Reports from Syria this week reveal a horrifying wave of violence against Christians and Alawites. The terror group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which controls parts of Syria, has reportedly massacred hundreds of these minority groups. This brutal attack serves as a grim reminder of the ongoing persecution Christians face under Islamist regimes — a crisis that the international community largely ignores.
The Trump administration condemned the killings at a crucial moment. While much of the world focuses on the political complexities of the Middle East, the reality on the ground for Christians is dire. As the Syrian government has collapsed, Assad loyalists — flawed as they may be — have been overwhelmed by jihadists intent on eliminating Christians. The choice for many is bleak: convert, flee, or face death.
We can no longer afford to turn a blind eye to the suffering of Christians around the world.
Let’s put the blame where it belongs. The perpetrators of this violence are no friends of freedom or democracy. HTS, originally an Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, is no better than ISIS. These groups have a proven track record of targeting minorities — Christians, Yazidis, and anyone who doesn't conform to their radical version of Islam. In their world, there’s no room for dissent. Convert or die — it’s as simple and as terrifying as that.
The situation in Syria isn’t just about two warring factions. It’s about innocent people paying the price for geopolitical blunders that have spanned decades. Bashar al-Assad’s regime, itself a brutal dictatorship, had relied on sectarian divisions to maintain power. But when the West, particularly under the Obama administration, empowered elements of the so-called Arab Spring — only to watch them devolve into radical Islamic regimes — we set the stage for more massacres.
The same pattern played out in Libya: Western intervention, followed by chaos, and the rise of violent extremists. The tragedy in Syria is no different. The same forces that were once seen as “freedom fighters” are now the ones persecuting Christians with impunity.
The past few years have seen a drastic decline in Christian populations across the Middle East. In Iraq, the number of Christians has fallen from 1.5 million to fewer than 200,000 since the rise of ISIS. In Syria, the Christian population has dropped from over a million to fewer than 300,000 — a number likely to decrease further if current trends continue. Meanwhile, Boko Haram has killed more than 12,000 Christians in Nigeria over the past five years.
The West’s inaction in response to this persecution is maddening. Thousands of Christians are being slaughtered, yet Europe and other Western nations seem more concerned with political correctness than with protecting those who are being killed for their faith. Why aren’t these refugees being granted asylum? Why do those fleeing regimes that commit such atrocities receive less attention than others escaping different conflicts?
The conflict in Syria isn’t a matter of simple political alignment. Neither side can claim to be the “good guys.” Bashar al-Assad is a bad actor, but so is the opposition. Both have blood on their hands. Meanwhile, Syrian Christians are caught in the crossfire of a proxy war, abandoned by the international community.
In 2024 alone, nearly 5,000 Christians were killed worldwide for their faith. This isn’t just a tragic statistic — it reflects a long-standing pattern of violence. The slaughter of Christians in Syria is merely the latest chapter in this ongoing tragedy.
The question now is: What are we going to do about it? We can no longer afford to turn a blind eye to the suffering of Christians around the world.
The Trump administration has made it clear that these atrocities cannot go unnoticed. It’s time for the rest of the world to step up and take a stand, not just for the people of Syria but for all those facing persecution under the hands of radical Islamist groups.
If history has taught us anything, it’s that when we ignore the suffering of minorities, it only sets the stage for more violence. We must act before it’s too late.
Want more from Glenn Beck? Get Glenn's FREE email newsletter with his latest insights, top stories, show prep, and more delivered to your inbox.
Nigeria is a youthful, fast-growing country with an estimated population of over 235 million. According to the CIA Worldbook's 2018 estimate, roughly 53.5% of the Nigerian population is Muslim and roughly 45.9% of the population is Christian — 10.6% of which is Roman Catholic.
While Nigeria is now home to around 100 million Christians — the sixth-largest Christian population in the world as of 2019 — numbers have proven no guarantee of protection for the faithful against intense persecution, especially not from the jihadist groups hell-bent on totally transforming Nigeria into an Islamist nation. This persecution takes various forms, one of which is kidnapping.
