Christians across the world celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ three days after his crucifixion by Roman soldiers just outside of Jerusalem a little less than 2000 years ago this past Sunday.
In Sri Lanka, Christian worshippers in three churches experienced the horror of a suicide bomber attack killing 290 and injuring another 500 motivated by radical Islam. According to CNN, the St. San Sebastian Church in Negombo alone suffered more than 100 fatalities from the suicide bomber attack.
But the hundreds dead in Sri Lanka is just the tip of the bloody iceberg being wrought against Christians in places like Nigeria, Pakistan and China.
In fact, the non-profit Open Doors organization which monitors Christian persecution worldwide reports that eleven Christians are killed for faith related reasons every day around the world for a total of 4,136 as of April 22. Additionally, 1,266 Christian church buildings have been attacked in 2019 alone. While the origins of the destructive fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France is still being determined and may be nothing more than an innocent electrical fire, it is undeniable that France has seen a growing number of attacks on Christian, largely Roman Catholic, churches. The Courrier International reports that in one week in February alone there were twelve separate attacks on French Christian churches with even Snopes agreeing that in February there was an unusually high number of attacks.
Last year in Nigeria, thousands of Christians were killed by organized radical Islamic terrorists who target churches and Christian villages, and the attacks continue this year. In March, 2019 alone the human rights organization, International Christian Concern (ICC) reports that “Fulani militants continued to carry out violent attacks throughout Nigeria’s Middle Belt region in March. The brutal attacks perpetrated by these hardline Islamic militants persistently spark fear among Christians living in the Middle Belt, as death tolls continue to rise… Last month [March 2019], at least 150 people were killed.”
The ICC reports that the three largest attacks in March were, “March 4, 2019 when Fulani militants attacked Benue State, killing 23; on March 11, 2019: when Fulani militias attack Kajuru, burning more than 100 homes, killing 52 and on March 18, 2019 when Boko Haram sieged a Christian majority town in Adamawa State, inhabited by more than 370,000 people.”
Americans may remember the Obama administration hashtag campaign response to the Islamic Boko Haram kidnapping of Nigerian Christian girls in 2014. Unfortunately, social media posts have not deterred the murder and rape of Christians in the region as the regional majority Fulani Islamic tribesmen have become bold in attacking their neighbors. More than 91 million Nigerians are Christian out of a total population of 196 million, yet Open Doors classifies Nigeria as the twelfth worse place for Christian oppression.
The sad truth is that the Easter massacres in Sri Lanka, the church attacks in France and the on-going murders of Christians by Nigerian Islamic herdsmen in an attempt to drive Christianity out of northern and central Nigeria continues unabated. This ongoing one-sided war has many in Africa wondering if the same slaughter was occurring in Europe would it be tolerated?
Given the evidence on three continents, the answer is very likely yes.
The West has chosen silence in the face of the anti-Western values of the Sharia-wielding invaders coming in the guise of being refugees. The post-modern West, which has largely forgotten the values which created the great cathedrals, literature, and unheard of prosperity for billions across the world, instead trading them for amoral secularism which pretends that all ideas are equal and that none should be opposed. Radical Islam, on the other hand, demands subjugation of the infidel whether through passive submission as those who impose their foreign values play the victim as seen in much of Europe, or through abject violence and oppression as is witnessed in Nigeria and throughout the parts of the world where Islam is the dominant religion, if only in a region of the country.
After massacre after massacre, hopefully the events of this Easter will wake up the West to the true threat to its survival. That threat is not radical Islam per se, but instead is the lack of a spiritual alternative to it. If the post-modern world will not awaken to this reality, Europe and indeed the United States will find itself living in a pre-enlightenment world where the only choice will be to submit to their feudal masters.
Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.
