Jihad, as I’ve said before, is not just something aimed at the West or suffered by the West. Jihad is a worldwide phenomenon and often something that afflicts those in countries who are least able to defend against it. Across the world jihadists are killing and maiming and kidnapping but many of these acts of Jihad do not impinge enough on the consciousness of those who live in the West.
The jihad being carried out in Africa is an ongoing tragedy and one that I believe that we should not ignore. Nigeria for example has suffered many years of attacks from jihadists with the most brutal ones aimed at Nigeria’s children. We recall the plight of the 276 Chibok girls kidnapped from their school in 2014, as we should, but there are other similar and less high profile incidents of this type going on all the time. The Boko Haram Islamic group has, according to a Guardian report, killed 20,000 Nigerians and displaced approximately two million more.
The Christian charity the Barnabas Fund is carrying a story (h/t ROP) about yet another in a long list of kidnappings carried out by Islamic jihadists against Christian Nigerians. Barnabas Fund has said that nine more Christians have been abducted by Islamic militants after armed attacks on two Christian schools.
Barnabas Fund said:
Nine Christians were abducted in two separate armed attacks on Christian boarding schools in Kaduna State, Nigeria in the past week.
On 3 October, just after midnight, armed gunmen entered a Christian boarding school in a remote area of Kaduna State. The attackers took captive the school’s vice principal, the matron and six female pupils. Police stated that they are “doing everything possible to secure the release of all the victims unhurt.”
In a second midnight attack on 10 October, 20 gunmen stormed a Government Technical School in the predominantly Christian district of Kajura and abducted the school’s principal, himself a Christian. Police said that their intervention prevented the assailants getting access to the students’ residence at the school.
I hope and pray that these Christians can be released unharmed but the bestial savages of Boko Haram are unlikely to allow this to happen. These Christians are likely to face beatings, sexual violence, forced conversion to Islam and possibly death at the hands of Boko Haram. Their fate will be a similar one to that suffered by others captured by Islamic extremists in Nigeria which is to disappear, never to be seen again.
The jihad in Africa is a tragedy of monstrous proportions aimed at those who are least able to defend against the violence that Islamists bring. The situation is so bad that countries like Nigeria seem to be unable to contain or destroy these Islamists and I predict that this problem will continue to worsen. These jihadists are on their way to destroying not just Nigeria but the entire continent of Africa and they will continue to do so unless they are contained or killed.