Although the former British colony sees millions of kidnappings every year, it is clear that many are religiously and/or ideologically motivated, especially when it comes to the persistent abductions of priests.
Nigeria is plagued by Islamic terrorists and gangs, including the al-Qaeda-affiliated outfit Ansaru, Islamic State of West African Province, and the terrorist group Boko Haram, which has reportedly killed over an estimated 36,000 people over the past two decades.
Some academics have warned against similarly recognizing elements of the deadlier, mass-killing Fulani herder-militant groups as religiously motivated terrorists, and others have suggested their attacks are instead economically or climate-driven. However, Nigerian Christians such as Bishop Wilfred Chikpa Anagbe of the Diocese of Makurdi recognize that the Fulani herders' apparent systematic killing of Christians also has "a motive of religion behind it."
Bishop Anagbe said in 2021, "The Fulani killers are Muslims, and the conquering of territory is paramount to large Muslim populations in Nigeria."
'I classify them as terrorists now.'
Jeff King, president of International Christian Concern and a leading expert on religious persecution, told Blaze News that like Boko Haram, the Fulani militants, a group of traditionally nomadic cattle herders seeking greater grazing lands for their livestock, "are also driven by Islam's practice of using violence to subjugate territories to Islam. In fact, the Fulanis are the driving force behind radical Islam's massive land-grab of a huge swath of Africa known as the Sahel. They are motivated by a desire to rebuild a caliphate they had built in the 1700s and 1800s."
Christians in the region have long suffered the savagery of these Muslim groups.
For instance, on July 19, 2024, Islamic Fulani militants reportedly dragged Christians out of their homes in Benue State and shot them, leaving 18 dead and many more wounded, reported ICN.
"I no longer call them bandits because I'm seeing elements of terrorism in their activities," Justine Shaku, the chairman of the local Katsina Ala government, said in a statement. "I classify them as terrorists now."
'Gaza and Ukraine are deadly, but if you're a Christian, the most likely place in the world to be hunted and killed is Nigeria.'
Muslim Fulani militants also massacred hundreds of Christians in over 160 villages on Christmas 2023, burning down eight churches in the process.
On June 5, 2022, terrorists later identified by the Nigerian government as members of ISIS-West Africa stormed into St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in the southwestern city of Owo, where parishioners were celebrating Pentecost Sunday. The terrorists slaughtered at least 41 parishioners, including children — some reports indicated more than 80 victims killed in the church — and brutally injured scores of others.
Mark Hill, a visiting professor of law and distinguished fellow at the University of Notre Dame, and Thomas Hellenbrand of the Society of Jesus noted in a 2022 paper that violence between Nigeria's religious and ethnic groups has worsened over the past two decades "due in part to the enlargement of the jurisdiction of Sharia Courts of Appeal in twelve Nigerian states after 1999, which have allowed the courts to handle Islamic criminal law, and are generally considered better run than their civil equivalents."
"Islamic jihadists in the north have attempted to use Sharia law to mobilize Muslims against minority Christian communities, notwithstanding the long-standing peaceful coexistence of indigenous Christian minorities in states such as Kano, Jihawa, Katsina, Zamfara, and Kebbi."
The Christian persecution watchdog Open Doors now ranks Nigeria as the sixth-worst place for Christians in the world:
More believers are killed for their faith in Nigeria each year than everywhere else in the world combined. The attacks are often brutal in nature and can involve destruction of properties, abductions for ransom, sexual violence and death. Believers are stripped of their livelihoods and driven from their homes, leaving a trail of grief and trauma. Violence by Islamic extremist groups such as Fulani militants, Boko Haram and ISWAP (Islamic State in West African Province) increased during the presidency of Muhammadu Buhari, putting Nigeria at the epicenter of targeted violence against the church. The government's failure to protect Christians and punish perpetrators has only strengthened the militants' influence.
