Did you know that today, more Christians are murdered for their faith than at any time in the last 30 years?

Open Doors International’s 2023 World Watch List (WWL) found that more than 360 million Christians suffer extreme or very high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith – a rise of 20 million since two years ago. In the top 50 countries alone, 312 million Christians now face very high or extreme levels of persecution, with most of them residing in Muslim majority countries.  This number represents one in seven Christians worldwide, up from one in eight just two years ago. 

Open Doors Over the 30 years of Open Doors’ World Watch List reporting, the number of countries where Christians face high to extreme levels of persecution nearly doubled from 40 countries in 1993 to 76 countries in 2023. Some of the biggest concerns on this year’s list are the violence against Christians in sub-Saharan Africa that has reached new heights.

The slaughter of Christians has become a regular occurrence in sub-Saharan Africa, the Barnabas Fund reports on Saturday, and the “cause is Islamic extremism.”

BreitbartThe violence in Nigeria and across West Africa “is carried out by the Islamic State West Africa Province, jihadi group Boko Haram, and other Islamist extremists,” the document states.

Terrorist groups affiliated with the Islamic State or al-Qaeda “have proliferated across sub-Saharan Africa,” the group observes, leading some observers to make “sobering predictions of an African caliphate stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.”

Many secular governments and international bodies have condemned violence such as the recent atrocious massacre of Christian schoolchildren in Uganda but downplay the vital religious element in these attacks.

Massacres like that in Uganda are often blamed on “economic downturns, marginalization and lack of opportunity, corrupt or authoritarian government, or environmental problems that reduce the supply of arable and pastoral land,” but the simple fact is: “the victims were Christians who were targeted for that very reason,” the report points out.

Commentators too often ignore “the stated aim of Islamic radicals across Africa: to kill as many Christians as they can,” it adds. For its part, the Islamic State has called its slaughter of Christians and the burning of church buildings across Africa a “Harvest of African Christians.”

Nigeria is the largest mixed Muslim/Christian nation in the world, with almost 50% of its population identifying as Christians. However, the rise of the extremist group Boko Haram has made Nigeria one of the most dangerous countries for Christians in the world. The group seeks to overthrow the current Nigerian government and establish an Islamic regime. Boko Haram has targeted secular schools and churches, and their attacks have resulted in the deaths of over 75,000 Nigerians.

Open Doors Beyond the top 50, five more countries also scored very high. Overall, 76 countries showed extreme, very high or high levels of persecution and discrimination.

Violence against Christians in sub-Saharan Africa has reached alarming new levels, as violent Islamic militants destabilise the region using extreme violence. It is most extreme in Nigeria (6), where militants from the Fulani, Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) and others conduct raids on Christian communities, killing, maiming, raping and kidnapping for ransom or sexual slavery.

Sub-Saharan Africa faces a vast humanitarian catastrophe, as a wave of religiously motivated violence nurtured in Nigeria has swept across the region, targeting Christian populations at an alarming rate in countries such as Mali (17), Burkina Faso (23), Niger (28) and Cameroon (45). Signs of jihadist expansion are also clearly visible in Mozambique (32), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (37) and other countries.

Religiously motivated killings in Nigeria have risen from 4 650 last year to 5 014 – a staggering 89% of the international total. Hundreds of thousands more have been forced into internal displacement or have become refugees. This year has also seen this violence spill over into the Christian majority south of the nation.

Violence is only part of the equation, with ever increasing Islamization putting extreme pressure on many Christians in their everyday lives. Nigeria’s government continues to deny this is religious persecution, so violations of Christians’ rights are carried out with impunity.

Eight out of the ten countries where Christians face the worst persecution in the world are Muslim countries, where Muslims comprise at least 50% of the population.