Why are massacres of Christians treated as background noise while Gaza dominates headlines for months? The answer is ugly: global outrage is selective, manufactured, deeply politicized and biased in favour of the Islamic world.
Even human rights
organizations display the bias. When Christians are massacred, the reports are
dry, perfunctory, couched in vague language of “communal violence” or
“clashes.” When Palestinians are killed, the reports are urgent, fiery, and
amplified. Victims are categorized not by their humanity but by their political
utility.
Massacre in Gaza: Global Outrage Ignites
The world has rarely
seen such waves of outrage as it has in response to Israel’s relentless assault
on Gaza. For months, images of bombed-out apartment blocks, lifeless children
pulled from rubble, hospitals reduced to smoking ruins, and desperate families
fleeing with nothing but the clothes on their backs have circulated across the
globe. Demonstrations have erupted in London, Paris, New York, Berlin, Sydney,
Jakarta, Mumbai, and virtually every other major city. University campuses in
the United States have turned into battlegrounds of protest; European
parliaments have been disrupted by activists unfurling Palestinian flags;
Western capitals have witnessed hundreds of thousands of people in the streets.
The sheer scale of
the devastation in Gaza is undeniable. Tens of thousands of civilians —
overwhelmingly Muslims — have been killed, according to various human rights
groups. Whole neighbourhoods have been flattened. The blockade has choked food,
water, electricity, and medical supplies, leaving hospitals overwhelmed and
children malnourished. International organizations from the United Nations to
Human Rights Watch have accused Israel of collective punishment, indiscriminate
bombing, and possible war crimes. Even allies of Israel in the West are
increasingly uneasy, facing pressure from their citizens demanding an end to
what they see as nothing short of a massacre.
The narrative has
gripped the world’s conscience. Celebrities write angry posts on Instagram.
Politicians deliver fiery speeches in parliament. NGOs churn out reports.
Editorial boards dedicate front pages and primetime coverage. In cafes,
universities, workplaces, and dinner tables, Gaza dominates conversation. To
oppose Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is to stand with humanity, or so the
loudest voices claim.
Of course, much of
this outrage is justified. Civilian slaughter is a moral horror wherever it
happens, and Gaza’s suffering cannot be denied or dismissed. Innocent people
are dying in large numbers, and that tragedy must be recognized. But here is
where the hypocrisy of the global protest industry is exposed with brutal
clarity: the same outrage that explodes over Gaza vanishes into thin air when
equally horrific massacres take place elsewhere — particularly when the victims
are Christians butchered by Islamist extremist groups in Africa.
The question is
simple: if human lives are equal, if oppression is to be condemned, if
massacres deserve global outcry — why then is there near silence when Christian
villages are torched in Nigeria, when worshippers are slaughtered in Congo,
when children are abducted, raped, and executed by Islamist militias? Why does
the moral compass suddenly break when the victims are Christian, the
perpetrators Muslim, and the continent Africa?
Massacres of Christians in Africa ignored
Let us step away for
a moment from Gaza’s bombed streets and look instead at northern Nigeria. In
the last decade, Islamist extremist groups — Boko Haram, Islamic State’s West
Africa Province (ISWAP), and armed Fulani militias — have carried out massacres
that dwarf many of the conflicts which make front-page news. Villages razed.
Churches burned. Congregations wiped out during Sunday service. Women taken as
sex slaves, men hacked to death, children shot or kidnapped. According to Open
Doors, a Christian watchdog organization, Nigeria is the most dangerous country
in the world to be a Christian. Between 2009 and 2023, more than 50,000
Christians were killed for their faith in Nigeria alone. That is not a typo.
Fifty thousand.
In 2014, the world
briefly noticed Boko Haram when the group kidnapped nearly 300 schoolgirls from
Chibok. The hashtag #BringBackOurGirls trended for a while, Michelle Obama held
a placard, celebrities chimed in, and then the noise faded. But the killings
continued. Mass abductions became routine. Villages disappeared overnight.
Thousands of children remain unaccounted for, enslaved in camps deep in the
forests. Yet, outside of niche human rights reports, there is barely a whisper.
No million-strong marches in Paris. No universities shut down in protest. No
city councils voting to rename streets. Silence.