Ryan Brown, the CEO of Open Doors US, said in a statement to Blaze News, "More believers are killed for their faith in Nigeria than anywhere else in the world."
Mindy Belz, an American journalist who has covered wars in Africa and the Middle East, emphasized the gravity of the situation last year in the Wall Street Journal, writing, "Gaza and Ukraine are deadly, but if you're a Christian, the most likely place in the world to be hunted and killed is Nigeria — a diverse country with a constitutional federal government and one of Africa's largest economies."
Despite their apparent bloodthirst, some Islamic terrorists and gangs have realized that victims are more valuable alive.
While groups like Boko Haram may still partially fund their operations through illegal mining, holding priests and seminarians captive now serves as an additional revenue stream as well a strategic means of disrupting Christian communities.
The Catholic Church, a popular target for extremists in the region, does not officially pay ransoms as a matter of policy; however, parishioners and others in the church routinely front the cash to spring the abducted church personnel, saving lives on the one hand but risking perpetuating the cycle of victimization on the other.
Maria Lozano, press director at the pastoral Catholic aid organization Aid to the Church in Need International, told Blaze News that "if ransoms are paid, it is usually because the parishioners, some financially well off faithful, and the families have collectively gathered the requested funds."
BishopMatthew Hassan Kukah of Nigeria's Sokota Diocese admitted in 2023 to shelling out roughly $37,200 to rescue church personnel from kidnappers.
"Many things have happened to us in Sokoto. We have had our churches burned down, the killing of Deborah Emmanuel [a Nigerian Christian student who was stoned to death by a Muslim mob], our cathedral was almost burned down, and my priests were almost killed," Kukah told ACI Africa. "I have lost a seminarian, I've lost a priest; we have spent over 30 million naira which we don't have to rescue our pastoral agents from kidnappers."
In the past several months alone, there have been numerous abductions, including:
The radicals who target priests and seminarians sometimes butcher their victims. For instance, Fr. Tobias Chukwujekwu Okonkwo, a 38-year-old priest and pharmacist, was reportedly murdered on Dec. 26, 2024.
The previous year, Fr. Isaac Achi was burned alive by Islamic terrorists.
Crux reported that two years after jihadists bombed his church in Madalla on Christmas Day, killing 44 parishioners, Achi was kidnapped by militants. Although he survived, years later, Islamic gunmen would once again storm into his church, this time Saints Peter and Paul Church in Niger State, yelling, "Allahu Akbar." The gunmen in the deadly January 2023 attack held Achi and another priest, Fr. Collins Omeh, at gunpoint. After Achi urged his fellow priest to escape, both priests were shot, but Omeh still managed to get away. Angered by the turn of events and Achi's heroism, the gunmen set fire to the rectory, leaving the wounded priest to die in the inferno.
"It's got to a point where out of ten [priests] in Nigeria, four are at risk of being kidnapped," Nigerian criminologist Emeka Umeagbalasi told the Tablet in June. "Out of that four, one or two are at high risk of being killed in captivity."
Blaze News reached out to various Nigerian Catholic dioceses impacted by the kidnappings for comment, including the Archdioceses of Abuja and Lagos and the Dioceses of Auchi, Awka, Minna, and Wukari, but did not receive responses by deadline.
King told Blaze News that "these abductions are often used to spread fear, fund further terror activity, or force conversions, targeting Christian communities to undermine their stability and presence."
"There is substantial evidence that clergymen and seminarians in Nigeria are specifically targeted due to their Christian faith and their potential deep pockets," continued King. "This targeting is part of a broader strategy by groups like Boko Haram and Fulani Islamist militants to eliminate Christian influence, as noted by the systematic attacks on churches and church leaders."
Lozano noted that priests and religious sisters are also prime targets because they "don't hesitate to be present in places that many people avoid working on."
