Genocide in Nigeria? What genocide?

I couldn’t help but notice over the recent holidays that the Muslim slaughter of Nigerian Christians continued unabated while the rest of the world yawned cavernously and continued not giving the first damn about it. Huh. It seems as if the world’s concern for slaughters, genocides and the like is highly selective, situational and even contextual, if you will. Apparently, at places like Harvard for instance, the brilliant onsite intellectuals are able to discern exquisite layers of contextual nuance that is beyond the ken of most of us.

But that splitting of hairs over which genocides are objectionable and which are perfectly understandable given the context is like music to the ears of radical Muslims, as well as the unemployable rabble who incomprehensibly fill the streets of Western cities to cheer them on.

Identity politics not withstanding, and even “black lives matter” not withstanding, nobody seems to care about black Nigerian Christians. On the world community’s to-do list, somewhere far, far below fixing climate change and getting rid of the “Zionist entity,” is helping Nigerian Christians, if it’s there at all. Why is that? one wonders.

In the modern world — or rather, the postmodern world — which includes a fallen Western civilization formerly known as Christendom, Christianity is now largely perceived as white supremacy, not to mention a total buzzkill on LGBTQIA2S+ aspirations (Queers for Palestine not withstanding).

And Christianity is certainly not faring well anywhere within or on the boundaries of that vast swath of the planet dominated by the religion of pieces — er, I mean — the religion of peace, which is to say, purportedly, Islam. Nigeria has been dealing with this for decades and has been declared the most beleaguered place in the world for Christians.

So, I guess in Nigeria it turns out that, if you can even believe it, and contrary to all conventional wisdom . . . Diversity is not their strength. You would have thought that such a rich tapestry of different religious beliefs and traditions would have immeasurably enriched the lives of all Nigerians. But instead, it leads to an attempted genocide by one group against the other. This must have left diversity chiefs throughout the West scratching their heads in befuddlement, at least the ones paying attention, which wouldn’t have been many.

But you probably won’t be surprised to learn that an explanation of sorts has been proffered by the diversicrat community and it’s a humdinger. Nor will you be surprised to learn they link it to another left-wing cause that keeps them up at night: climate change!

You see, the real source of the conflict between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria, according to this theory, has nothing to do with clashing cultures and religions. And it especially has nothing to do with Islamic supremacy or Islamic intolerance or the Islamic call to kill the infidel or anything of the sort. Rather, it’s all about the shifting around of scarce resources in a harsh land due to a changing climate and the ensuing and understandable struggle for survival. The only thing that hasn’t been adequately explained is how it occurs in just such a way as to drive Muslims into a genocidal fury against Christians, but, amazingly, never the other way around.

Well, at least the world isn’t actually blaming the victims like it does with Israel. But that’s probably only because the Nigerian Christians don’t really have the capacity to wage an effective war against their Islamic persecutors. If they did, they would be accused of genocide, like Israel is.

It might be worth noting here that I just happen to go to a conservative, orthodox Anglican church that is attended by a large number of Nigerians — and guess what? I’m not going to say diversity is our strength because that is an idiotic, left-wing trope, but neither is it a source of friction in our church. It is simply irrelevant. Why? Because in the context of our church and Christianity, we are all brothers and sisters in Christ and that makes race irrelevant. In fact, it seems that when people of different races share the same bedrock values, immutable incidentals don’t matter. In other words, to put it in stark Carvilleian terms, it’s the values, stupid.

But in the postmodern, secular world, bedrock Christian values have been tossed out and now the immutable incidentals are the values. In such a morally perverse world, someone like George Floyd becomes a saint while Christianity is slandered by the institutional leaders of the West as a form of white supremacy (see Time, NPR, the New Yorker and a million others).

But what about when it’s practiced by black Africans in Nigeria? Well, those same towering intellects would probably say such practice represents the vestiges of a lingering colonial mentality that, if truth be told, needs to be eradicated once and for all. And how best to do that? By not interfering and just letting the situation on the ground in Nigeria work itself out naturally (wink, wink).

If there’s an upside for Nigerian Christians I guess it would be that, as former President Obama once said, the call to Muslim prayer is “one of the prettiest sounds on earth.” Even if the rest of it ain’t so pretty.