Muslim Terrorism in Nigeria

Conversations That Matter

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00:14

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast, I'm your host John Harris, and we've had Judd Saul on the program before to talk about his mission in Nigeria called equipping the persecuted.

00:24

You know them because we've talked about how they build orphanages and supply persecuted Christians who are under attack from Boko Haram, Muslim terrorist organization.

00:33

They give them food and supplies and walkie talkies and training to help them minimize this threat.

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And frankly, it is shocking to me still sometimes when I think about how we focus on other countries and Israel, for example,

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I understand Israel is very influential and we should be concerned about what's happening there. But we do have a genocide happening that you never hear about.

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And Nigeria is probably one of the hottest spots, if not the hottest spot for anti -Christian persecution.

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So I wanted to give you all an update today. We have with us Judd here to talk about it. Welcome back, Judd. Appreciate you coming on.

01:12

Hey, thanks for having me back, John. Really appreciate it. Yeah. Well, Judd's, you know, for those who don't know, who are new to the podcast, and we have several new subscribers,

01:20

Judd's been a longtime friend. We've worked together on a number of things, including the Enemies Within the Church project. And this is just your latest project.

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I have to say, Judd, I think this is probably where you've shined the most as far as, you know, being, getting traction for, you know, what you're doing and you seem very motivated about it.

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And frankly, I don't quite understand how you can go to Nigeria as often as you do, but you obviously believe in this.

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How many times do you go a year? On average, about four times a year. And so, and that, you know, what do you have to go to like Heathrow and do a long layover?

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I mean, it's got to be grueling. When you include all the layovers and everything start to finish, it's about a 25 -hour journey every time we go.

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Because we have to go from one place to another layover and then go to another connection and then another connection into Nigeria.

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And it's just par for the course. Pretty much used to it now. And you know, it's really strange when you're going to all these foreign airports and they recognize you because you travel through there.

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That's what's happening to us. Well, you might stand out in Nigeria. I'm just saying. I don't know. I'm trying to stick out like a sore thumb.

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They call me Babamba Baturi, which is big white man. Big white man. Oh man.

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And you want me to come with you. I don't know. You feel like I'm going to have like a bad nickname.

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I don't know what it would be. But you know, sometimes people go to Africa for missions and, you know, like short term missions trips.

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And you find out later. And I'm not saying this is necessarily all wrong, by the way. But you know, they got to see

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Victoria Falls and they got to, they went to the beautiful parts of South Africa and which

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I would love to go to. I was actually just watching a documentary the other day on South Africa and my goodness, how beautiful a country is that?

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But you're not going to an area where, I mean, that's not even an option. This is really, it's a plane, as I understand it, kind of like the

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Midwest, right? It's kind of like, what do people do? It's farming and stuff. There's farming, there's mining.

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Those are pretty much the main driving economic forces in Nigeria is mining and farming.

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And next to that is terrorism, kidnapping and extortion. Right. So it's a war zone. Yes. I saw a map the other day that southern

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Nigeria has high literacy rates. Northern Nigeria has horrible literacy rates. And it's it literally follows the

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Muslim Christian divide there. Correct. And you can attribute that to the radical

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Muslim takeover of the North. It was not like that. I mean, it was majority Christian at one point, but as they took over, they ban education.

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They don't like the girls educated. In fact, Boko Haram essentially meaning is we don't like Western education.

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That's the translation. Yeah, that's the translation. It's anti -Western education and influence.

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So they want to keep people somewhat ignorant, I suppose, and under the thumb of Islam. I just saw, obviously, you saw yesterday the attacks as we're recording this.

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This is what's in the news in New Orleans with Muslim terrorists. And then actually,

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I heard there was a big, like booming sound. I don't know whatever happened with that, but people are scared right now.

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And I think it was a few hours after that happened. And I think it was New York City. There was a huge march in support of Palestine.

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And I mean, I don't know where things exactly are in the you know, obviously the

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Democratic Party in the United States is in a civil war over the Israel -Palestine issue. How does what you're fighting fit into all of this or what you're,

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I should say, addressing? Well, it directly fits and I just want to point out and kind of update everybody.

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So the whole world knows about what happened in New Orleans with 15 people killed by, you know, by a terrorist attack that happened in New Orleans.

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What no one knows about is that just last week. Sorry, did we lose connection?

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No, I still hear you. I just don't see you anymore. Your camera went off. I don't know if your camera died.

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I still got audio, though. OK, well, we'll just stay on audio. I don't know what's going on. But what happened was just last

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Christmas or seven days ago over Christmas in Nigeria, 25 Christians were killed. But you don't hear anything about it on the news.

