[𝑵𝒊𝒈𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒂] 𝑰𝒕’𝒔 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒓𝒆𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒊𝒔𝒄𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝒂 𝒅𝒆𝒍𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔 𝒎𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒊𝒏 2022 𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒏, 𝒇𝒐𝒍𝒍𝒐𝒘𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒂𝒏 𝒂𝒑𝒑𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒎𝒂𝒔𝒔𝒂𝒄𝒓𝒆 𝒂𝒕 𝑺𝒕 𝑭𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒊𝒔 𝑪𝒉𝒖𝒓𝒄𝒉 𝒊𝒏 𝑵𝒊𝒈𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒂, 𝑴𝒊𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒆𝒍 𝑯𝒊𝒈𝒈𝒊𝒏𝒔, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒓𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒐𝒖𝒔 𝒑𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝑰𝒓𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒅, 𝒓𝒆𝒑𝒐𝒓𝒕𝒆𝒅𝒍𝒚 𝒔𝒂𝒊𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒂𝒔𝒔𝒂𝒖𝒍𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒌𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒐 “𝒄𝒍𝒊𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆”. 𝒀𝒆𝒔, 𝒄𝒍𝒊𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆.

Well, of course, when DJT opens his mouth on anything the allegedly "educated" liberal intelligentsia are ready to jump down it.

The BBC usually leads the charge. Nothing to see here. Just more guano-stirring by those awful right-wingers.

Seems to me Islam has been a problem for the world ever since Gabriel (allegedly) had that cave-side chat with Muhammad.

Here's a nice (paywalled) piece you may care to read by Daily Telegraph political editor Tim Stanley.

You know, I always feel that little bit more intelligent after reading Tim.

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𝐈𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐬𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞: 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐬

𝐷𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑑 𝑇𝑟𝑢𝑚𝑝’𝑠 𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑑 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡: 𝐼𝑠𝑙𝑎𝑚𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑠 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑎 𝑤𝑎𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎 𝑤𝑎𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑖𝑛 𝑛𝑜𝑟𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑛 𝑁𝑖𝑔𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑎

By Tim Stanley

Today’s lesson comes from the Book of Donald: “in all the world, there is no greater idiot than a sophisticate”.

At 2am on November 21, gunmen stormed a Christian boarding school in central Nigeria, kidnapping 303 students and 12 teachers, presumably for ransom. It was the third such attack within a week. Since the early 2010s, around a million Christians have been displaced by violence, churches have been destroyed, thousands are dead.

The good news is that it’s nothing personal. Or so some journalists and politicians tell us. Any Nigerian who thinks they’ve been kidnapped because they’re a Christian is the victim of fake news agenda pushed by Donald Trump, who is demanding that Nigeria end this so-called “genocide” or he’ll go in “guns ablazing”.

The New York Times said, “it’s not so simple”: security is poor for all religions and Islamic students have been captured, too. Others argued that more Muslims have been killed overall than Christians. The BBC deployed its Global Disinformation Unit – one imagines them descending from a helicopter in fatigues – to question high death figures and the motives behind sharing them. Simon Tisdall of The Guardian, his cheerful photo evoking a 17th century witch-finder about to pass sentence, concluded that though “the threat of Islamist terrorism is real… there is no evidence of genocide… Trump’s intervention was about politics, not faith.”

It’s all reminiscent of a delirious moment in 2022 when, following an appalling massacre at St Francis Church in Nigeria, Michael Higgins, the previous president of Ireland, reportedly said the assault was linked to “climate change”. Yes, climate change.

The argument, backed by the Nigerian government, is that climate change has led to violent land competition, while herders take hostages for much needed cash. But fears about rising sea levels make Europeans glue themselves to asphalt. In Nigeria, the ecologists burn churches. Why should land hunger lead to the targeting of religious schools, the killing of priests or the abduction of nuns? Who knew that global warming was sectarian?

The Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa argues that ethnic violence has “altered the demographic landscape of Nigeria’s central belt”, that between October 2019 and September 2024, Christians in some states “were murdered at a rate 5.2 times higher than Muslims relative to their population size.”

Maybe Christians have been driven out are cleared out less because they are Christian than they happen to be in the way, but the outcome remains the same: a form of ethnic cleansing. In August, Aid to the Church in Need interviewed Father Ukuma Jonathan Angbianbee, whose town – up to 98 per cent Christian – had just been attacked by militants (three dead). What, they asked, was the motive? “It’s multi-dimensional,” he replied: the attackers want land. But when “our churches are [attacked], the people are no longer there, our community is decimated” – then we’re not far from it being “religiously motivated.”

This Nigerian government is probably keen to downplay the element of religious persecution lest it inflame tensions and undermine sincere peace efforts, and it’s worth noting that the country’s president is a Muslim married to a Christian. This is a multi-ethnic state with constitutional religious protections.

But the 2025 report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom states clearly that “bandits predominantly target Christian communities in northwest Nigeria”, while extortion campaigns have “primarily victimised Christian farms.” The USCIRF is entirely non-partisan; it is most definitely not a tool of the Trump White House. Indeed the overall picture of Islamism spreading through Africa – killing both Muslims and Christians but, logically, of particular threat to religious minorities – was long regarded by many observers as self-evident.

So why, in the past few weeks, have Westerners questioned it with such swottish glee?

This didn’t happen so much with Gaza. Then, atrocities were shared online, the worst case-scenario statistics accepted, and march after march permitted across major cities. Muslim anguish at the death of Muslims was treated sympathetically; Jewish allegiance to Israel was regarded as contemptible yet axiomatic.

But when a Christian is gunned down at his altar in Africa, the Western liberal suddenly poses as an anthropologist. Claims are subjected to doubt. We do not take sides.

In 2022, the idiot Higgins wrote that it would be quite wrong to “scapegoat pastoral peoples” driven to despair by desertification. A local Nigerian bishop called this “incorrect and far-fetched”. One might infer that Higgins thinks Africans are not wholly responsible for their own actions but puppets of economic forces beyond their control. Meanwhile Westerners are at turns devilish and God-like, for we alone destroyed the world’s climate and we alone can save it, with heat pumps.

Many Westerners only tune into Africa when it opens up a conversation about ourselves, hence it’s Trump’s remarks that have turned writers into genocide-sceptics. Today’s narrative: far-Right charities and a fascist president are using dead Africans to get votes.

Never mind that Nigerian Christians are crying out for help, insisting ethnic cleansing is taking place even as journalists verify that it isn’t. When woke Westerners said we must “respect people’s lived experience”, it seems they referred exclusively to themselves, not to Congolese whose throats were slit in a clinic by Islamists on November 14. Nor clerics being locked up in Armenia. Nor the hundreds in Pakistan’s jails for blasphemy. They have somehow slid down the list of concern, even though their cause ought to be our own, for the West is what it is because of Christianity.

Our refusal to rush to the defence of our religious brethren is bizarre and unique to us. Muslim nations certainly don’t feel that way. This veneer of impartiality is said by some, ironically, to be a Christian inheritance – the principle that all are made in God’s image has seeped into our cultural DNA, leaving us reluctant to prioritise one victim over another.

But that Christian nations owe no special allegiance to Christian foreigners is theologically unsupportable, ahistorical and inhuman. Why do we care especially when Britons are caught in a natural disaster abroad? Why, when there’s a fire, do we worry in particular if our own children are caught inside? Because partiality is natural, the root of duties that we must personally honour.

The West has an obligation to stand up for the world’s Christians if only, as the deteriorating situation in Nigeria suggests, because we cannot rely upon anyone else to do so. Our sanctimonious objectivity is not shared by the Islamist with a machete.