by Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n
Hudson New York<\/em><\/p>\n Several churches in northern Nigeria were bombed December 25, in what has been\u00a0described<\/a>\u00a0as “Nigeria’s blackest Christmas ever.” The attacks, perpetrated by the Muslim militant group Boko Haram, killed at least 39 people, “the majority dying on the steps of a Catholic church [in Madalla near the capital of Abuja] after celebrating\u00a0Christmas Mass<\/a>\u00a0as blood pooled in dust from a massive explosion.” Charred bodies and dismembered limbs lay scattered around the destroyed church.<\/p>\n As usual, the world offered the requisite, if perfunctory, condemnations. Of note, however, is the word so many Western leaders, from the\u00a0White House<\/a>\u00a0to the\u00a0Vatican<\/a>, used to characterize this latest\u00a0Muslim attack on Christians<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 “senseless” \u2014 a word that implies no motive, no goal, no rhyme, no reason.<\/p>\n Although Boko Haram has been bellowing its straightforward and far from “senseless” goals for a decade \u2014 enforcing Sharia law and, in conjunction, subjugating if not eliminating Nigeria’s Christians \u2014 one can see why so many are decrying the Christmas Day bombings as “senseless”: the mainstream media’s coverage offers little by way of context or continuity concerning the attacks.<\/p>\n Consider the\u00a0New York Times<\/em><\/a>‘ coverage, as reported by Adam Nossiter, in an article titled “Nigerian Group Escalates Violence with Church Attacks”:<\/p>\n The sect, known as Boko Haram, until now mostly targeted the police, government and military in its insurgency effort, but the bombings on Sunday represented a new, religion-tinged front, a tactic that threatens to exploit the already frayed relations between Nigeria’s nearly evenly split populations of Christians and Muslims\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This sentence is fraught with problems. For starters, Boko Haram has been terrorizing Nigerian Christians for years, killing thousands of them, and destroying hundreds of their churches. Considering that just last\u00a0Christmas Eve, 2010<\/a>, Boko Haram bombed several churches, killing nearly 40 Christian worshippers, the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>‘ characterization of these latest attacks as “represent[ing] a new, religion-tinged front” is not only unconscionable, but unprofessional.<\/p>\n Boko Haram \u2014 whose full name in Arabic is “People of Sunna for Da’wa [Islamization] and Jihad [Holy War]” \u2014 has, for a decade, been representing a very “religion-tinged front,” that is, an\u00a0Islamic<\/em>\u00a0front, one that is hostile to all things non-Muslim, with Christians at the very top.<\/p>\n In just the last couple of months, Boko Haram has\u00a0carried out<\/a>\u00a0attacks on dozens of other churches,\u00a0bombing<\/a>\u00a0some,\u00a0torching<\/a>\u00a0others. In one instance, they opened fire on a congregation of mostly women and children, killing dozens; they\u00a0executed two children<\/a>\u00a0of an ex-terrorist because he converted to Christianity; they murdered Christian pastors\u00a0in cold blood<\/a>; they “went to shops owned by Christians, ordering them to\u00a0recite verses from the Quran<\/a>,” killing those who could not.<\/p>\n Just last month, hundreds of armed Muslims from Boko Haram invadedChristian villages<\/a>, “like a swarm of bees,” killing, looting, and destroying. At the end of their four-hour rampage, at least 130 Christians were killed. Forty-five other Christians in another village were slaughtered by another set of “Allahu Akbar<\/a>!” screaming Muslims. Hundreds of Christians are missing; thousands have fled the region.<\/p>\n Of course, you would not know any of this reading Nossiter’s\u00a0NYT<\/em>\u00a0report, which asserts that Boko Haram’s attacks on Christians are somehow “new.” The report willfully refracts reality through the approved paradigm of political-correctness \u2014 a paradigm that always minimizes or ignores Muslim persecution of Christians around the world (lest it appear to “side” with Christians), while always putting the best spin on Muslim violence (lest it appear critical of Islam).<\/p>\n Moreover, the assertion that there are “already frayed relations between Nigeria’s nearly evenly split populations of Christians and Muslims” suggests both camps are equally hostile \u2014 even as one seeks in vain for Christian terror groups that bomb mosques in Nigeria to screams of “God is Greatest!”<\/p>\n The report goes on to offer more canards, including the suggestion that the Nigerian government’s “heavy-handed” response to the terrorists is responsible for their terror:<\/p>\n Critics of the government campaign against Boko Haram say that the effort has not only failed but has increased the sect’s appeal, because the security forces’ heavy-handed tactics have given it new sympathizers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The\u00a0NYT<\/em>\u00a0report even manages to insert another mainstream media favorite: the myth that poverty-causes-terrorism \u2014 this despite the acres of evidence that many of the most notorious Islamic terrorists are well educated and come from wealthy families, and that the terrorists’ Christian victims are often worse off than they. Regardless:<\/p>\n The sect’s attacks have been further bolstered by festering economic resentment in the impoverished and relatively neglected north, which has an exploding birthrate, low levels of literacy and mass unemployment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In short, Boko Haram’s actions have been anything\u00a0but<\/em>\u00a0“senseless”: its terror campaign has seen Christians reduced in number \u2014 whether by killing them off or tormenting them into fleeing their villages \u2014 and has seen hundreds of churches eliminated. These results correspond quite well with Boko Haram’s own stated goals of creating an anti-infidel Sharia state.