The below article was originally posted here. Please excuse the commentary, as this author was a bit green at the time. My title was “Outrage! Radical Islamists Attack Christians in Nigeria Again; Johnnie Carson Says It Is Not About Religion.”
April 11, 2012 04:40 PM EDT
Another deadly attack by radical Islamists in Nigeria happened over Easter at the All Nations Christian Assembly Church. A car bomb exploded in the church parking lot, killing at least 36 people. This despicable act, sadly, is not unusual, as there are attacks nearly every day, being traced to the group Boko Haram.
On Christmas day, an attack on a Christian church killed 44 people. Christians are fleeing the north after being threatened by the Boko Haram. The north is predominantly Muslim, while the south is mainly Christian. The attacks have been mainly focused in the north but have been moving to the south. A Boko Haram spokesperson stated that the motivation for the crime was “part of our response to the ultimatum we gave to southerners to leave the north.” The three day deadline for Christians to leave was corroborated by several news sources in early January.
The American Thinker reports that in 2011, “the Muslim extremist group Boko Haram killed 510 Christians and destroyed more than 350 churches using guns, gasoline bombs, and even machetes, all the while shouting ‘Allahu akbar.'” Boko Haram “has repeatedly vowed to cleanse northern Nigeria of minority Christians, and is responsible for more than 1,000 deaths since mid-2009.”
There are too many other instances of violence against Christians to list here.
Congressmen Peter King and Patrick Meehan
Last month, Congressmen Peter King and Patrick Meehan wrote a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging the State Department to designate Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organization, the letter stated, in part:
Attacks on northern and central Nigeria’s Christian community come as no surprise in light of Boko Haram’s genocidal declarations to kill Christians in the North, yet sadly they were avoidable. Despite the fact that the world has been on notice about religiously motivated terrorism in Nigeria due to sustained terrorist activity occurring against perceived “Western” concepts including churches, schools and even the United Nations, governments at home and abroad have largely ignored or underestimated the growing problem of interreligious strife and terrorism within Nigeria.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Ambassador Johnnie Carson
Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Johnnie Carson stated “religion is not driving extremist violence” on Monday at a forum on U.S. policy toward Nigeria held at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. He said, “I want to take this opportunity to stress one key point and that is that religion is not driving extremist violence either in Jos or northern Nigeria,” as reported by CNS news. Is he a madman? Is he deranged? How can he lie so blatantly? Why?
Carson continued to say “Boko Haram’s attacks on churches and mosques are particularly disturbing because they are intended to inflame religious tensions and upset the nation’s social cohesion.” Boko Haram has attacked mosques and police stations if they find them to be “insufficiently Islamic,” according to an article by CNN, but the vast majority of attacks are on Christians.
Johnnie Carson needs to step down; his denial of an obvious religious influence in these attacks is astoundingly irresponsible.
In Nigeria, as well as around the world, Christians have been targeted by radical Islamists. This is not a hate-mongering statement, this is not an anti-Islam statement, and it is simply a fact. The plight of the Christians has been largely ignored by the mainstream media. Just like the violence at Occupy, it exists, but the stories are diminished, not reported and dismissed, while other stories (e.g., Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke and the Trayvon Martin case) are inflated and reported ad nauseum. Why? Is it laziness? Is it something more insidious, like an agenda?
Christians are being targeted around the world, (e.g., Pakistan) and nobody reports on this? Why? Where is the outrage?