"Priests are frequently abducted in areas affected by conflict, extremism, or political instability, where they may be seen as representatives of a specific faith or because they are considered easy targets," added Lozano.
Just as with the broader persecution of Christians in the region, religion appears to be a major factor when it comes to the abductions, though Lozano noted there are other factors at play.
Catholic priests and seminarians are often targeted because of their faith, particularly by Islamic extremists. However, it's important to understand the broader dynamics in Nigeria. We must differentiate between regions such as the Middle Belt, Maiduguri, Kaduna, Benin, and Lagos, as the motivations behind these attacks can vary. In some cases, priests are targeted directly because of their faith, while in others, the primary motive may be linked to the general lawlessness and insecurity in the region. There are economic kidnappings perpetrated by criminals who are only looking for quick money. Kidnapping has become a business in many cases. However, priests and seminarians are vulnerable in all cases due to their commitment to serve.
Archbishop Kaigama of Abuja similarly suggested to ACN in 2021 — after Bishop Moses Chikwe of the Catholic Archdiocese of Owerri was kidnapped by armed bandits — that while there were criminals undertaking abductions for "quick money," there were also Islamists seeking to "conquer those they consider infidels, and Christians are number one on their list."
Umeagbalasi noted that priest kidnappings in the north of the country are usually conducted by jihadists "in furtherance of their quest to Islamize Nigeria. Those who kidnap priests in the eastern part of the country are out for ransom payments."
'The Islamist deep state in Nigeria is aiding and abetting a stealth jihad.'
Archbishop Kaigama noted that the kidnapping situation is "a disease that is spreading without any significant effort being made to stop it." While the kidnapping of religious leaders amounted to an escalation and "big news," Kaigama noted that multitudes of other Nigerians are suffering the same fates: "They are what I would call silent victims, and there are many of them."
According to the Crime Experience and Security Perception Survey released by Nigeria's National Bureau of Statistics in December, over 2.2 million Nigerians were kidnapped between May 2023 and April 2024. Among the households that suffered kidnapping incidents, 65% reportedly paid a ransom. The survey indicated that Nigerians paid over $1.42 billion at the current exchange rate as ransom during that time period.
While the Catholic Church reportedly invests heavily in prevention measures as well as in training priests and nuns on how to deal with these frequently occurring hostilities, Lozano indicated that "governments must invest in improving law enforcement capabilities, especially in regions where abductions are most prevalent."
Extra to training police, improving resources for intelligence gathering, reinforcing border patrol to curb human trafficking across state lines, and promoting religious dialogue, Lozano suggested that the influence of extremist groups and criminal organizations can be reduced by “tackling poverty, fighting corruption, and promoting economic development."
When asked whether Nigeria's federal government and law enforcement have done enough to help victims and to protect Catholics in the country, Lozano noted that the response has "been criticized for being insufficient. Catholics and Nigerians, in general, do not feel that they are being well protected."
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom indicated in its 2024 annual report that the government not only failed to prevent attacks against Christians and churches but has faced accusations of actually fomenting certain attacks.
King told Blaze News, "The Nigerian government has done nothing for two decades despite the approximately 100,000 Christians killed and 3.5 million Christian farmers and families displaced. Perpetrators are very rarely engaged or chased down by the military. In fact, many report that the military has cordoned off Christian areas for attackers to enter. In the very rare instances where we see a quick military response [it] is when Christians have responded to attackers with gunfire."
"To be very frank and impolitic, the simple and obvious truth is that the Islamist deep state in Nigeria is aiding and abetting a stealth jihad and slow-moving genocide against Christians in Nigeria," said King. "Until the international community (especially the U.S.) cries foul and says 'no more,' it will continue. President Trump will hopefully lead the way."
Trump stated in an October post on Truth Social, "When I am President, I will protect persecuted Christians."
Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) echoed Trump on Oct. 23, writing, "The United States should fight against the persecution of Christians all over the world, and it will when President Trump is back in the White House."
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom recommended in its latest report that the the U.S. government "designate Nigeria as a 'country of particular concern,' or CPC, for engaging in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom." The Biden State Department previously dropped the country's CPC designation.
The USCIRF also recommended that Congress ask the Government Accountability Office to investigate the effectiveness of American aid to Nigeria in achieving religious freedom objectives in the country.
When asked about what the faithful at home can do, King and Lozano both emphasized the importance of prayer, advocacy, and financial support.
"Nigeria needs our prayers, but it also requires our support, both financial and advocacy," said Lozano. "People can raise awareness about the situation in Nigeria. Sharing information about the persecution of Catholics and other religious minorities helps to bring global attention to the crisis, which can, in turn, lead to greater support from international communities. It is good to advocate for Nigeria by urging governments, international organizations, and institutions to take a stronger stance against religious persecution. This includes urging for diplomatic pressure, greater law enforcement, and the protection of religious freedoms in Nigeria."
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
When a young man committed suicide last year after falling victim to a financially motivated sextortion plot, his grief-stricken father went on a crusade to help the FBI track down the scamming suspects on another continent.
The FBI defines financially motivated sextortion as: "When predators pose as someone else online to coerce victims into taking and sending sexually explicit photos and videos — and then immediately demand payment or threaten to release the photo to the victim’s family and friends."
Within days of his son's suicide, the father discovered "suspicious banking transactions" to an unknown phone number from his son's Zelle account.
In 2023, a young Pennsylvania man fell victim to a financially motivated sextortion scheme. He allegedly believed he had met a girl online on Instagram, Google, and Snapchat. He reportedly sent the girl sexually explicit images of himself, according to USA Today.
But two men from Nigeria purportedly posed as a girl to financially extort the young man.
The Nigerian men in a text message reportedly threatened to release the compromising material and "ruin" the victim's "career" if he did not make a $1,000 blackmail payment to them, according to court documents.
"The extortion scheme that targeted [the victim] is consistent with a trend of foreign-based organized groups targeting victims in the United States in various sextortion schemes," FBI Special Agent Jennifer Zenszer wrote.
The victim, identified only as J.S. in court documents, reportedly told the suspects in a text message, "I don't even think I have enough for it."
Three minutes after sending that message in January 2023, J.S. died by suicide, federal officials said.
Following his son's tragic death, the father was determined to locate the suspects who allegedly drove his son to take his own life.
Within days of his son's suicide, the father discovered "suspicious banking transactions" to an unknown phone number from his son's Zelle account. The father forwarded the information to the FBI — which used the phone number to track down an email address with the name "Antonia Diaz." The phone number was linked to several other email addresses using different variations of the name "Antonia Diaz," according to Fox News.
Court documents say FBI agents twice issued subpoenas to Google and connected the email addresses to a phone number in Nigeria.
In March 2023, the father logged into his son's Snapchat account and saw that J.S. had been receiving messages from a user under the name of "Alice." The father messaged the user, who then demanded money.
A Pennsylvania district court judge subpoenaed Snapchat for information regarding the "Alice" account. Authorities said the Snapchat account was linked to another phone number based in Nigeria.
"J.S.’s father later reviewed J.S.’s Apple iPhone, and observed that notifications of emails from ALICEDAVE660@GMAIL.COM appeared repeatedly," court documents said. "J.S.’s father emailed that address using his own email account, identifying himself as J.S.’s father and requesting a phone call. ALICEDAVE660@GMAIL.COM refused to speak with J.S.’s father by phone, and instead directed via iMessage that J.S. ‘reply me if he doesn’t want trouble.’"
The father then sent screenshots of the communication from the emails from "Alice" to law enforcement.
Days later, an undercover FBI agent sent a friend request to "Alice" on Snapchat. The agent posed as a friend of J.S., and the alleged scammer attempted another blackmail scheme but provided bank account usernames, believing the person would send more money.
