On September 27, on his show, “Real Time with Bill Maher,” host Bill Maher called out mainstream media for their complicit silence. “If you don’t know what’s going on in Nigeria, your media sources suck. You are in a bubble. And, again, I’m not a Christian, but they are systematically killing the Christians in Nigeria,” Maher said.
The host continued. “They’ve killed over 100,000 since 2009. They’ve burned 18,000 churches. This is so much more of a genocide attempt than what is going on in Gaza,” Maher said. “They are literally attempting to wipe out the Christian population of an entire country. Where are the kids protesting this?”
Maher is right.
Christians are being slaughtered in Nigeria.
More than 7,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria this year, displacing 12 million Christians since 2009, according to the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (Intersociety).
“We have documented the coordinated and systematic murder of an entire people; therefore, we are clearly talking about a Christian genocide,” the director of Intersociety, Emeka Umeagbalasi, a criminologist and researcher, told ACI Prensa.
Umeagbalasi called this a “systematic strategy to achieve the extermination of Christians,” that has occurred and continues because Nigerian officials and the rest of the international community allow it to. “Today in northern Nigeria, it’s almost impossible to live as a Christian, and if the trend continues, within half a century we will no longer be a country with religious pluralism,” he said.
Boko Haram, an Islamic militant group in Nigeria, has executed many of the attacks on Nigerian Christians, murdering them or displacing them from their homes. News reports say members of the group demand Christians convert to Islam or die.
US News is only focused on certain conflicts.
There are conflicts around the world that deserve our attention, including the wars waging between Israel and Gaza, Russia and Ukraine. In the US, of course, we have our own share of political violence, domestic terrorism, school shootings, and more. All of these things are worthy of the attention of the American news media.
But what is happening to Christians in Nigeria also seems worthy of attention. These things do not need to be mutually exclusive. Yet few outlets have paid attention to Boko Haram’s ongoing war to convert, kill, or displace Christians across Nigeria. Perhaps it’s because the group is so obviously connected to Islam, or because Nigeria seems like a world away compared to problems in the US. But it does not make what’s happening to Christians there less important.
Reputable organizations like Open Door and others have warned of what Boko Haram and other militant groups are doing to persecute Christians in Nigeria, but still, the international community seems to fall silent. While the United Nations has condemned Boko Haram’s actions and labeled it a terrorist organization long ago, they do not seem to be willing to do any more to the group for its human rights violations.
In February, the US Embassy and Consulate in Nigeria condemned Boko Haram’s obvious human rights violations, saying, in a statement, “The United States condemns the violence and blatant disregard for human life perpetrated by Boko Haram and other terrorist groups in Nigeria and the region…The United States continues to work with Nigeria and regional partners to counter terrorism.”
I can’t help but think that if another large religious group, other than Islamic extremists, were perpetrating extensive, gruesome, and systematic crimes against another large religious group of people—including innocent women and children—other than Christians, more mainstream outlets may be willing to provide extensive coverage of the events. And then the exposure might force the international community at large to do more than just condemn the acts, but step in to provide these Christians with relief and aid.
Kudos to Bill Maher for having the courage to say something publicly and to expose both the problem, the perpetrators, and the twisted logic behind the lack of media coverage.
These are grievous human rights violations in the name of religious extremism toward the most prominent group of religious people in the world. Christians have always known they will face persecution and suffer for their faith, but it does not mean the world must stand idly by and allow it to happen without taking action.
