“Christians in the Middle East and Africa are being slaughtered, tortured, raped, kidnapped, beheaded, and forced to flee the birthplace of Christianity. One would think this horror might be consuming the pulpits and pews of American churches. Not so. The silence has been nearly deafening,” observed Kristen Powers in a Daily Beast article.

The Christian community in northern Nigeria has faced, with growing alarm, a spreading phenomenon: Christian girls under 18 are abducted and forced to convert to Islam by radical religious leaders, sometimes linked to the “Boko haram” group. This has only recently made headlines but the terrorist campaign there against Christians has been going on for years. Churches have been attacked and Christians killed. Last July, more than 40 people, mostly students, were killed in an attack against a college and in another attack, the dormitory of an institute was set on fire while the children were sleeping and those who tried to escape the fire were gunned down.

Yet far too few Christians have spoken out about any of this violence until a Nigeria-based social media campaign — #saveourgirls – recently started making headlines. I admit I have too often been among the silent. Last September, I sat with the world, in front of my television, horrified as Al-Shabaab terrorists slaughtered over 60 Saturday afternoon shoppers in Nairobi’s Westgate Mall, while sparing Muslims through a kind of twisted religious quiz: Who was the prophet’s mother, can you recite a verse from the Qu’ran, can you say the Shahada? Answer correctly, you were set free. If not, you were murdered.

Jews, Hindus, Christians, secular people — to these terrorists, we are “kuffar,” a highly derogatory Arabic term referring to non-Muslims. In the mall that day, the “kuffar” fell victim to a warped “meticulous vetting process” that qualifies some, but not others, as human beings with human rights, including the right to life.

As Christians, we must break our silence, but wise and effective action can be planned and taken only by first asking why – why is the world, and especially the Christian world, so silent?

 

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