Islam in Africa

For more than a decade the rise of Islamic terror in Africa has seemed unstoppable.

Jihadists are murdering, raping, torturing, kidnapping, enslaving, and, in some instances, burning people alive — across Africa, and now in Syria.

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.

Jihad Rising in Africa While the West Averts its Eyes

By: Charles Jacobs and Uzay Bulut, Gatestone, April 3, 2025 at 5:00 am

• Jihadists are murdering, raping, torturing, kidnapping, enslaving, and, in some instances, burning people alive — across Africa, and now in Syria.
• 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).
• 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.
• 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.
• In Sudan, a current genocide includes race-based slaughter of indigenous Africans by Arab jihadists… with the RSF forces targeting ethnic African minorities for extermination… According to the organization “Operation Broken Silence,” more than 150,000 civilians are estimated to have already perished from violence and hunger.
• 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.
• In Somalia, no area is safe for Christians… [al-Shabaab] maintains a commitment to eradicating Christianity from Somalia and often murders Christians on the spot.
• Nigeria has seen a dramatic increase in the abduction of Catholic priests, seminarians and religious women — for ransom, as Vatican News noted.
• All decent people…. 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.

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.

Continued…..