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No one covered it. No one's bothering to talk about what happened there. And we had women, men, children all slaughtered, some burned alive.

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And the last Christmas attack, but it's done by the same ideology that perpetrated the attacks in New Orleans.

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This is this is the same ideology, the same the same radical Islamic ideology that is permeating throughout the world and our country in the for the cause of political correctness and not wanting to offend anybody allowed it to happen.

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Yeah, it's an amazing thing. I don't know why Nigeria doesn't get more attention, but I think you're it pretty much right, like there's some websites that will sometimes report.

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There's some websites, watchdog organizations that will report numbers. But now they're starting to get their information from us.

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It's starting to report numbers that we're giving to them because we're actually on the ground verifying the numbers, responding to the attacks and actually helping those that have been wounded and we're helping the survivors.

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So we're the ones on the ground dealing with it on a real time basis. So now these organizations are coming to us, actually getting information.

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So this is cutting, cutting edge stuff. TruthNigeria .com is the website, right? If people want to see that.

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That's our, that's our, that's our new site. And and John, what's been crazy is, is that, so we knew about the, we knew the

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Christmas attacks were going to happen. We put out terror alerts about the potential attacks during Christmas.

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And yes, 25 people were killed, but our terror alerts mitigated hundreds being killed because people took our information and set up a defense and thwarted off other attacks.

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What does that look like out of curiosity? Is that guys with guns acting as a deterrent on the borders of a town or what is it?

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It's, it's village security teams and farmers with homemade shotguns standing in the line and, and, and spraying whatever they can out of those barrels at the terrorists that are coming in.

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So there was fighting that happened. Oh yeah. There was fighting that happened. There was definite fighting that happened.

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And, but they were able to put up a first line of defense because we had the intelligence that, that we knew attacks were going to occur in what area.

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See, this is one of the things that I know for years, we've talked about this. I've wondered about some of these persecuted areas where you have enough

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Christians, it would seem to make a defense, but there's this passivity that I guess we just should be persecuted or something.

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And, and I've wondered like voice of the martyrs and some of these other organizations that go in and give aid, you know, whether it's a world vision or, um, you know,

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I don't know, like, you know, and I don't, obviously they're not really as operational or operational at all in Nigeria, but in some of these other places,

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I've just thought, look, why? Why not? Like, I don't know, help them out with the root of the problem, right?

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You're coming in after and you're trying to fix the, uh, the devastating effects of it, but you're addressing the root cause here, uh, as far as the violence is concerned by helping them or notifying them that it's coming.

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And, um, so without giving, uh, you know, away too much information in case we have

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Muslim terrorists watching this podcast, uh, what does that look like? Is that, are that, are there people on the ground?

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How do they know that there's going to be an attack and that kind of thing? Well, we teach them, we teach them how to gather intelligence.

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Um, I mean, they do it all the time. They have eyes and ears on the ground everywhere in every village, every area

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I'm talking about the Fulani terrorists, they have their eyes and ears, well, why can't Christians have their eyes and ears on what's going on?

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Like, these are just simple things that it's common sense to us, but it's kind of a foreign concept, uh, to Nigerian, Nigerian Christians for whatever reason.

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And so unlike other organizations, we actually want to stop the terrorist attacks.

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We want to stop the killing. We don't want to come in and say, oh, thousand of you have been slaughtered. Here's a hundred thousand Bibles. We would actually like to come in and prevent the attacks and empower our

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Christian brothers and sisters. So they don't have to be massacred and bullied by thugs. What are the needs right now?

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Do you need like the security experts from the United States to come in? Do you just need money? Do you like what kind of, uh, we need, we need, we have, we have the plan in place.

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We have the people in place. We just need more finances to execute our plan.

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Um, we have done what none, no other organization has done in regards to helping persecuted

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Christians. Um, uh, we have, and how effective we've been with the little amount of resources we've raised.

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So we need resources. We need funds to execute our plans, to take this to the next level. And John, I'm convinced if we had the resources and the political will in the

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United States and the rest of the world, we could end persecution in Nigeria. It doesn't have to happen.

10:59

Old statement. Uh, yeah, I've wondered that about other places too. Like, well, it doesn't have to happen.

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It doesn't, right. Why does this, um, continue? Isn't there a deterrent? Um, so you, you, you had said when you reached out that, um,

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I think it was the topic of, uh, this attitude of persecution grows the church.

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You wanted to address that. So I'll let you talk about that. Okay. So there is a,

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I think there's a big misconception of, uh, a naivety, especially in American Christianity, where they say, oh, persecution just explodes the church.

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It grows the church. It spreads it far and wide. That does not happen when it comes to Islam.

