Nigeria Christians attend the Palm Sunday mass, at St Theresa’s Catholic Church, in Yola, Nigeria. Sunday, March 29, 2015. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

If you want an example of how the media picks and chooses tragedies on the basis of how much of whether they can push their chosen political narrative or not, here you go.

After weeks of coverage, and rightfully so, over the mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand by a white supremacist, ask yourself why you’ve haven’t also heard about the consistent slaughter of Christians that’s happening in Nigeria?

Islamic terrorists killed more than 120 Christians and burned dozens of homes in northern Nigeria in a series of attacks they have waged since February. ISIS-affiliated Boko Haram militants and Muslim Fulani tribesmen have hammered Christian villages in the Kaduna, Benue and Borno state, spurred on partly by Kaduna Gov. Nasir El-Rufai’s dubious claims that 133 people, mostly Fulani, were murdered on the eve of Nigeria’s presidential elections. The Nigerian Emergency Management Agency refuted his claim, calling it “a rumor to instigate violence.”

As is often the case, a Muslim leader lied in order to facilitate deadly attacks on other religious groups. This is a pattern that’s repeated itself in Islamic countries for as long as the religion has existed.

These are not old cases either. Here’s some of what’s happened in just the last month.

Muslim Fulani militants killed 52 Christians and burned at least 100 homes in villages in the Maro district of the Kajuru Local Government Area in Kaduna state March 11, according to Christian Post. Witnesses reported the Fulani attacked in three groups — one setting fire to homes, another shooting villagers, and another designated to chase down those who tried to flee. The Fulani also murdered nine Christians in isolated attacks in Ungwan Barde village in Kajuru on Feb. 9, killed 10 more in a coordinated attack on the village the following day, and killed 17 in yet another attack on the village March 10. Fulani militants also waged coordinated attacks on three villages in Benue state March 4, killing 23 Christian villagers with guns and machetes, and slaughtered approximately 32 in a Feb. 28 attack in Kaduna state.

I’ve spent significant time in this part of the world and have interacted with Fulani tribesmen. It’s an awful thing to watch some of them become radicalized by the invasive virus that is radical Islam. More and more, the middle east’s violent strain of Islam is being imported to Nigeria and other Western African nations. The situation is only worsening.

For its part, the major player in the region, Boko Haram, has killed over 30,000 people in the last decade. Keep that in mind next time someone like Ilhan Omar makes the vapid claim that white nationalism (which still stands as its own evil) is the primary cause of “extremist deaths” in the world. Given Boko Haram’s penchant for targeting Christians, their actions are getting very close to qualifying as genocide, if they don’t already.

Calls are starting to mount for President Trump to get involved.

Nigerian Christian leaders and advocacy groups like Save The Persecuted Christians have repeatedly urged President Donald Trump to intervene and help bring an end to the attacks, specifically by appointing a U.S. special envoy to Nigeria. Father Peter John Wumbadi, who leads St. Anne’s Catholic Church in Michika and witnessed Boko Haram’s March 18 attack on the village, also pleaded for help, claiming Nigerian government sources spread misinformation about the attacks.

Nigeria was once one of the most prosperous countries in Africa. It was also, not coincidentally, majority Christian. The further importation of Islamism has wreaked havoc, from violence to economic distress.

CNN and MSNBC haven’t devoted a single minute or word in the past several months to the Islamist violence in Nigeria. Why? Because they can’t blame Trump for it. That seems to be the basis for coverage these days at most mainstream outlets. Meanwhile, real people are dying and no one even notices.

Despite laughable efforts by some U.S. politicians to pretend radical Islam is a marginal problem, it continues to be the biggest cause of political and religious violence in the world. Hiding behind massaged definitions so as not to include deaths like those in Nigeria in the totals is not only disingenuous, it’s dangerous. Awareness of what’s going on can lead to greater action to solve the problem.

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