It’s not just Ukraine and Gaza. Pope Leo recently called attention to two massacres elsewhere, with Christians as victims, both of which point to a strong resumption of radical Islamist aggression, mainly embodied by al-Qaeda and ISIS, the Islamic State.
On the first of these massacres, in Nigeria, Leo spoke out as follows at the Angelus of June 15 :
“During the night between 13 and 14 June, a terrible massacre took place in the city of Yelwata, located in the local administrative area of Gouman, in the state of Benue, Nigeria. Around two hundred people were killed with extreme cruelty. The majority of those killed were internally displaced people who were being housed at a local Catholic mission. I pray that security, justice and peace prevail in Nigeria, a beloved country that has suffered various forms of violence. I pray in particular for the rural Christian communities in the state of Benue, who have unceasingly been victims of violence.”
While on the second massacre, which took place in Syria (see photo), these were his words at the general audience on Wednesday, June 25 :
“Last Sunday, a heinous terrorist attack was carried out against the Greek Orthodox community in the Church of Mar Elias in Damascus. We entrust the victims to God’s mercy and we offer our prayers for the wounded and their families. I say to the Christians of the Middle East : I am close to you ! The whole Church is close to you ! This tragic event recalls the profound fragility that Syria still faces after years of conflict and instability. It is therefore essential that the international community not ignore this country, but continue to offer support through gestures of solidarity and a renewed commitment to peace and reconciliation.”
The end of the caliphate created by ISIS in 2014 between Syria and Iraq, with its capitals in Raqqa and Mosul, overwhelmed in 2019 by US-backed Kurdish militias, had opened a phase of eclipse of Islamist terrorism, which, however, was only apparent and concealed a reorganizational activism that has now gone overwhelmingly back into action with a massive resumption of attacks, both in existing areas of influence in Africa and Asia and in the West.
On this resurgence of Islamic terrorism “La Civiltà Cattolica” – the magazine of the Rome Jesuits published after review by top Vatican authorities – dedicated in its latest issue a thorough analysis from the pen of Giovanni Sale, which it is useful to run over in its main points.
No longer centralized in a specific territory, the jihadist galaxy, from the Arabic “jihad,” holy war, has become more decentralized and widespread, with intense recruitment activity even far from its theaters of operation. For example, an ISIS network recruiting followers among Bangladeshi migrants was dismantled in Malaysia in recent days.
In the West, recruitment is also aimed at mobilizing individual attackers, induced to act against heretical Muslims, Christians, and Jews, but in practice massacring ordinary citizens, often run down with a vehicle driven suddenly into a crowd. These terrorist acts are carried out primarily in the United States, France, and Germany, and La Civiltà Cattolica provides a striking overview of them. They are easy to execute and always result in a large number of victims, instilling widespread terror.
But it is above all against the historic enemies of ISIS that terror is once again spreading. On January 3, 2024, two attacks in the city of Kerman in southern Iran claimed more than a hundred victims, who had gathered to mark the fourth anniversary of the killing of Pasdaran general Qasem Soleimani. In claiming responsibility for the massacre, ISIS made no secret of its stance that the Shiite heretics in power in Iran are its main adversary, for religious rather than political reasons, and so has also distanced itself from Hamas, precisely because it is funded by the renegades of Tehran, despite sharing the goal of destroying Israel.
Another, less obvious, adversary that ISIS is lashing out against is Russia. On March 22, 2024, a group of its terrorists killed more than 130 people and injured 180 during a concert at Moscow’s Crocus City Hall.
And now that the Assad regime has fallen in Syria and Moscow has had to dismantle its garrisons, ISIS is once again aiming to regain ground. Ten thousand of its men are held in prison camps guarded by the Kurds with the support of two thousand American soldiers, but if Donald Trump were to withdraw the bulk of these, as he has indicated, ISIS might be able to free those prisoners, as it has repeatedly tried to do, redoubling at a stroke its forces on the ground.
The massacre last June 22 in the church of Mar Elias in Damascus is a tragic sign of this resumption of Islamist terrorism in Syria.
But the area where the proponents of jihad have never lost ground, and indeed have consolidated their presence, is sub-Saharan Africa, from Mali to Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad. Here, it is rather the French, American, or United Nations troops that have withdrawn, replaced by a growing Russian presence, with Wagner mercenaries, in support of the local regimes.
In this vast region, the Islamist terrorists belong to two movements. In Mali, rampant above all is the GSIM (Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims), composed largely of Tuaregs converted to radical Islam by Arab and Pakistani preachers. Elsewhere, the ISWAP, Islamic State’s West Africa Province, operates.
The former is part of the al-Qaeda galaxy, while the latter reports to ISIS. And the differences are not slight, to the point of provoking armed clashes between the two groups, with a great many deaths.
The former are Salafists, from the Arabic “salaf,” “elder,” meaning that they hark back to the Islam of the golden age and condemn as apostates only the leaders of Muslim states who do not follow their vision of Islam, but not the people. While the latter are Takfirists, from the Arabic “takfir,” “excommunication,” and maintain that the people are also apostates and should be condemned. So civilians can also be killed. Both represent the two wings of contemporary jihadism.
And both are expanding. “La Civiltà Cattolica” cites a recent UN report according to which jihadists already “threaten the coastal states of West Africa and could establish, as has happened on other occasions, ‘a terrorist sanctuary’ from which to attack both Africa and the West.”
But expansion is also taking place in populous Nigeria, where Islamization is advancing at the expense of the Christians, supported by the offensives of both jihadist groups, the al-Qaeda-affiliated Boko Haram and the ISIS-affiliated ISWAP.
The states where radical Islamists are most dominant are Borno and Adamawa, in northeastern Nigeria, bordering Chad. While further to the south, in the states of Benue and Enugu, the Muslim Fulani tribe, made up of herdsmen, mistreats and persecutes with ever greater aggression the Christian farmers, according to these latter with the evident approval of the central government.
The terrible massacre that Pope Leo spoke of in mid-June took place in Benue State and is the latest in a crescendo of attacks on Christian churches and villages.
Getting back to the other massacre recalled by the pope, the one at the Greek Orthodox church of Mar Elias in Damascus, the Syrian government attributed the attack to ISIS and said it had arrested some of its fighters and dismantled a cell. But the attack was claimed by a different jihadist group, called Saraya Ansar al-Sunna.
After the explosion of violence in the spring that indiscriminately struck Alawite Muslims and Christians, accused of having ties to the fallen Assad regime, the self-proclaimed new Syrian president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, he too a jihadist fighter in his youth, has renewed his resolutions for reconciliation in a Syria hospitable to all faiths. And the unprecedented agreement he signed with the leader of the Syrian Kurdish community, Mazloum Abdi, gives hope for movement in this direction, as does the likely future accession to the Abraham Accords, with the resulting recognition of the State of Israel by Damascus.
Meanwhile, however, since the beginning of the conflict in 2011 the Christian population in Syria has shrunk by more than two thirds and today numbers no more than 300,000 faithful.
(Translated by Matthew Sherry : traduttore@hotmail.com)
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Sandro Magister is past “vaticanista” of the Italian weekly L’Espresso.
The latest articles in English of his blog Settimo Cielo are on this page.
But the full archive of Settimo Cielo in English, from 2017 to today, is accessible.
As is the complete index of the blog www.chiesa, which preceded it.
