Jihadists are murdering, raping, torturing, kidnapping, enslaving, and, in some instances, burning people alive — across Africa, and now in Syria. Recent videos posted on X show that Syrian Islamists are doing to Alawites what Hamas did to Jews living near Gaza. Christians, Druze and Yazidis in Syria — like their non-Muslim or non-Arabized counterparts in Africa— fear they may be next.
The al-Qaeda-affiliated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorists, led by Ahmed Hussein al Sharaa, who conquered Damascus in December 2024, are going from door to door in western Syria and massacring religious minorities in cruel, sadistic ways. Social media posts show Alawite men, women and children shot at close range. According to Greek Member of European Parliament Nikolas Farantouris, who recently visited Syria, "Reliable data indicate 7,000 massacres of Christians and Alawites and unprecedented atrocities against civilians." The death toll is still rising.
Syria is just the most recent country targeted by Islamic jihadists. For years now, in at least 12 countries in Africa, jihad has been spreading. Local jihadist organizations go by different names, but the ideology that drives them is the same: Every one of them deeply believes that Allah wants him to wipe the world clean of the kuffar (infidels). In Nigeria, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Niger, Somalia, Mozambique and Libya, among others, Islamic militants massacre civilians, the vast majority of whom are Christians, leading to widespread terror, insecurity and displacement.
More than 16.2 million Christians in Sub-Saharan Africa have been driven from their homes by jihadi violence and conflict, reports the human rights organization Open Doors. Such violence includes murder, physical injury, rape, abduction, theft of property and destruction of homes and farmland. Christians are being dispossessed of their land and means of livelihood. Millions of them now live in displaced-persons camps. Women and girls are abducted, forced into "marriage," forced to convert to Islam, raped, and subjected to forced labor. Several girls have been forced to act as suicide bombers or human shields at the hands of jihadis.
On February 13, seventy Christians were beheaded by jihadists in the Congo, now one of the most dangerous countries for non-Muslims due to escalating jihadist violence. Church leaders are targeted, abducted, tortured and murdered. Christian villages have been burned down, and pastors, priests and lay Christians abducted by the Islamist "Allied Democratic Forces" and other armed factions. Churches, convents and Christian schools have been vandalized and looted by militiamen. From January to June of 2024, Islamic militants murdered 639 Christians in various incidents, including beheadings and shootings, according to a report released by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
In Sudan, a current genocide includes race-based slaughter of indigenous Africans by Arab jihadists. The war in Sudan is between two Muslim forces — the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), the country's official military, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a regional paramilitary group created by a previous military regime. Arab supremacy against the indigenous, non-Arabized Sudanese people drives both sides, with the RSF forces targeting ethnic African minorities for extermination. They are responsible for committing sexual violence on a large scale in areas under their control, including the gang rape, abduction and detention of victims in conditions that amount to sexual slavery, as the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan documented in a detailed report. Most of the victims are non-Arabs, particularly the Masalit people.
Innocent civilians have been murdered for their race in Sudan. Towns and villages are being destroyed. According to the organization "Operation Broken Silence," more than 150,000 civilians are estimated to have already perished from violence and hunger. Nearly 25 million Sudanese — half of the country's population — are facing high levels of acute food insecurity. Roughly 15 million people have been forced to flee their homes or have left Sudan as refugees. That is nearly one in three of all Sudanese. Nearly 80% of the country's healthcare system is not functioning. Roughly 90% of schools are closed.
In Libya, slavery, forced labor and human trafficking are still widespread, as seen in video evidence of an auction of sub-Saharan Africans in the country. Today, Sharia law is strictly upheld: for a Muslim to convert to Christianity is a crime punishable by death. In one reported case, a Christian convert from a Muslim background received a death sentence in September 2022 and remains imprisoned while his case is pending with the Supreme Court. If a Libyan woman is suspected of being interested in Christianity, she faces house arrest, sexual assault, forced marriage or even death. Foreign Christians, especially those from sub-Saharan Africa, are also targeted by Islamist militant and criminal groups in Libya. These groups kidnap and sometimes brutally murder Christians. Even if they avoid such a fate, sub-Saharan African Christians face harassment and threats from radical Muslims in Libya.
In Cameroon's Far North region, Islamic terrorists — specifically Boko Haram and the Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP) — regularly attack, trying to carve out an Islamic caliphate in Cameroon's most volatile region. Christians who live in these areas are targeted for violence, abduction and murder. Churches have been set on fire and church leaders and seminary students kidnapped, as corroborated by reports from the US State Department. Armed groups often occupy churches, turning sacred spaces into arenas of conflict.
