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Nigerian Village Bombed by Trump Has 'No Known History' of Anti-Christian Terrorism, Locals Say
“Portraying Nigeria’s security challenges as a targeted campaign against a single religious group is a gross misrepresentation of reality,” said Nigeria's information minister.
Dec 27, 2025
When President Donald Trump launched a series of airstrikes in Nigeria on Christmas, he described it as an attack against "ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians."
But locals in a town that was hit during the strike say terrorism has never been a problem for them. On Friday, CNN published a report based on interviews with several residents of Jabo, which was hit by a US missile during Thursday's attack, which landed just feet away from the town's only hospital.
The rural town of Jabo is part of the Sokoto state in northwestern Nigeria, which the Trump administration and the Nigerian government said was hit during the strike.
Both sides have said militants were killed during the attack, but have not specified their identities or the number of casualties.
Kabir Adamu, a security analyst from Beacon Security and Intelligence in Abuja, told Al Jazeera that the likely targets are members of “Lakurawa,” a recently formed offshoot of ISIS.
But the Trump administration's explanation that their home is at the center of a "Christian genocide" left many residents of Jabo confused. As CNN reported:
While parts of Sokoto face challenges with banditry, kidnappings and attacks by armed groups including Lakurawa–which Nigeria classifies as a terrorist organization due to suspected affiliations with [the] Islamic State–villagers say Jabo is not known for terrorist activity and that local Christians coexist peacefully with the Muslim majority.
Bashar Isah Jabo, a lawmaker who represents the town and surrounding areas in Nigeria's parliament, described the village to CNN as “a peaceful community” that has “no known history of ISIS, Lakurawa, or any other terrorist groups operating in the area.”
While the town is predominantly Muslim, resident Suleiman Kagara, told reporters: "We see Christians as our brothers. We don’t have religious conflicts, so we weren’t expecting this."
Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation with more than 237 million people, has a long history of violence between Christians and Muslims, with each making up about half the population.
However, Nigerian officials have disputed claims by Republican leaders—including US Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas)—who have claimed that the government is “ignoring and even facilitating the mass murder of Christians.”
The senator recently claimed, without citing a source for the figures, that "since 2009, over 50,000 Christians in Nigeria have been massacred, and over 18,000 churches and 2,000 Christian schools have been destroyed" by the Islamist group Boko Haram.
Cruz is correct that many Christians have been killed by Boko Haram. But according to reports by the US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project and the Council on Foreign Relations, the majority of the approximately 53,000 civilians killed by the group since 2009 have been Muslim.
Moreover, the areas where Boko Haram is most active are in northeastern Nigeria, far away from where Trump's strikes were conducted. Attacks on Christians cited in October by Cruz, meanwhile, have been in Nigeria's Middle Belt region, which is separate from violence in the north.
The Nigerian government has pushed back on what they have called an "oversimplified" narrative coming out of the White House and from figures in US media, like HBO host Bill Maher, who has echoed Cruz's overwrought claims of "Christian genocide."
“Portraying Nigeria’s security challenges as a targeted campaign against a single religious group is a gross misrepresentation of reality,” said Nigerian information minister Mohammed Idris Malagi. “While Nigeria, like many countries, has faced security challenges, including acts of terrorism perpetrated by criminals, couching the situation as a deliberate, systematic attack on Christians is inaccurate and harmful. It oversimplifies a complex, multifaceted security environment and plays into the hands of terrorists and criminals who seek to divide Nigerians along religious or ethnic lines."
Anthea Butler, a religious scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, has criticized the Trump administration's attempts to turn the complex situation in Nigeria into a "holy war."
"This theme of persecution of Christians is a very politically charged, and actually religiously charged, theme for evangelicals across the world. And when you say that Christians are being persecuted, that’s a thing," she told Democracy Now! in November. "It fits this sort of savior narrative of this American sort of ethos right now that is seeing itself going into countries for a moral war, a moral suasion, as it were, to do something to help other people."
Nigeria also notably produces more crude oil than any other country in Africa. Trump has explicitly argued that the US should carry out regime change in Venezuela for the purposes of "taking back" that nation's oil.
Butler has doubted the sincerity of Trump's concern for the nation's Christians due to his administration's denial of entry for Nigerian refugees, as well as virtually every other refugee group, with the exception of white South Africans.
She said: "I think this is sort of disingenuous to say you’re going to go in and save Christianity in Nigeria, when you have, you know, banned Nigerians from coming to this country."
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The Disturbing Dawn of the Alt-Right
Aug 25, 2016
I wrote about the Alt-right for Salon today. It's not the same as European ethno-nationalism. It's scarier:
After months of squabbling about whether it's acceptable to use the "F" word (fascism), it seems at long last that we have come to some consensus about what to call Donald Trump's "philosophy": Alt-Right, also known as white nationalism. With the hiring of the former chief of Breitbart Media, ground zero for the Alt-right movement, as Trump's campaign chairman, the interest in it has now gone mainstream. Hillary Clinton made a speech about it later today.