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You do not see an explosion of Christianity in the Middle East, which was all once Christian.

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Syria, Iraq, Lebanon. These were all majority

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Christian countries that have been taken over by Islam and the Christians are a tiny minority living in slavery under Islam.

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Christianity did not explode. With persecution in regards to Islam. So anybody that's out there saying, oh,

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Christianity explodes under persecution, not when it comes to Islam. It doesn't. And there's a big naivety when that happens.

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And then we go back and I'm seeing all these former videos of Russell Moore promoting, you know, built having

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Southern Baptist promote building mosques and we're going back and seeing all these naive, stupid

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Christians saying we need to help build mosques and come alongside our Muslim brothers and sisters and promote the religion in our communities.

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This is insanity and it's stupid and it does not work. Yeah, I actually got an email last night from someone who left

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Brent Leatherwood's church. I think it was like five years ago over this issue. And Brent Leatherwood, I guess, was pretty adamant that and really they wouldn't frame it as promoting

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Islam, but promoting religious pluralism. They would think, I guess they would say religious freedom or liberty. You know, we need to be in support of the in the case of the

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ERLC filing briefs that would pave the way or help alleviate local government concerns over mosques being built and that kind of thing.

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And yeah, John, John, it is it is absolutely insane that these people even have positions in leadership in the

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Southern Baptist Convention just for even having that attitude. They need to be tarred and feathered because it is anti -ethical to the scriptures.

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Nowhere in the Bible does it say, let's be pluralistic with other religions and promote other religions. No, no.

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What are Christians supposed to do? We're supposed to smash Baal idols. We're not supposed to build them next to our churches.

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So the question, I guess, I mean, this is getting outside the scope, perhaps of the I don't know, maybe it's not of the mission here in Nigeria.

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But, you know, like where do you draw lines? There's some religions, there's some false religions, we'll say out there that are peaceful for like they're not going to go blow up your church.

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They don't have terrorists. And we can probably categorize those as less of a threat on a physical level, at least to, you know, they're not going to threaten the life of my daughter.

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They're not going to. Right. You know, unless she walks into their temple or whatever religious building, they're not going to be a big, huge threat.

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But there's other religions that are very much, you know, very aggressive, very violent.

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And I just I've wondered this before. I've never gotten a straight answer on it. Like, OK, so where do you draw the line on what you allow in your society?

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If it's a cannibalistic religion or a religion that promotes murder and things that everyone knows even go against the laws of the land.

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Like, how does that fall under religious freedom? Do we accommodate that? Or and Islam seems to me like the most at least this form of Islam is more like fundamentalist form of Islam.

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Seems like the greatest threat in a way, you know, on that religious level, because there there's so many of them.

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They're coming in in all kinds of places because of the Biden administration and administrations before that.

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Well, let's let's let's I'll answer this real easy. OK, Islam is not just a religion. It is a military form of government.

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It is a political form of government. Islam wraps in the military, their politics, their religion all wrapped under one system.

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OK, so they have their own laws. They have Sharia law. All right. So when you implement

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Sharia law, which is the foundation, it's their foundation of law. It is incompatible with Western civilization.

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Sharia law is incompatible with the United States of America. Our Constitution, our Bill of Rights.

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OK, so they want to implement a law system, not just a religious law system.

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They are implementing their law as their government law, which trumps everything else.

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So when you're saying let's be compatible with Islam, Islam is a political, a religious and military religion all wrapped into one.

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So it is it is completely incompatible with our civilization, how we do things. And that is where it draws the line.

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And Islam believes that there will be no peace unless everybody's under Sharia law. So I have a question, because in the

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United States, I have worked with Muslims in the past who are not the fundamentalist kind.

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And they are sometimes they actually offer some refreshing perspectives on, you know, like they don't like the decadence of the

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West. You know, they'll say the movies we watch are trash and they you know, there's this general morality sometimes that they will support that.

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I would also agree with. And oh, you're back and came back on.

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You need a new camera. I don't know. So, you know, anyway, all that to say in Nigeria, because in the

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West, this is a common thing, right? Like you meet Muslims who are somewhat well respected in the community and they would never go into a building and blow themselves up or anything like that.

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But in Nigeria, it's not a Western country. Is did those

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Muslims even exist to try to, like, defend their religion and say, well, don't look at those crazy people over there.

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Look at us. We're the examples. Or is it just all people who support terrorism? But what we're seeing is is we see those types look the other way.

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Hmm. A lot of them, we see them look the other direction when the radicals are doing the terror.

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And in many cases, a lot of the politicians make excuses for them. And then they they have also controlled the narrative as far as like when we see international reporting on what's going on, like I said, the mainstream media says

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Christians are being killed because of climate change. Mm hmm. They're being killed because, oh, it's farmer herder clashes.

