also speaks to the broader trend of the increase in persecution of Christians worldwide.
According to The Wall Street Journal, China has been rounding up Christian pastors: “Police on Friday detained Ezra Jin Mingri, a pastor who founded Beijing Zion Church in 2007, according to his daughter Grace Jin, who lives in the U.S.” Both Fox News and the Associated Press also reported “that dozens of other church leaders in Beijing and at least five other provinces across China were arrested Friday as well.” Ms. Jin said in an interview on Fox, “One after another, they were also taken, detained. Like, they were saying that there were people outside their doors, and then one at a time they were taken into custody.” Once people disappear in Communist China, they are in serious danger of prolonged detention and abuse, often without a charge or trial.
China has been cracking down hard on the underground church in recent months for things such as “online dissemination of religious materials” and “fraud.” In May, Light of Zion Church Pastor Gao Quanfu of Xi’an was detained by authorities on charges of “using superstitious activities to undermine the implementation of justice.” In June, multiple church workers from the Golden Lampstand Church in Linfen were sentenced to prison time for “fraud” charges. The Communist Party has also issued a new code of conduct for religious clergy on the internet, giving the CCP license to go after any pastors or churches who had been forced to shut down their physical churches when they got too popular and move to using an online model. If there’s one thing the communist government hates the most, it’s people worshiping anything other than the government.
A U.S.-based religious group, China Aid, said that so-called “house churches,” such as Zion, are “facing unprecedented pressure.” “Xi Jinping has waged a war against God’s Church, such as the Zion Church, that he will never win. The level of persecution against religious freedom has reached the worst [level] in 40 years,” China Aid founder and President Bob Fu lamented. “Faith is not a crime. Worship is not a crime. Prayer is not a crime. The courage of China’s urban pastors and believers will be remembered in history as a living testimony that the light of Christ cannot be extinguished by tyranny.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a statement on Monday calling for the release of Pastor Jin and other Zion Church leaders. President Donald Trump, in his recent speech at the UN, rightly labeled Christianity “the most persecuted religion on the planet today.” His call in the same speech to “protect religious liberty” is both timely and prescient, and it should not be ignored.
Given the world’s trajectory, it is all the more necessary that we protect religious liberty as if our lives depended on it — because they, and others’ lives, do. As Christians, we know we are called to take up our cross and follow Jesus, and part of that cross is persecution. But we are also called to “do justly” in Micah 6:8 and “rebuke the oppressor” in Isaiah 1:17. Staying silent and doing nothing is not being the light that is so desperately needed in this dark world.
