Let's Talk About the Real Genocide of Christians in Africa

David Harsanyi
Mon, 03 Nov 2025 14:10:42 -0800
Opinion

With so much of the legacy media's focus spent on smearing Israel these days, you probably haven't heard a ton about the ongoing massacres in Nigeria.

Islamists have murdered tens of thousands of defenseless Christians, displacing around 15 million people from their homes.

Medieval sexual violence and torture are regularly practiced by Islamist militants, who also recruit children into their terrorist army. Thousands of churches and schools have been burned down. Catholic priests are regularly targeted for kidnapping.
Updated: Mon Nov 03, 2025

With so much of the legacy media's focus spent on smearing Israel these days, you probably haven't heard a ton about the ongoing massacres in Nigeria.

Islamists have murdered tens of thousands of defenseless Christians, displacing around 15 million people from their homes.

Medieval sexual violence and torture are regularly practiced by Islamist militants, who also recruit children into their terrorist army. Thousands of churches and schools have been burned down. Catholic priests are regularly targeted for kidnapping.

The victims of Boko Haram and other Islamist groups in Nigeria aren't members of any army.

Yet, as far as I know, there have been no college protests or rallies in the streets of American cities decrying the systemic ethnic cleansing by Muslim forces. The Israel-obsessed right-wing podcasters, who claim to stand for Christian values and decency, barely, if ever, mention the slaughter of their co-religionists. They're too busy with another topic.

In Sudan, another civil war has broken out. Around 150,000 civilians have been murdered so far, while around 12 million have been displaced from their homes. Again, Christians, along with non-Arab minorities, are among the most vulnerable.

Much like Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood's Sudanese Armed Forces, backed by countries like Turkey and Iran, enjoy producing gleeful videos of their wanton killing sprees.

On the other side of the war is the Rapid Support Forces, who are not much better. Not long ago they teamed up with SAF to ethnically cleanse the Sudanese population of non-Arabs.

Yet, this campaign of extermination garners no mentions from the Squad. The co-founder of Ben & Jerry's hasn't created a special flavor for the millions of victims of the Sudanese Islamist. The leaders of France, Britain and Canada have yet to preen in front of the cameras as they recognize a state for the minorities of Sudan.

Then again, Christians, who predate Muslims in the Middle East by centuries, have been driven out or massacred in most Islamic nations. In the 20 years since Iraq was freed from Saddam Hussein, the Christian population has shrunk from 1.4 million to around 120,000. In Syria, the Christian population has dramatically contracted, as well, and is in constant danger. Christians made up somewhere around 80% of the Lebanese population at one point. Now it is under 30%. In Turkey, where Muslims have hit a hat trick of genocides (Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks), the Christian population has shrunk from around 20% to somewhere around 0.2%. The Coptic Christians of Egypt live in constant fear.

The Christian population in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank significantly decreased since Palestinians have taken control. If Israel annexed Christ's birthplace, Bethlehem, tomorrow, the Christian population would immediately explode.

It's difficult not to notice that Islamists are generally given a pass by the same Westerners who spend their days accusing Israel of war crimes.

Not that Israel-obsessives care about Muslim victims, either, mind you, if the oppressor isn't a Westerner.

In Yemen, Iran-funded Houthis have sparked another civil war. Somewhere around 17 million people teeter on the edge of starvation daily, including over a million children.

You won't see any flotillas packed with privileged celebrities dressed in keffiyehs headed to a Yemeni port to feed children in hunger.

Of course not. Unlike the Israelis, who gave activists air-conditioned rooms and airline tickets back to the comforts of their European homes, the Houthis would almost surely be less gracious.

There are no protests over Turkish ethnic cleansing efforts of Kurds from their own nation to northern Syria and Iraq. There are no big banners flown at left-wing protests condemning the ChiComs' ethnic cleansing campaigns against Uyghurs, Tibetans, Dzungar and Hui and others. The Democratic Party's mayoral candidate in New York City, who's spent his adult life pretending to be a humanitarian, doesn't think it worth mentioning this barbarism.

Those who rail against AIPAC never seem to care about the billions of dollars the petro-sheiks of Qatar dump into our institutions to corrode Western values.

Conversion to Christianity, incidentally, is still an apostasy in Qatar, punishable by the death sentence.

Do the young people, left and right, who've been propagandized into believing that Israel — and American Jews — are their enemy understand all of this is going on? Probably not.

Israel's imaginary genocide dominates news coverage because progressives are obsessed with "colonizers" and the populist social-media bigots use the Jewish state to spread their own paranoia.

If they're interested, however, there is plenty of real ethnic cleansing to protest.

David Harsanyi is a senior writer at the Washington Examiner. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books — the most recent, "The Rise of Blue Anon," available now. His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post and numerous other publications. Follow him on X @davidharsanyi.