Move further east to
the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a
jihadi group linked to ISIS, has left a trail of horror. Entire Christian
communities have been slaughtered. In 2021 alone, over 1,200 civilians were
killed in Ituri and North Kivu provinces, most of them Christians targeted
deliberately by Islamist militias. Mass graves are uncovered regularly.
Families flee into the forests with nothing, their villages burned to ash.
Where is the outrage? Where are the UN resolutions? Where is the viral social
media storm? Nowhere.
Even beyond Nigeria
and Congo, the pattern repeats. In Mozambique, Islamist insurgents aligned with
ISIS decapitated children, torched churches, and drove hundreds of thousands
from their homes. In Burkina Faso, Christian villagers are lined up and executed
by extremists who demand conversion or death. In Sudan, decades of persecution
continue with little interruption. The Christian minority across large swathes
of Africa faces an existential threat. This is not sporadic violence; it is
systematic, ideologically motivated massacre. And yet the silence is deafening.
Why does the world
avert its eyes? Why are massacres of Christians treated as background noise
while Gaza dominates headlines for months? The answer is ugly: global outrage
is selective, manufactured, and deeply politicized.
Time to confront this hypocrisy without apology
Western media, which
prides itself on moral clarity, has chosen its narrative. Palestinians fit
neatly into the “oppressed vs oppressor” script, while African Christians do
not. Coverage of Africa is sporadic, often buried in the back pages, framed as
“tribal conflict” or “local unrest” rather than religiously motivated
extermination. The scale of suffering is minimized, the pattern ignored. There
is no sustained coverage, no relentless primetime focus, no celebrity hashtags.
The dead are too poor, too African, too Christian to count.
Western politicians
are no better. They thunder against Israel, not merely out of compassion but
because it resonates with their electorates, their activists, their identity
politics. Condemning massacres of Christians in Africa, however, wins no votes,
earns no clicks, stirs no protests outside their offices. It is politically
useless. So they turn away.
The hypocrisy reeks.
If the principle is that innocent lives matter, then the silence over Nigeria
and Congo is a moral scandal. A Nigerian child hacked to death in front of his
burning church is no less human than a Palestinian child pulled from the rubble.
A Congolese mother watching her family slaughtered by Islamist militias is no
less deserving of compassion than a Gazan mother mourning under bombardment. To
grieve selectively, to rage selectively, to march selectively — that is not
solidarity, it is cowardice.
What makes this
double standard especially grotesque is that the numbers are not marginal.
According to the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law,
more than 5,000 Christians were killed in Nigeria in 2022 alone. By comparison,
the widely reported death toll in Gaza in 2023 stood at around 20,000. The
scale in Africa, stretched across years, is staggering — yet absent from the
world’s conscience.
Why? Because the
protest industry thrives on spectacle, not substance. Gaza provides a clear
villain and victim, an oppressor and oppressed, a narrative that aligns with
ideological battles in the West. Nigeria and Congo provide none of that. They
are messy, distant, complicated, and lack the emotional branding that fuels
hashtags. The victims are Christians — unfashionable, unglamorous,
inconvenient. And so, they are erased.
This moral bankruptcy
corrodes the very foundation of human rights. By turning massacres into a
selective commodity, activists and politicians cheapen the meaning of outrage.
They turn compassion into theatre. They transform solidarity into a partisan
game. In doing so, they abandon thousands of voiceless victims whose only crime
was belonging to the wrong faith in the wrong continent.
It is time to confront this hypocrisy without
apology. If Gaza deserves outrage — and it does — then so too do Nigeria,
Congo, Mozambique, Burkina Faso, Sudan, and every other place where innocent
lives are massacred. To scream about Gaza while ignoring Africa is not justice;
it is selective morality dressed up as virtue. It is easy outrage, fashionable
outrage, outrage that flatters the protester rather than honours the dead.
History will not be
kind to this silence. One day, when the graves are counted, when the
testimonies are written, when the true scale of slaughter emerges, the world
will be asked: where were you when Christian villages were burned to ash? Where
were your marches, your placards, your hashtags? Where were your celebrities,
your speeches, your resolutions? And the answer will be shameful: you were
busy, apparently, outraged elsewhere.
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