Law enforcement named two suspects — both from Nigeria — in the sextortion scheme: Imoleayo Samuel Aina, 26, and Samuel Olasunkanmi Abiodun, 24.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania announced that Aina had been charged with cyberstalking, interstate threat to injure reputation, and receiving proceeds of extortion.
Aina and Abiodun are both charged with wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy.
If convicted of all the charges against them, Aina faces a maximum possible sentence of life in prison, and Abiodun faces a maximum possible imprisonment sentence of 40 years.
The suspects were arrested in Nigeria, and the FBI took custody of them on July 31.
On Aug. 2, Aina and Abiodun appeared in federal magistrate court in Philadelphia before U.S. Magistrate Elizabeth T. Hey.
According to the FBI, financially motivated sextortion victims are typically males between the ages of 14 and 17, and the schemes can lead to victim suicide.
From October 2021 to March 2023, the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations received more than 13,000 reports of online financial sextortion of minors. The sextortion schemes involved at least 12,600 victims — mostly boys — and led to at least 20 suicides.
There was a 20% spike in reports of financially motivated sextortion in the six-month period from October 2022 to March 2023 compared to the same time period the previous year.
The FBI noted that financially motivated sextortion criminals usually are located outside the United States and known to operate out of West African countries such as Nigeria and Ivory Coast or Southeast Asian countries such as the Philippines.
Blaze News previously reported about a 16-year-old Mississippi boy who committed suicide after getting entangled in a sextortion plot in 2023.
In 2022, a 17-year-old Michigan boy committed suicide after falling victim to a sextortion scheme that three Nigerian men orchestrated.
South Carolina state lawmaker Rep. Brandon Guffey (R) lost his 17-year-old son, Gavin Guffey, to a suicide in 2022 due to a sextortion scheme.
"The most important thing for [victims] to realize is to remember that they are a victim of a crime," Guffey told Fox News. "They are not the cause of this happening. They are not in trouble because they sent an image. And then I always recommend to not delete the messages. Instead, screenshot them and go offline. Disconnect your account because they will continue to harass you."
Special Agent in Charge Douglas DePodesta of the FBI Memphis Field Office said, "The FBI has seen a horrific increase in reports of financial sextortion schemes. Protecting children is one of the highest priorities of the FBI. We need parents and caregivers to work with us to prevent this crime before it happens and help children come forward if it does."
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Islamic terrorists butchered hundreds of Christians throughout Nigeria on Christmas Eve. In their hours-long attack, Muslim Fulani militants gunned down Christian farmers, hacked up defenseless women and children with machetes, and torched churches.
While willing to express "solidarity" with the victims, the European Parliament appears more than willing to displace blame from the savage ideologues responsible and to instead pin the atrocities on so-called climate change.
According to Open Doors International, Nigeria is the sixth most brutal place in the world for Christians — bad news for its roughly 100.4 million Christian inhabitants. In and outside the country's northern Sharia states, Christians are routinely subjected to enforced Islamization, forced marriage, murder, torture, abduction, rape, and other ideologically motivated brutalities.
Nearly 5,000 Christians were murdered in Nigeria just last year, accounting for 82% of all Christians killed for their faith in 2023, reported the National Catholic Register.
In 2022, Genocide Watch indicated that jihadists slaughtered 6,000 civilians, mostly Christians, in the first three months of the year, then kept adding to their tally.
Nigerian Bishop Wildred Anagbe of the Makurdi Diocese reckons this bloodletting amounts to a genocide, telling CNA that the Christian population is being "gradually and systematically" reduced by Islamists through "killings, kidnappings, torture, and burning of churches."
Mark Lipdo, program coordinator at the Stefanos Foundation, a Christian charity that supports Nigerian Christians, told Christian Today, "These attacks are being seen by local Nigerians as a jihad, like the jihad of 200 years ago. This is why they are targeting Christmas and targeting churches."
