The jihad against Christians in Nigeria goes on:

'Governor Ahmed Sani of Zamfara State has ordered the demolition of all churches in the state, as he launched the second phase of his Sharia project yesterday. Speaking at the launch in Gusau, the state capital, Governor Sani disclosed that time was ripe for full implementation of the programme as enshrined in the Holy Quran. He added that his government would soon embark on demolition of all places of worship of unbelievers in the state, in line with Islamic injunction to fight them wherever they are found. The governor also disclosed that a law to compel employers of labour in the state to give their employees "prayer breaks" five times daily would soon be enacted by the state House of Assembly.'

Meanwhile, 20 more Nigerians have been killed in ongoing clashes between Muslims and Christians:

'Security officials last week intercepted a lorry-load of arms in Shendam city, which shares a border with Bakin Chiyawa. The state has since the return of civilian rule in 1999 been the scene of ethnic and religious unrest in which hundreds of people were killed. Wase, a largely Muslim community in the state, has in recent years been locked in conflict with the Christian villagers of nearby Tarok and Langtang'.

While in the Sudan, mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing have reached horrific proportions:

'Sudan's National Islamic Front regime has waged a war of atrocities against the Christian and animist peoples of southern Sudan since 1983. Two million people have perished. Thousands of black Africans have been captured in militia raids and sold in slavery to Arab masters in the north. Now the regime in Khartoum is perpetrating massacres and ethnic cleansing in two new areas of the country. United Nations reports tell of more than 1 million people being driven from their homes in Darfur, the western region of Sudan. In Darfur, the victims of the regime, which is led by Lieutenant General Omer Bashir, are themselves Muslim, like the government-backed militias known as the janjaweed who are burning their villages, raping women, and murdering men. In a recent alert from Human Rights Watch, the executive director, Kenneth Roth, says: "These militias work in unison with government troops, with total impunity for their massive crimes." The UN emergency relief coordinator for Sudan, Jan Egeland, said Friday: "The number one humanitarian drama in the world right now is not in Iraq and not in the Palestinian territories. It is in Darfur." '

Where are the apoplectic denunciations in the Guardian or Independent of these outrages? Where are the BBC documentaries? Where is the moral outrage of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops and establishment of the Church of England, who remain all but silent on the persecution of their own flock in Nigeria and Sudan and elsewhere across the world? But of course, when persecuted people are Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Hindus or Muslims at the hands of other Muslims, they simply don't register at all on so-called liberal Britain's conscience radar screen.

Posted by melanie at May 5, 2004