<\/p>\n “Senseless” is better reserved for the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0and other mainstream media that \u2014 by disinfecting, delousing, and deodorizing events until they correspond to the ideals of their writers and editorial boards \u2014 distort and lie about the truth.<\/p>\n \u00a92011 Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Raymond Ibrahim Hudson New York Several churches in northern Nigeria were bombed December 25, in what has been\u00a0described\u00a0as “Nigeria’s blackest Christmas ever.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[377,225,227],"tags":[379,191,192,378,30,1075],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-kV","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":837,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/death-in-churches-targeting-christian-holidays-in-the-islamic-world\/","url_meta":{"origin":1297,"position":0},"title":"Death in Churches: Targeting Christian Holidays in the Islamic World","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Gatestone Institute Last Sunday, many Christians around the world celebrated Easter, taking it for granted that they can congregate and worship in peace. Not so; in the Islamic world, where\u00a0top religious officials call for the destruction of churches, Christian holidays celebrated in church are increasingly a time\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Islam"","block_context":{"text":"Islam","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/islam\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1058,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/nigerian-new-year-christian-slaughter\/","url_meta":{"origin":1297,"position":1},"title":"Nigerian New Year, Christian Slaughter","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 22, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim FrontPage Magazine The New Year's resolution for \"Sunnis for Da'wa [Islamization] and Jihad\" \u2014 also known as Boko Haram, or \"Western education is forbidden\" \u2014 is to create a Christian-free Nigeria, beginning, naturally, with the north, where Muslims outnumber Christians. Right at the start of 2012, Boko\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/religion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7027,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/new-york-times-biased-coverage-on-muslim-persectution\/","url_meta":{"origin":1297,"position":2},"title":"New York Times Biased Coverage on Muslim Persectution","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 18, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/ RaymondIbrahim.com\u00a0 The\u00a0New York Times\u00a0has finally found a victim of Islamic aggression in Nigeria worth reporting on: homosexuals. \u00a0 In a big spread complete with pictures appearing last week, the NYT\u2019s Adam Nossiter wrote \u201cWielding Whip and a Hard New Law, Nigeria Tries to \u2018Sanitize\u2019 Itself of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Nigeria"","block_context":{"text":"Nigeria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/nigeria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6081,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-administration-calls-for-the-human-rights-of-jihadi-murderers\/","url_meta":{"origin":1297,"position":3},"title":"Obama Administration Calls for the ‘Human Rights’ of Jihadi Murderers","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 25, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Nigerian government is criticized by the U.S. for going after mass murdering terrorists. by Raymond Ibrahim PJ Media It\u2019s well known that whenever jihadis attack and slaughter innocent people \u2014 especially Christians \u2014 the Obama administration tries to ignore or whitewash. Lesser known, however, is that whenever foreign governments try\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Nigeria"","block_context":{"text":"Nigeria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/nigeria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":828,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/how-the-media-whitewashes-muslim-persecution-of-christians\/","url_meta":{"origin":1297,"position":4},"title":"How the Media Whitewashes Muslim Persecution of Christians","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim The Gatestone Institute When it comes to Muslim persecution of Christians, the mainstream media (MSM) has a long paper trail of obfuscating; while they eventually do state the bare-bone facts \u2014 if they ever report on a story in the first place, which is rare \u2014 they\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/religion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7391,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/nigerian-sex-slaves-disrupt-obama-narrative-on-islam\/","url_meta":{"origin":1297,"position":5},"title":"Nigerian \u2018Sex-Slaves\u2019 Disrupt Obama Narrative on Islam","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 15, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/ RaymondIbrahim.com Islamic law permits the possession of concubines, or sex slaves.\u00a0 This has been demonstrated countless times, including through\u00a0Islamic\u00a0clerics\u00a0quoting\u00a0Islamic scriptures, and through ordinary Muslims,\u00a0past and present,\u00a0acting on it. 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