Most Dangerous Nations for Christians - Nigeria Tops List
What is the most dangerous place in the world to be Christian? Nigeria. But there are too many other African and Asian countries where Christians are targeted, abused, and even massacred with scarcely any sign of horror from the West.
I have argued that Nigeria is the most dangerous country in the world for Christians ever since a report came out that, in 2021, eight out of ten Christians killed globally for their faith were Nigerian. The two-decade-long death toll of the (largely Muslim) persecution of Nigerian Christians was previously estimated at 60,000, with an estimated 10 million more displaced between July 2009 and July 2021. Persecution.org (International Christian Concern or ICC) released its 2023 report on the world’s worst persecutors of Christians, with Nigeria at number one.
The report had three different categories. Note that all but one of the “groups” is Islamic, and that the three lists of persecutors are almost entirely made up of Communists and Muslims:
Countries:
Nigeria
North Korea
India
Iran
China
Pakistan
Eritrea
Algeria
Indonesia
Azerbaijan
Entities/Groups
Allied Democratic Forces
Al-Shabab
Fulani Militants
Sahel Terror Groups
The Taliban
Tatmadaw (Burmese Army)
Individuals:
[Hindu monk and Chief Minister of India’s Uttar Pradesh] Yogi Adityanath
[Eritrean president] Isaias Afwerki
[Turkish dictator President] Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
[Chinese dictator] Xi Jinping
[North Korean dictator] Kim Jong Un
China has been growing steadily worse for Christian in recent years, and parts of India are becoming a morass of religious violence.
What’s horrifying is how little the West seems to care. As just one example, when the Biden administration took over in 2021, Nigeria was removed from the State Department list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC), even as genocidal violence raged on! Remember, 2021 was the year when eight out of ten Christians killed globally were Nigerian, and yet the Biden administration deliberately removed Nigeria from the list of countries of concern. While woke leftists definitely don’t care about the persecution of Christians, especially Asian and African Christians, too many Western Christians don’t seem to know or care anything about the horrific persecution of Christians in many nations around the world either. Religious leaders scarcely ever talk about it, and the media largely ignores it.
From Breitbart:
“Radical Muslim terror groups such as Boko Haram and Fulani militants have waged a ‘20-year genocide against Christians in Nigeria,’ the report declared, and as a result ‘Christian men, women, and children are brutally kidnapped, tortured, and killed every week in Nigeria.’
In just 128 days of 2022, spanning from March 4 to July 6, a total of 55 separate attacks resulted in the deaths of 549 Christians, ICC reported.
The adoption of Sharia criminal law in 12 northern states has exacerbated the ongoing persecution of Christians in the region, the text stated, and meanwhile the Nigerian government and much of the international community ‘continue to deny religious motivation behind ongoing violence, despite the clear targeting of Christians and churches’…The principal driver of Christian persecution in Nigeria is radical Islam and, according to ICC, the three main perpetrators of persecution are Boko Haram, Fulani militants, and Islamic conservative communities.”
Even when Western outlets do cover the violence in Nigeria, they usually refuse to admit that radical Islam is the driving factor behind it.
We must pray for and spread the word about suffering Christians in Nigeria, China, India, Iran, North Korea, and all the other countries where Christians are persecuted (including some not on the above list, like Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan). We should look for ways to donate to these Christians, and urge our religious leaders to speak up against this global plague of anti-Christian hatred.