"What is happening is a religious war," added Lipdo.
Genocide Watch indicated that terrorists killed over 350,000 in Nigeria between 2009 and 2022.
At least 200 Christians were reportedly murdered between Dec. 23 and Christmas Day, 2023, in a series of terror attacks in 26 Christian communities in Nigeria's Central Plateau State. Other estimates put the number at over 230 dead.
Magit Macham, who returned to the area to celebrate Christmas with his family, told Reuters, "We were taken unawares, and those that could run ran into the bush. A good number of those that couldn't were caught and killed with machetes."
After the marauders shot his brother in the leg, Macham dragged him into a bush, where they hid for the night.
Alliance Defending Freedom International noted that hundreds more were injured, eight churches were burned to the ground, and another 15,000 people were internally displaced by the attacks.
As the footage of the mass graves circulated online, Bishop Matthew Kukah of the Sokoto Diocese told Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, "You have no excuses before God or the people of Nigeria," reported CNA.
Western outfits have suggested that while often acknowledged as an ethno-religious conflict, the attacks are largely driven by bad weather patterns.
Citing nameless experts, Reuters floated the notion that "the conflict is based on the availability of resources rather than ethnic or religious differences."
The International Crisis Group, whose work is supported by George Soros' Open Society Foundations and cited by the Biden State Department, claims that "climate change has aggravated" "farmer-herder violence."
"Increasingly, the security implications of changing weather patterns are visible in deadly land resource disputes between farmers and herders across the continent," added the group.
The European Parliament appears willing to similarly cast the persecution not as a sustained jihad but as a resource dispute caused by the specter of anthropogenic climate change.
Members of the climate alarmist political group Green/European Free Alliance introduced a motion for a resolution last week that grossly underestimated the Christian death toll and criticized the description of the conflict in religious terms. After all, "several factors are to be taken into account such as competition for land fuelled by rapid climate change."
The proposed resolution would have the parliament warn "against an instrumentalisation of the farmers-herders conflict for spreading religion-based hatred" and "cal[l] on the Nigerian authorities to take meaningful steps to identify and address all root causes of the violence in Plateau state, such as competition for scarce resources, environmental degradation and the disappearance of effective mediation schemes."
The climate alarmists' resolution would also have called on European authorities to make African migration to Europe easier and to "ensure humanitarian assistance for those affected and displaced by the violence and climate change."
The European Parliament ultimately passed a modified version of the resolution, which starts strong with an acknowledgement of the murder of Nigerian Christians by "Islamic terrorist groups" and the destruction of 18,000 churches and 2,200 Christian schools since 2009. However, the resolution largely reverts to the language of the climate alarmists' original draft.
"Factors fuelling the clashes overlap and are rooted in, among other things, territorial disputes, ethnic tensions, access to scarce resources and environmental degradation," says the European resolution.
The parliamentarians also acknowledged "the role of climate change, competition for scarce resources and the disappearance of effective mediation schemes in aggravating the farmer-herder conflict."
ADF International highlighted that various parliamentarians have criticized the resolution.
Bert-Jan Ruissen, a Dutch politician and MEP, stated, "Saying that it is a mere conflict between farmers and herders fails to acknowledge the other causes. It is Muslim extremists causing death and destruction."
Hungarian politician and MEP György Hölvényi said, "Blinded by ideology, some people are totally insensitive to human suffering when it comes to Christians. The timing of the attacks, brutal killings, and destruction of churches cannot be misinterpreted and can only be understood as the persecution of Christians, and we should be able to say so."
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Once you’re so intent on pushing your own agenda that you’re willing to arrest people for praying silently in their homes, it’s only a matter of time before you’re willing to silence them completely.
In the new documentary 'Giannis: The Marvelous Journey,' the NBA star is refreshingly likable, grounded, and humble.
www.theblaze.com