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It's this and this. The when Islam gets it, the first thing they do is they go in. They control the speech.

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They control what people can and cannot say. And it's and it's the moderates that have allowed them to do that.

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And they look the other way when the attacks occur, they'll come out and say, yeah, this is a tragic thing. What happened?

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This is terrible. But if you look at what just happened now, I don't know if you've seen this, John. But the mosque that the terrorists in New Orleans attended issued a statement telling people, telling their people not to talk to the media or the

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FBI. No, I have not seen that. So he attended a mosque there in New Orleans. Well, he attended a mosque in Texas, but the mosque he went to just said if FBI or if media come and asks questions, don't talk to anybody.

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Instead, refer them to care the Council of American Islamic Relations. Yeah, so that's what happens like in Nigeria, a major attack happens.

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Oh, this is tragic. This is terrible. We don't like what's going on yet. These are the same people.

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If you look at Israel, you saw all those Israelis get massacred and you saw everyone say this is a tragic event that happened.

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But now they're protesting and advocating for Hamas. They're advocating for these terrorist organizations that like to slaughter people and they're funding it.

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Yeah. So on one end, they'll say this is tragic. This shouldn't happen. And then on the other end, a few days later, they're like.

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Pro Hamas, yay. So let's go back to the terrorism for a second that happened over Christmas, and you said that there are a number of villages that warded off these attacks.

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Yeah. You have any firm numbers on any of this? I mean, I know you're somewhat connected. You probably don't know everything, but how many villages were able to ward off attacks versus how many got attacked successfully by there were there were three other villages that were able to ward off attacks.

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And two two of them got hit and twenty five were killed.

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But if but there were people that knew about what was going on, they did put up a line of defense. How big are these villages?

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What are we talking? Anywhere between like five hundred people to a thousand. OK, so these are small towns and tiny, tiny towns, because these people won't go after the major cities.

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They'll go they they go after a nitpick, the little communities outside the cities and how isolated are they?

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Like if one town is under attack, is it close enough that another town can send resources to ward it off or are they on their own?

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They're pretty much on their own. There's there's no security infrastructure really there to protect them other than our warnings and then banding people together to put up a first line of defense.

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But the thing is, is we told the military, we told the police, we told the

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Nigerian government that we have this information. And yet there was no military presence in force in those areas to protect the people, we gave them 48 hours notice.

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Yeah. Yeah, and, you know, this is going to maybe surprise some people in the

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United States, but I think we have to start thinking about these things now, just in case because situations change very fast.

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You don't know what's coming up next. And we have relied on the government, at least in our country, to do the work of protecting us.

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But if there ever comes a time and I'm not just saying from Islam, but, you know, whatever threat might be out there where the government is not willing to do that or not able to do that.

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Christians who are under that kind of persecution have to make some decisions. And we might as well start forming in -group preferences for ourselves now.

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What I mean by that is we might we might as well, you know, the love that the New Testament talks about we should have for one another.

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We should just be practicing that in general. And I think that would include protection. Right. And because we don't want each other getting killed like that's a pretty

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I think it's obvious, but I know this is surprising for many Christians. We just haven't had to think this way. And looking to Nigeria, we see

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Christians who their survival depends on this. And just we have to also just look at math, look at it mathematically.

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OK, Nigeria is a very poor country. And in terms of standards, the rest of the world, they have on average maybe two police officers to protect 10 ,000 people.

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Oh, that is all right. So, yeah. So per capita. That's that's the security force.

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They have two security personnel for every 10 ,000 people. And well,

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I know we have to kind of wrap up the time here. But, you know, how can people pray? I mean, you said giving resources, you know, plug the websites and let us know what we can do.

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So if you guys want to partner with an organization that actually helps persecuted

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Christians and and works to prevent attacks against our brothers and sisters, go to EquippingThePersecuted .org

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and partner with us today. We're looking for monthly supporters. Also, just speak about the issue to your

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Bible studies, your churches, your pastors, let them know about the persecution that's going on in Nigeria. And I'll just reiterate this fact again.

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90 % of all Christian persecution deaths worldwide have occurred in Nigeria over the last five years.

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On average, 17 Christians are killed per day. No one talks about it. The mainstream media doesn't talk about it.

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Christian media wants me to pay them to talk about it, but they don't even talk about the problem. So talk about the problem.

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Pray for our persecuted Christian brothers and sisters and then take action by donating to EquippingThePersecuted .org.

24:06

Yeah, well, that's great. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. God bless you. God bless Equipping The Persecuted.