Prominent faith leaders and self-described “freelance diplomats,” Reverend Johnnie Moore and Rabbi Abraham Cooper have released their new book, The Jihad, which exposed the everyday horrors that Christian believers face in Nigeria
The authors spotlight the enduring atrocities of religious persecution—and the costs of global inaction.
Reverend Johnnie Moore, a noted speaker, author, and human rights activist, President of Congress of Christian Leaders, is also a U.S. Presidential appointee to the United States Commission for International Religious Freedom.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper is associate dean and director of the Global Social Action Agenda of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish human rights organization.
The new book reveals the failure of international community and the Nigerian government to address ongoing religious persecution and was inspired by a meeting victims of religious persecution in 2020 during the authors’ visit to Nigeria. The visit was a joint fact-finding mission with international human rights lawyer, Emmanuel Ogebe of US-Nigeria Law Group.
Already, copies of the new book have been presented to Pastor Dr Paul Enenche and the famous sole survivor of Boko Haram slaughter, Habila Adamu by the US-Nigeria Law Group.
Rooted in first-hand testimonials and Moore and Cooper’s on-the-ground experience, The Next Jihad forewarns about the dire but largely disregarded threat of terrorists seeking to eradicate Christians in Africa, either by forced conversion to Islam or by murder.
The authors’ contrasting religious backgrounds, Moore, an Evangelical Christian, and Cooper, an Orthodox Jew, make this multifaith collaboration an especially powerful argument for safeguarding religious tolerance and our shared human rights.
“This book is a small effort to put a human face on mind-numbing statistics. We have tried to give a voice to some, but thousands of others suffer in silence. Only when NGOs, international organizations, governments, and private individuals provide opportunities for victims to be heard is there any chance of ensuring that Nigeria’s institutions—from the executive branch to the military to the justice system—will awaken to their responsibilities,” Moore and Cooper write.
Through numerous chilling accounts, the authors depict how radicalized Fulani militants, not to be confounded with millions of peaceful Fulani, increasingly target vulnerable Christians in Nigeria with tactics that are eerily similar to those deployed by Boko Haram and other Islamic extremists. These include deadly midnight raids, arsons, kidnappings, rapes, forced conversions, and overt slaughter.
Harrowing examples range from the Yakubu family and their three children, who were hacked to death by Fulani militants in Kaduna; to the beheading of 11 Nigerian Christians on Christmas Day in 2019; and the public execution of Lawrence Duna and Godfrey Ali Shikagham, which was temporarily available on YouTube.
Throughout the book, Moore and Cooper maintain that it is our collective moral imperative to act in the face of this blatant brutality. As they write, “The very least we can do for our distant brothers and sisters is to be a voice for the voiceless. And if you’ve read this far, your conscience—like ours—must now bear responsibility to let them know their cries are silent no more, their tears no longer invisible.” In a characteristically pragmatic fashion, Moore and Cooper also offer a roadmap for Nigerians, the broader international community, and each of us to actualize this.
According to data analysis conducted by the Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Justice for Jos Project and corroborated by Open Doors Netherlands, over 60 per cent of Christians killed globally in 2012 were in Northern Nigeria alone.
“This informed the naming of Nigeria as the deadliest place in the world to be a Christian!
In 2018, Open Doors’ data showed that Nigeria accounted for 90 per cent of global Christian deaths from persecution. In six years, the deadliest place to be a Christian became even more so with no new appellation to be added.
“Yet it took years before I could get the US government to designate Boko Haram, already identified by a US government study as one of the top three deadliest terror groups in the world, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. In 2014, the 1st and 4th deadliest terror groups were in Nigeria.
“This is why this collaborative book by a rabbi and a priest is so important as a wake up call to a mindless slaughter of Christians in Nigeria reminiscent to the persecution of the early church. When Rev Moore first mooted the idea of a follow up book to the epochal “Martyrs Oath” that would be a contemporary compendium of this generation’s martyrs, my immediate response was – ‘you have to publish a companion book exclusively for Nigerian martyrs.’
“One church denomination alone has lost 10,000 members and this was the total fatality several years ago. It’s the highest martyrdom of any single church in contemporary Christendom and is the Nigerian affiliate of an American denomination. So instead of the arduous and emotionally-wrenching task of documenting thousands of modern day martyrs, this new book declares the urgency of delimiting additions to the Martyrs list. Beyond a wake up call, it is a call to action.
My prayer for the reader is: May God bless us with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that we may live deep within our hearts. May God bless us with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that we may work for justice, freedom, and peace.
“May God bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, hunger, and war, so that we may reach out our hands to comfort them and turn their pain into joy. And may God bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in this world, so that we can do what others claim cannot be done, to bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.”