Boko Haram ‘flies flag 2 hours from Abuja’ warned Governor, as Nigerian captive teen turns 18

Leah Sharibu was 14 when she was abducted, Feb 19, 2018
Today (14 May), Leah Sharibu is 18 years old; it’s her fourth birthday as the captive of Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP). Nigerian Leah is the girl who defied one of the most globally well-known terrorist groups, a splinter group of Boko Haram. The then-14 year old was among . . . Read More

Death threats, by Islamic State in Sinai, against Egyptian Copt sons who mourn dad

Nabil Habashi Salama, taken by unseen watchers; he was 'executed' by ISIS, March 2021
Fears that ‘Islamic State’ once again threatens the lives of some of the Middle East’s largest Christian population have emerged again, after the radical militant group killed an Egyptian Coptic businessman who’d funded the construction of the only church in his north Sinai village. The death of 62 year old . . . Read More

Violent Islamist militancy spreads into weak states across sub-Saharan Africa

Nigerien soldiers on patrol near the town of Arlit, north-central Niger. (Photo: Getty)
The newly-released annual World Watch List (WWL) of the top 50 countries in which it is most difficult to live as a Christian shows that, especially in the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa, the rise of Islamist militancy has become a challenge not only to Christians, but also to the existence . . . Read More

Afghanistan: Radical Islamist groups recruit at universities

The Taliban continues to launch deadly attacks, most recently on Wednesday in the capital Kabul where at least 15 people were killed in a suicide attack.(Photo: Getty Images)
While the Afghan government is engaged in peace talks with the hard-line Taliban movement, radical Islamist groups are spreading their ideology at universities. Basira Akhtar, a 22-year-old student, was beaten up twice earlier this year, at her university in the capital Kabul, when her headscarf slipped from her head. In . . . Read More

‘It’s time to be real: what happens in Iraq is ethnic cleansing’ – UK analyst

Tahira Church in Qaraqosh, a Christian town in northern Iraq, shortly after liberation from Islamic State in November 2016. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)
What Iraq’s Christians want from the West is to say the plain truth: that there is ethnic cleansing of Christians in the region and it is ongoing, Dr Tim Stanley told a meeting at the UK’s parliament last Tuesday, 9 July. The historian and columnist, working for UK daily newspaper . . . Read More

Iraq: Five years after IS occupied Mosul, returnees live in fear

Iraq: Five years after IS occupied Mosul, returnees live in fear
The Islamic State’s three-year occupation of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and its surrounding villages ended nearly two years ago, yet the city and its diminished number of Christian residents remain vulnerable.   Last month the Iraqi government announced it would arm residents of 50 villages around Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, . . . Read More

For persecuted Christian women, violence is compounded by ‘shaming’

Women to women conference in Ethiopia, February 2018.
It would be hard to argue the world is unaware that Islamic State fighters used rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war against Iraq’s Yazidi women: Nadia Murad shared the 2018 Nobel Prize after she told the world of her personal ordeal at their hands. However, testimonies from . . . Read More