"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths." Northwoods is a ministry dedicated to refreshing Christians and challenging them to search for the truth in Christianity, politics, sociology, and science
"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life"
Father God, thank you for the love of the truth you have given me. Please bless me with the wisdom, knowledge and discernment needed to always present the truth in an attitude of grace and love. Use this blog and Northwoods Ministries for your glory. Help us all to read and to study Your Word without preconceived notions, but rather, let scripture interpret scripture in the presence of the Holy Spirit. All praise to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Please note: All my writings and comments appear in bold italics in this colour
It’s “silent” because Israel and Jews can’t be blamed, and because it doesn’t fit the establishment media paradigm in which Muslims are always brown victims and Christians are always white oppressors.
ISIS soldiers behead Christians in Mozambique, burning church and homes: ‘Silent genocide'
International observers are reporting that ISIS-aligned soldiers are beheading Christians and burning churches and homes in central and southern Africa – with some of the most brutal attacks happening in the nation of Mozambique.
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) – a counter-terrorism research nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. – is sounding that alarm about what it describes as a “silent genocide” taking place against Christians.
The Islamic State Mozambique Province (ISMP) recently released 20 photos boasting of four attacks on “Christian villages” in the Chiure district, in Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado province, according to MEMRI.
MEMRI said the photos show ISIS operatives raiding villages and burning a church and homes. The images also allegedly depict the beheadings of a member of what the jihadists consider “infidel militias” and two Christian civilians. Rampaging jihadist groups celebrated the killings. Photos also showed the corpses of several members of those so-called “infidel militias,” according to the institute’s analysis.
“What we see in Africa today is a kind of silent genocide or silent, brutal, savage war that is occurring in the shadows and all too often ignored by the international community,” MEMRI Vice President Alberto Miguel Fernandez told Fox News Digital.
“That jihadist groups are in a position to take over not one, not two, but several countries in Africa – take over the whole country or most of several countries – is dangerous,” Fernandez, a former U.S. diplomat, said. “It’s very dangerous for the national security of the United States let alone the security of the poor people who are there – Christians or Muslims or whoever they are.”
The Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP) also recently released several photos of their own documenting a July 27 attack against the Christian village of Komanda in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Ituri province. Islamic State-affiliated soldiers opened fire at a Catholic Church and set fire to homes, stores, vehicles and possessions. At least 45 people were killed, according to MEMRI. The photos show burning facilities and the corpses of Christians.
Fernandez explained to Fox News Digital that the goal of these jihadist groups is “eliminating Christian communities,” as they push down from safe havens and Muslims are “given a choice: ‘either join us or you too will face killing and annihilation.’”
“Christians, of course, are not going to be asked to join,” Fernandez told Fox News Digital. “Christians are going to be targeted and destroyed.”…
Fighting has erupted in the town of Bariire as part of ongoing operations to retake territory from an Al-Qaeda-linked insurgent group
The African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM) has confirmed that more than 50 Al-Shabaab militants were killed during intense fighting on Friday in the southern Somali town of Bariire.
According to the statement released by AUSSOM on Sunday, the joint operation—conducted in coordination with the Somali National Armed Forces (SNAF)—targeted positions held by the al-Qaeda-linked group in Bariire, a strategic agricultural hub located 73 kilometers southwest of the capital, Mogadishu.
AUSSOM rejected recent media claims suggesting that its own forces had suffered heavy casualties during the clash. Ambassador El Hadji Ibrahima Diene, Special Representative of the African Union Commission Chairperson (SRCC) for Somalia, said that AU and Somali forces “are determined to recapture Bariire town and other territories still under Al-Shabaab control to ensure lasting peace and security for the people of Somalia.”
Al-Qaeda-linked insurgent groups, Al-Shabab in particular, have been carrying out regular attacks in several African states, including those in the Sahel region – Burkina Faso, Mali, and Somalia in East Africa. The group continues to carry out raids, bombings, and targeted assassinations in an effort to destabilize the Somali government and regional security structures.
In July, a military helicopter deployed under the AU mission crashed at Mogadishu’s international airport, killing five personnel.
Previously in the same month, another helicopter, operated by Burundian troops, made an emergency landing in the Middle Shabelle region during an evacuation mission. While Al-Shabaab claimed to have shot down the aircraft, AUSSOM stated that the chopper was forced to land due to a technical malfunction. All crew members survived that incident.
In a separate attack in May, at least 10 people were killed when a suicide bomber detonated explosives outside the Damanyo military base in Mogadishu, targeting a group of teenage recruits waiting to enlist. Al-Shabaab later claimed responsibility for the attack.
