Evidence the Fulani attacks on Christians in Nigeria’s Middle Belt are due to Islamic radicalisation

Maps used by kind permission of ICON

For more than two decades there have been increasing attacks by Fulani militias on villages inhabited by Christians and adherents of African Traditional Religions (ATR) in Nigeria’s Middle Belt. In 2013/14 the annual numbers killed jumped from around 63 to an estimated 1,229.

The attackers are almost entirely Muslim and the victims overwhelmingly non-Muslims, churches have been repeatedly destroyed and the attackers shout Islamic slogans as they attack. Despite this, Western media have repeatedly claimed this is a climate-change-driven conflict between herders who happen to be Muslims and settled farmers who happen to be Christians. In other words, it is claimed that there is no religious motivation for the attacks.

The Lindisfarne Centre for the Study of Christian Persecution has today published a research report which provides evidence that in recent years jihadist groups in West Africa have been repeatedly seeking to radicalise the Fulani. There now appears to be a revival of a traditional form of Fulani Islam which existed prior to British annexation of Northern Nigeria in the early twentieth century. This involved raids to capture both cattle and slaves from among the non-Muslim populations of what is now Nigeria’s Middle Belt. These raids were justified by Islamic concepts such as jihad, booty, land seizure and enslavement of non-Muslims which formed part of the traditionalist Islam taught in Maliki madrassas which predominate in West Africa. The current Fulani attacks on Christian and ATR villages in the Middle Belt bear significant resemblances to these earlier Fulani raids. A deadly history is being allowed to repeat itself.

The large-scale killings of Christians and other non-Muslims and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of others indicate that at least two of the criteria set out in the UN Genocide Convention have already been met - a factor almost entirely ignored by Western media.

The Lindisfarne Centre’s report also identifies two further, future risks. First, that the Fulani attacks could progress from killing Christians and adherents of African Traditional Religion, burning their churches      and seizing their land, to reviving the enslavement of non-Muslims, which was widespread among the Fulani until the early twentieth century. Secondly, there is a risk that jihadist groups such as Boko Haram may be exercising “strategic patience” – holding back, waiting for the Fulani to clear Nigeria’s Middle Belt of much of its non-Muslim population, before they themselves enact the next stage of their jihad to seize control of Nigeria.

To access the full report click HERE