JOHANNESBURG: Millions of Christians in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), spending Christmas under the reported threat of persecution, kidnapping, sexual violence and in some cases, death from Islamist militants, have seen Friday’s U.S. strikes on Islamic State militants in Nigeria as a real sign that President Trump is serious in his efforts to stop the killing of Africa’s Christians.
Over 16 million Christians are estimated to have been displaced and ripped from their homes across the region. The alleged release of 130 kidnapped schoolchildren in Nigeria this week has done little to reduce fears, as many on the continent try to worship at Christmas.
But this year, Fox News Digital has highlighted the catastrophe from Africa on multiple occasions. The situation led to senior members of Congress, including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas., Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., and ultimately, President Donald Trump’s threats and now actions have shone strong light on the violence.
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In Africa this Christmas, so far there’s reportedly little sign of improvement. “The militant Islamist onslaught across SSA is a catastrophe of global proportions unfolding before us,” Henrietta Blyth, CEO of Open Doors UK & Ireland, told Fox News Digital this week.
Open Doors is a global Christian charity supporting Christians persecuted for their faith.
Blyth continued, “the last year has seen a non-stop stream of reports from sub-Saharan Africa. (including) reports of militant Islamist groups brutally attacking, among others, defenseless Christian communities.”
“At Open Doors, we have been sounding the alarm through our Arise Africa campaign. We’ve prayed repeatedly that the campaign of terror will reach public awareness.”
Referring to Nigeria and the thousands of Christians reported to have been killed there each year and the speeches, articles and posts against the violence, Open Doors’ Blyth states, “There is no sign that this has abated in 2025”.
“The lack of global outrage and action on this issue is a moral disgrace,” South Africa’s Chief Rabbi, Dr. Warren Goldstein, told Fox News Digital. He added, “It seems as if black lives do not matter if they are murdered by Islamists in Africa. The persecution of Christians in Africa needs to be seen in its global context. It is part of a multi-continental jihadi war on the ‘infidels’ — Jews and Christians — and on Western values.”
He continued “it is a world war, with Israel at the epicenter of the fire of the jihadi forces of Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and others. The Islamist war on Christians in Africa is another front of this world war that stretches from Sudan in the north to Mozambique in the South.”
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Fox News Digital has highlighted where persecution has hit hardest in Africa in 2025:
According to Open Doors, the continent’s most populous nation saw the worst persecution in Africa in 2025, with ‘non-stop stories of deadly attacks and kidnappings’ across Nigeria’s north and Middle Belt — a litany of villages torched, citizens raped, abducted, shot and beheaded.
Pope Leo XIV spoke out this year against killings attributed to Muslim Fulani tribesmen in Nigeria’s Benue State in June, saying “Some 200 people were murdered, with extraordinary cruelty.”
Bishop Wilfred Anagbe’s Makurdi Diocese in north-central Nigeria is almost exclusively Christian. But the constant and escalating attacks by Islamist Fulani militants led him to testify at a congressional hearing in Washington in March. Back in Nigeria, he was threatened, and some 20 of his parishioners killed.
The war-torn country is 95% Christian, yet the faithful are being targeted by jihadists. In February, terrorists linked to Islamic State from the so-called ADF group, who want the eastern part of the country to become a Muslim caliphate, rounded up 70 Christians and reportedly beheaded them — in a church. In September, at least 89 Christians were reportedly slaughtered by jihadists at a funeral and in surrounding fields.
Sudan’s estimated 2 million Christians make up an estimated 4% of the country’s population,
Like the rest of Sudan’s people, they face chronic food shortages and the horror of a yearslong war. But Christians are also allegedly singled out for discrimination and persecution by both sides in the conflict.
A senior Sudanese church leader told Fox News Digital that in the Darfur city of El Fasher, that “now Christians are eating animal feed and grass. No wheat, no rice, nothing can get in.”
A civil conflict and weak governance have allowed armed militants to step into the vacuum of law and order, Open Doors reported. In the far north, Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province regularly swoop into villages in overnight raids, killing, abducting and destroying. Thousands of people have fled their homes for displacement camps.
Ali, a villager, said, “It never ends. I want it to end, but it doesn’t. We must sleep in the mountains for safety.”
Situated in the southwest of the continent, Mozambique has a Christian population of 55%. Islamic State Mozambique is causing havoc in the far north, targeting Christian communities, burning their churches and destroying homes. The killings have multiplied this year, and thousands more are fleeing their homes, joining more than 1.3 million who have already been displaced.
In one mass attack on the village of Napala in October, Open Doors reported militants killed 20 Christians and displaced some 2,000. A local pastor described how four elderly sisters were tied up and burned to death inside a house.
On the airstrikes in Nigeria, Open Doors’ Henrietta Blyth told Fox News Digital, “a military operation like this is not going to provide any sort of quick fix for decades of violence. The Nigerian government must pursue lasting solutions that ensure peace, protection of civilians and religious freedom for everyone.”
Chief Rabbi Goldstein concluded, “The West can only win this war if it can find the moral clarity to call it by its name and see all the theaters of war as part of the same fight.”
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