In Somalia, no area is safe for Christians. However, Christians are most at risk in areas under the control of radical Islamic militants such as al-Shabaab. A violent Islamist terrorist group, al-Shabaab controls large swaths of the country, where it enforces a strict form of Sharia (Islamic law). It maintains a commitment to eradicating Christianity from Somalia and often murders Christians on the spot. In March 2024, for instance, al-Shabaab militants reportedly murdered six Christian men.
In Burkina Faso, the rise of Islamic radicalism has forced Christians to flee. Cities that used to be safe are now at risk of attack. In areas where militant groups are active, Christians risk being kidnapped, displaced or murdered and their churches destroyed. For fear of jihadists, hundreds of churches have been closed. In August 2024, at least 500 people in the central part of Burkina Faso were murdered when jihadists opened fire on civilians.
Jihadist violence continues to escalate in Nigeria. Raids by Muslim Fulani militants, multiple groups of armed bandits, and terror groups such as Boko Haram and ISWAP have devastated Christian communities in the country. In shockingly brutal attacks, these terrorists also destroy the homes, churches and livelihoods of non-Muslims. Tens of thousands of Christians have been murdered and thousands of women and girls have been abducted and subjected to sexual violence. In addition to being forcibly "married," girls abducted by terrorists have reportedly been used as human shields or as leveraged commodities in negotiations.
Church leaders are specific targets of Islamists. Vatican News, the news portal of the Holy See, reported on recent cases of abductions and murders of Catholics in Nigeria. Speaking on behalf of Nigeria's Bishop Gabriel Dunia, of Auchi Diocese, the diocesan spokesman Fr. Peter Egielewa said 21-year-old Major Seminarian Andrew Peter "was gruesomely murdered by the abductors." On March 5, Ash Wednesday, Fr. Sylvester Okechukwu of Kafanchan Diocese was also murdered by kidnappers. In the last two months, Nigeria has seen a dramatic increase in the abduction of Catholic priests, seminarians and religious women — for ransom, as Vatican News noted.
Mali is another African nation ravaged by a jihadist insurgency. The Islamic insurgency that devastated the north of Mali in 2012 continues to have massive repercussions for the country. Islamists instituted a strict Sharia regime in the north, demolishing churches and assaulting Christians, Open Doors reports. As a result, many Christians have lost their homes and been forced to flee the region. Islamist persecution has rendered many regions in the country uninhabitable for Christians. Those living in areas controlled by Islamic militants have been denied access to water and land to grow crops. The jihadist violence is spreading southward, and the country's institutions are rapidly collapsing, further playing into the hands of jihadist groups.
In Mozambique, a majority-Christian country, the rise of Islamist extremism in the north, especially in regions such as Cabo Delgado, has made life increasingly perilous for Christian communities. Islamists there unleashed a wave of violence, targeting Christian places of worship, abducting pastors and murdering many Christians. The objective of these groups is to establish a strict Islamic state, making Christians a specific and vulnerable target. In 2024, there were numerous reports of abductions across areas of the country where jihadists and their gunmen exert influence. Christian homes and businesses were frequently targeted and set on fire, contributing to the ongoing displacement and economic destabilization of the region.
Over two weeks in January of 2024, for instance, Islamic State-affiliated terrorists attacked several villages in the Mocímboa da Praia district. The attacks began on January 3 in the village of Ntotoe, where three Christians were murdered, and more than 60 homes and a church burned down. Subsequent attacks in Chimbanga and another village resulted in the murder of six more Christians and the destruction of over 110 homes.
A near continent-wide jihad has set Africa aflame, yet the West averts its eyes. Its "human rights" movements and mainstream media mostly avoid noticing victims — especially black victims whom it had historically and instinctively championed. The willful blindness to black suffering — imposed very often by non-blacks — has been called hypocritical, but this strange behavior needs a deeper, more serious analysis.
All decent people — including especially those who are partisans, even activists, in "human rights" movements — need urgently to address this question: Why does the liberal West turn a blind eye when Islamic jihadists abduct, abuse, rape, enslave, forcibly convert or murder millions of darker-skinned people in Africa and the Middle East? A refusal to address such lethal moral blindness signifies that the West has chosen a path to its own demise, and will be abandoning countless innocents as it goes.
Dr. Charles Jacobs is President of the African Jewish Alliance.
Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute and a senior researcher at the African Jewish Alliance
Abhishek Ghosh