Americans tend to take religious freedom for granted. There has been the occasional church shooting here and there and even a general rise in violent threats and church vandalism, but for the most part, religious persecution in the United States looks like insults and slurs, accusations of bigotry by progressives, and the occasional lawsuit over a business owner’s right to refuse service on religious grounds. The First Amendment to the US Constitution doesn’t exist outside our national borders, though. It can be very dangerous to follow Christ in the wider world, where thousands of believers are murdered for their faith every year. Right now, nowhere demonstrates that quite as clearly as Nigeria.
Nigeria – A Genocide by Any Other Name
President Trump has said many times that Christians are being persecuted in Nigeria. A few months ago, Bill Maher said on his show that the African nation is “systematically killing the Christians.” Genocide, some are calling it. But the progressive press is fighting back. An Al Jazeera headline in October declared: “No, Bill Maher, there is no ‘Christian genocide’ in Nigeria.” PBS ran a story titled: “Trump says Christians are being persecuted in Nigeria. Experts and residents say the reality is more complicated.”
More coverage across the establishment press uses some form of the “it’s complicated” language or phrases it as a question. Is the situation on the ground more complicated than simply one group or government systematically exterminating Christians? Of course. There are several factors. Many are killed in specific raids by extremist groups like Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). Then there’s the ongoing issue of Muslim Fulani herders raiding Christian farming communities in the Middle Belt region. Finally, general violence and kidnapping for ransom are high in Nigeria, no matter the demographic, though some reports suggest Christians are disproportionately targeted. So is genocide a fair label to apply here? Let’s look at some numbers, then revisit the question.
It’s difficult to get a precise number of the Christians killed for their faith in Nigeria at any given time. As such, the reports vary – and sometimes by quite a lot. Open Doors US reported in its 2024-2025 study, which covers the 2024 calendar year, that 3,100 Christians were killed in Nigeria, accounting for the highest number of faith-related Christian killings globally. The International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law, however, gave a much higher figure: more than 7,000 in the first 220 days of the year, averaging about 35 per day. Amnesty International counted 1,336 killed by Muslim herders in the Plateau State of Nigeria alone over the brief span from December 2023 to February 2024.
From January to July 2025, some reports indicate that as many as 7,000 Christians have been killed for their faith in Nigeria. It’s nothing new, of course. Older Open Doors reports give numbers like 3,530 from October 2019 to November 2020; and 4,650 between November 2020 and October 2021. Various reports give the total number of religious killings in Nigeria since 2009 as ranging between 50,000 and 100,000. Since Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari came to power in 2015, more than 30,000 Christians have been murdered for their beliefs. So no, it isn’t new, but it is getting worse.
Whether it’s jihadist herdsmen or terrorists from Boko Haram or ISWAP, Muslim extremists are killing thousands of Christians annually in Nigeria – a number that consistently grows year over year – and the government either can’t or simply won’t stop it. The country doesn’t just have the highest number of such killings in any given year. Its share of Christian murders is often as high as 80% of the global total. What, then, do we call it? Genocide by any other name would be just as deadly.
The Christian Crisis in the Wider World
While Nigeria easily takes the top spot for murders, it’s far from the only nation in which Christians are severely and violently persecuted for religious reasons. Open Doors World Watch List 2025 covers October 1, 2023, to September 30, 2024. The report gives several disturbing totals and highlights various spots around the world. According to the report, 4,476 Christians were murdered in that span, 3,100 of whom were in Nigeria. There were 3,944 reports of sexual assault, sexual harassment, or forced marriage to non-Christians globally, with an estimated 500 in Syria alone. There were 4,744 arrests for faith-related reasons, more than 2,100 of which took place in India. An estimated 54,780 Christians were beaten for their faith, including about 10,000 in Pakistan. And more than 200,000 were forced to leave their homes to go into hiding or exile, with at least 40,000 of them being in Myanmar.
North Korea tops the watch list, though getting any solid information out of that country is next to impossible. While Open Doors doesn’t report a total of arrests or murders for the country, it does explain the consequences of following Christ: either immediate execution upon discovery or internment in a labor camp.
In addition to the countries mentioned already, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Sudan, Eritrea, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and China feature prominently. Even the western hemisphere is not safe, as Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Colombia all made the list. In total, there are 50 nations marked by Open Doors as hotspots for Christian persecution, and gathering accurate totals is simply impossible from many of them. Remember that next time an LGBTQ advocate of indeterminable gender screams about “bigotry” or some gay couple sues a cake shop. Yes, it is still persecution – and it is still wrong – but millions of Christians around the world would be relieved to suffer so.
