However bad the problem of jihadism is in the West, and it’s plain to see that the problem is bad or we would not need airport style security at sports and music venues, we should never forget that the jihad that afflicts Africa is far worse and far more bloody. The African jihad is what I have to sadly call ‘the forgotten jihad’ as it rarely gets the sort of coverage that it deserves in Western mainstream media when compared to jihad attacks elsewhere.

Even though there have been some horrific mass murder attacks by extremist Muslims in the West, they are not as frequent as those suffered by Africans. Attacks like those on London Bridge and Manchester Arena make the news primarily because they are more local, but also because they are not as common as jihad attacks elsewhere. Sadly the media seems to treat the far greater numbers of jihad attacks in Africa as being, to paraphrase the words of Neville Chamberlain happening in ‘a far away country of which we know little’. Also, these attacks in Africa are now so common that they have become somewhat routine and no longer newsworthy.

This I believe is a scandlous state of affairs as we should be disturbed and angry at manifestations of Jihadism no matter where they occur. We are all human and should be moved by the stories of brutal and bestial attacks by jihadists on whatever continent they happen on.

The latest example of the ongoing jihad in Africa comes from the northern part of Cameroon where 7 Christians have been murdered by jihadists of the Boko Haram Islamist movement. According to a report by the Barnabus Fund (h/t ROP), at least seven Christians were killed when 300 militants from Boko Haram attacked five Christian villages.

The Barnabus Fund said:

At least seven Christians were killed as gangs of around 300 Boko Haram militants raided five Christian villages in Far North Cameroon, reports a Barnabas contact.

In the first attacks, which began late at night on 6 January, two men were killed and two children kidnapped when heavily armed militants invaded the village of Hitere, Tourou district. Hitawa village, in the same district, was also raided and looted.

In Moudokou village, Moskota district, three Christians were killed in a raid and a ten-year-old boy was kidnapped. Another Christian man was murdered by the Islamists in an attack on Guitsenad village.

On 7 January, a seventh Christian was murdered in a Boko Haram assault on a fifth village, Guedjelé in Koza district.

The two church buildings used by the affected communities were sabotaged and burnt.

According to the Barnabus Fund, eyewitnesses said that the Boko Haram jihadists were ‘heavily armed’ and went on an orgy of looting, destruction and murder. These attacks follow a similar pattern to that of other jihadist attacks on Christians in the area where jihadists descend en masse to Christian areas and slaughter the inhabitants.

These killings are not the result of any economic or resource issues of the sort that have all too often marred the lives of Africans, but instead are perpetrated by those driven by a hatred engendered in them by Islam. It is Islam that has primed these jihadists to kill.

We should not ignore what is happening in Africa with regards to jihad. We should not ignore it primarily because we are all human and no human should suffer the horror that this jihad has brought to Cameroon and other places in Africa. But there is also a more self-centred reason why we in the West should not ignore or minimise what is going on in Africa. This reason is that what these jihadists are doing in Africa they would quite readily do to others who live elsewhere in the world. The pattern of Jihad in Africa is a pattern that jihadists would like to replicate in Europe and in the Americas. We should take what is happening in Africa as a warning as to what could happen here unless jihadism is nipped in the bud before it can take hold as it has done in Africa.