Togo: Muslims have murdered at least 54 civilians and eight soldiers in jihad attacks this year
As insecurity spirals in Togo, the country’s foreign minister says a group affiliated with Al Qaeda has killed at least 54 civilians and 8 soldiers so far this year.
The comments to news agency, Reuters, was a rare official acknowledgement of the death toll in attacks.
Robert Dussey said there have been 15 incidents in northern Togo, which borders on Burkina Faso, perpetrated by the insurgent group Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin.
Togo has seen a rise in jihadist activity in recent years, as groups linked to Islamic State and Al Qaeda spread from the West African Sahel region….
Nigeria: Muslims murder seventeen Christians in jihad raid on village in Plateau state
The overall objective is to drive the Christians out entirely, or at very least reduce them to a tiny, subjugated minority, and to impose Islamic rule over the whole country. And to do the same thing in neighboring states.
Fulani Herdsmen Kill 17 Christians in Plateau State, Nigeria
ABUJA, Nigeria (Christian Daily International–Morning Star News) – Fulani herdsmen on Monday morning (Aug. 4) killed a Christian woman in a village in Plateau state, Nigeria, the latest of 17 Christians slain in the area since July 15, sources said.
The herdsmen raided Njin village at about 10 a.m., said resident Dorcas Ishaya.
“Fulani herdsmen are at it again,” Ishaya said in a message to Christian Daily International-Morning Star News. “This morning at 10 a.m., Monday, August 4, they attacked Njin village in the Kopmur area of Mushere chiefdom, in Bokkos Local Government Area of Plateau state, killing a Christian woman.”
Area resident Ezekiel Tongs added in a message that the assailants robbed and torched properties.
“These herdsmen did not just attack the village but also carted away domestic animals from houses of Christians,” Tongs said. “Many houses have been burned down, and many Christians displaced.”
Nigerian troops were reportedly dispatched to the area.
Ishaya also said that two Christians were shot and killed in an ambush in the Bokkos area on July 15, “and their bodies burnt to ashes.”
A community leader from the area, Yohana Margif, said on Friday (Aug.1) that armed Fulani herdsmen have driven Christians from nine villages that they are now occupying….
Numbering in the millions across Nigeria and the Sahel, predominantly Muslim Fulani comprise hundreds of clans of many different lineages who do not hold extremist views, but some Fulani do adhere to radical Islamist ideology, the United Kingdom’s All-Party Parliamentary Group for International Freedom or Belief (APPG) noted in a 2020 report.
“They adopt a comparable strategy to Boko Haram and ISWAP and demonstrate a clear intent to target Christians and potent symbols of Christian identity,” the APPG report states.
Christian leaders in Nigeria have said they believe herdsmen attacks on Christian communities in Nigeria’s Middle Belt are inspired by their desire to forcefully take over Christians’ lands and impose Islam as desertification has made it difficult for them to sustain their herds….
'Systematically slaughtered': Okla. student lost 34 family members in massacre; pregnant woman's stomach cut open
WASHINGTON — Barr Franc Utoo, a native of Nigeria's Benue state and a graduate student at the University of Central Oklahoma, awoke to several missed calls one morning last month.
Fulani terrorists murdered 34 members of his immediate family during the June 13-14 Yelewata Massacre, including his pregnant aunt, by slicing open her belly and removing her twin unborn children.
The extremists attacked the Christian community of Yelewata in the Guma Local Government Area of Benue, slaughtering more than 200 believers in what has been described as one of the deadliest assaults in the region's ongoing violence that has claimed the lives of countless Christians.
"The first names that I asked after spontaneously, they were all killed," Utoo, who was in Oklahoma at the time, told attendees during a Thursday press conference hosted by Equipping The Persecuted, an organization dedicated to reporting on Nigerian Christian persecution and enhancing villages' security.
Barr Franc Utoo, a native of Yelewata, Nigeria, speaks at a conference at The National Press Building in Washington, D.C., on July 24, 2025. Fulani terrorists murdered dozens of Utoo's friends and family during the Yelewata Massacre of June 13 and 14, 2025. | Samantha Kamman/The Christian Post
The extremists who carried out the massacre "butchered" his aunt, he said, who had been pregnant with twins at the time of her death. The radicals pierced her belly and removed the twins, killing Utoo's aunt and her unborn children.
The Nigerian, who comes from a family of Catholics, also said his sister was killed during the massacre. Utoo said his sister, a devout Catholic and an altar server, had her brain "peeled out."
One of Utoo's friends, who had just graduated after studying pharmacy for seven years, arrived at the village on the same day that the killing began. The Fulani terrorists killed Utoo's friend by burning him to death in his room during their rampage, where they torched buildings and burned people alive.
