Although we are in the midst of Ten Thursdays of Prayer for China’s Church, we are interrupting our series for a special Religious Liberty Alert on recent attacks on Christians in Nigeria. Our brothers and sisters in Nigeria need your prayers and your voices. And, if you are anywhere in the New York City area, they need your presence at a rally for Nigeria’s Christians on April 7, outside the Nigerian Permanent Mission in the United States.
Thirteen Christians in Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria were attacked during the darkness of the earliest morning hours of Wednesday, March 17, 2010. This was the latest of three brutal attacks on Christians in this northern belt region since January. I will spare you the photos of the violence, but even without photos, what was done to these Christian men, women, children, and unborn babies is horrifically graphic. The Bible says to remember those who are persecuted as if you yourself were being persecuted. To imagine ourselves or our families and friends persecuted in this manner is the stuff of a nightmare. But this is what is happening to our family in Nigeria!
In the latest attack, the VOA news reported Nigerian officials and residents saying that at least 13 in a Christian village outside the city of Jos were killed by Muslim Fulani herdsmen. The cowardly Islamists were disguised as soldiers when they attacked.
According to the Christian Solidarity Worldwide report of March 17, most of the victims were attacked in their beds. Those killed on the scene included two men, four children and six women. Two of the women were pregnant, so actually 14 lives were taken at the scene. The Islamists cut out the tongues of one of the women and her little boy. They burned alive another mother and her two young children in their home. Other victims were hospitalized with gunshot wounds allegedly from AK 47s, and machete wounds, and may have succumbed to their injuries since that time.
Christians in Jos were still reeling from the wholesale slaughter that took place in Jos earlier in the month. On March 7, hundreds of men, women, and children, including the unborn and the elderly, were hacked to death, beheaded and set on fire by Fulani Jihadists. The Rt. Rev. Benjamin Kwashi, the Archbishop of Jos, said in an interview with Channel 4 Belfast that the attacks, in which some 500 were murdered in three Christian villages, were “systematic and quite well organized.”
“Even children were all massacred. One day old. A woman was delivering and even she with the undelivered baby were all killed. Everybody – women, children, men and all,” Archbishop Kwashi stated. He said that busloads of Fulani Muslims armed with swords and machetes accomplished this slaughter of three villages in two hours. In spite of receiving advance warning from Christian leaders that the attack was coming, the military did nothing to intervene and protect the Christians until it was too late.
An AFP article in The Australian tells of the toll that the Fulani Jihadists took on Christian children, “the limbs of slaughtered children tangled in a grotesque mess.” It went on to describe, “One toddler appeared fixed in the protective but hopeless embrace of an older child, possibly his brother. Another had been scalped. Most had severed hands and feet.” Archbishop Kwashi has said that an entire generation of Christians from the area was wiped out by the Jihadists.
According to the AFP, survivors said “entire families were killed, some to the chants of Allahu akbar – God is great – and villagers awoke to shouting and gunfire about 3am on Sunday.” The survivors also said that Muslim residents of the area were warned to leave town two days before the attacks on their Christian neighbors.
Nigeria has one of the largest populations of Christians of any country. It also has the largest population of Anglican Christians of any country. The Islamists are attempting to change that. In global-political strategic terms, they want to accomplish the Islamization of Nigeria, establish Nigeria as an Islamic republic. In real terms, that is accomplished by the merciless slaughter of hundreds and thousands of individuals – individuals who are our brothers and sisters.
We have our own worries and concerns in America about our churches and our country. But we have not had our children scalped. We have not had our pregnant women butchered and our elderly burned alive in their houses. We have not suffered to the shedding of blood or the point of death. Can we take our eyes off ourselves and our own problems for a while? Can we devote some of our coveted prayer time to something beyond ourselves? Can we be advocates for the Christians in Nigeria?
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