As Utoo noted, the village is "sandwiched" by two state capitals and is located near several military bases. However, the attack lasted around four hours without interruption. The Yelewata native believes this is a sign of what he calls the Nigerian government's complicity in Christian persecution.
A May intelligence memo from Nigeria's Department of State Security reportedly even foreshadowed a planned assault by Fulani militias in Benue communities such as Yelewata. However, the Nigerian military provided no defense to Yelewata.
"The Nigerian government, despite its pronouncement, has demonstrably failed to defend us," Utoo said. "Time and again, when our villages are attacked, help is either non-existent or deliberately arrives too late."
"Worse, when our young men, driven by desperation to protect their families, organize themselves in self-defense, they are often met not with support, but with arrest and detention by the very authorities who should be protecting them, leaving our communities even more vulnerable."
"This is not just neglect," Utoo asserted. "It is an active disarming of the victims."
Advocates have spoken out for years on the rising trend of what they say are genocide-like attacks on predominantly Christian farming communities in Nigeria's Middle Belt states carried out by armed and radicalized Fulani militias. Thousands have been killed in recent years, and many more have been displaced from their communities and farms.
Christian persecution watchdog organizations like Open Doors and ADF International note that more Christians are being killed in Nigeria each year than in all other countries combined.
Local leaders have pushed back on the Nigerian government's narrative that increasing attacks are part of decades-old farmer-herder clashes and not sectarian violence.
Last month, James Ortese Iorzua Ayatse, paramount ruler of the Tiv tribe, said during an event attended by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu that attacks like the one in Yelwata are not communal conflicts.
"It's not herders-farmers clashes, not communal clashes or reprisal attacks," Ayatse said, according to outlet TruthNigeria. "It is a calculated, well-planned, full-scale genocidal invasion and land-grabbing campaign by herder terrorists and bandits."
Pope Leo XIV acknowledged the Yelwata attack, saying in an Angelus message he is praying for those killed in "a terrible massacre," most of whom were "sheltered by the local Catholic mission." Leo prayed for "rural Christian communities of the Benue State who have been relentless victims of violence."
In 2020, the U.S. government added Nigeria to the Countries of Particular Concern list during the final year of President Donald Trump's first term. During the first year of the Biden administration, the State Department removed Nigeria's CPC label to the dismay of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. There is some hope that Nigeria could be re-added to the CPC list with Trump back in the White House.
Utoo shared several recommendations that he believes will protect Nigerian Christians from persecution and genocide. He called on the U.S State Department to redesignate Nigeria as a CPC and called for the prosecution of terrorist sponsors through the International Criminal Court "for crimes against humanity." The sponsors of Fulani extremists, according to Utoo, are well-known to the United States and Nigeria.
"This is not merely about justice for the past; it is also about dismantling the machinery of terror that continues to threaten our existence," Utoo said.
"My people are resilient, we are resourceful, but we are also systematically slaughtered," he added. "We are not asking for an army to fight our battles, but for the right to protect our lives, our families and our faith in the face of an existential threat."
"The price of continued inaction, of polite diplomacy that ignores the brutal reality on the ground, will be paid in Christian blood," the Yelewata native warned.
Some people actually believe that all religions are equally capable of inciting their adherents to commit acts of violence. Some people actually believe that Islamic jihadis, though they are found all over the world and base their appeal to peaceful Muslims on their strict obedience to the commands of the Qur’an and Sunnah, are twisting and hijacking the beautiful religion of peace.
Islamic State-backed rebels attack a Catholic church in eastern Congo, killing at least 34
by Justin Kabumba and Ope Adetayo, Associated Press, July 27, 2025:
GOMA, Congo (AP) — Islamic State-backed rebels attacked a Catholic church in eastern Congo on Sunday, killing at least 34 people, according to a local civil society leader.
Dieudonne Duranthabo, a civil society coordinator in Komanda, in the Ituri province, told The Associated Press that the attackers stormed the church in Komanda town at around 1 a.m. Several houses and shops were also burnt.
“The bodies of the victims are still at the scene of the tragedy, and volunteers are preparing how to bury them in a mass grave that we are preparing in a compound of the Catholic church,” Duranthabo said.
Video footage from the scene shared online appeared to show burning structures and bodies on the floor of the church. Those who were able to identify some of the victims wailed while others stood in shock.
At least five other people were killed in an earlier attack on the nearby village of Machongani….
Eastern Congo has suffered deadly attacks in recent years by armed groups, including the ADF and Rwanda-backed rebels. The ADF, which has ties to the Islamic State, operates in the borderland between Uganda and Congo and often targets civilians….