Alt-right white nationalism is an apt term for a campaign that has electrified white supremacists so it makes sense that most people would focus on the racial angle. According to this analysis in the Guardian, the rising right-wing ethno-nationalist movement in Europe is the progenitor of this American version, which adheres to its basic premise but brings its own special brand of deep-fried racism. Both share a belief that the white race is under siege and that "demands for diversity in the workplace, which means fewer white males in particular, forms the foundation for the movement." So it stands to reason that Trump's border wall, Muslim ban, and bellicose appeals for "law and order" (along with his overt misogyny) is a clarion call to this faction.
But while it's obvious that the subtle and not-so-subtle racial messaging are among the primary attractions for Trump voters, they are also responding to an economic appeal, much of which stems from the misconception that because Trump himself is a successful businessman he must know what he's doing. But as Dave Johnson of Campaign for America's Future pointed out, many of the white working-class folk who believe Trump's promises to "bring back jobs" would be surprised to know what he actually means by that:
Trump says the U.S. is not "competitive" with other countries. He has said repeatedly we need to lower American wages, taxes and regulations to the point where we can be "competitive" with Mexico and China. In other words, he is saying that business won't send jobs out of the country if we can make wages low enough here.
His "plan" is to compete by pitting states against each other to lower wages, particularly by encouraging businesses to move to low-wage, anti-union states. Once the layoffs start, workers will be willing to take big pay cuts to keep their jobs. Johnson shows how Trump believes "companies should continue this in a 'rotation' of wage cuts, state to state, until you go 'full-circle,' getting wages low enough across the entire country. Then, the U.S. will be 'competitive' with China and Mexico.
So this white nationalist "populist" economic appeal is less than meets the eye. In that regard Trump is just another "cuck-servative" (you can look it up) who thinks he can fool the rubes into making people like him even richer than they already are. But all that is subsumed in Trump's message of white grievance and American decline.
One of the most important characteristics of this faction is a strong attraction to authoritarianism. This fascinating report at Vox by Amanda Taub tracked studies which show that "more than 65 percent of people who scored highest on the authoritarianism questions were GOP voters and more than 55 percent of surveyed Republicans scored as "high" or "very high" authoritarians."
Authoritarians, we found in our survey, tend to most fear threats that come from abroad, such as ISIS or Russia or Iran. These are threats, the researchers point out, to which people can put a face; a scary terrorist or an Iranian ayatollah
That fear is also something the American alt-right has in common with their European cousins, but I see it having a different effect here. In Europe, the desire truly is for a withdrawal from external obligations and the dismantling of institutions that have blurred national identity and political independence. They are afraid of mass immigration from the Middle East in the age of terrorism and the economic crisis emboldened the usual European suspects. So some observers are tempted to believe that Trump's invocation of the old isolationist slogan "America First" will likewise result in a pull-back of the American global empire. But a closer look at Trump's rhetoric shows that he and his followers have a different worldview.
Look at his slogan: "Make America Great Again." Those four words imply the idea of America dominating the planet as it did after World War II. Of course, it still does, but in Trump's mind, America has become a weak and struggling nation hardly able to keep up with countries like Mexico. He believes other countries are laughing at us and treating us disrespectfully, which has had him seething for over 30 years. Back then it was Japan "cuckolding" America. Today it's China and Mexico, both of which he promises to sanction for failing to properly "respect" America -- with a thinly veiled violent threat backing it up. After all, trade wars have often led to shooting wars.
American nationalism cannot be separated from its status as the world's only superpower. Trump promises to build up the American military to the most massive force in history (of course, it already is) so that "nobody will mess with us ever again." He doesn't say that America should pull back from its security guarantees, merely that it should require other nations to pay more for the protection. He doesn't take nuclear war off the table, one can assume for the reason that it's a cheaper, quicker way to "take care of" problems than these relatively smaller wars we've waged since the world burned in the two epic conflagrations of the 20th century. His nationalism is all about domination not withdrawal.
And that view is shared by the American alt-right. Here's one Breitbart writer making the case:
I'd like an America that makes 7 "Fast & Furious" movies without making concessions to Ayatollah Khamenei. I'd like an America that humiliates the likes of Vladimir Putin, not vice-versa. An America that punches back eight times as hard over a tiny offense. An America that everyone might laugh at but ultimately stop attacking because it can only end poorly for them.
Trump's nationalism is absolutely about ethno-purity, and there's an element of populism as well, although it's clearly a misdirection. But it's largely about wounded national pride,e which has been a potent motivating force on the American right for a long time. There's a reason Trump is now playing the conservative anthem "Proud To Be An American" at his rallies. Good old-fashioned jingoism is the one thing that brings the old right, the new right, and the alt-right together.
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What Khizr Khan Said That Wasn't About Trump and You Probably Won't Hear
Fresh interview comes as US expands its bombing campaign in Libya
Aug 03, 2016
As the United States this week expands its bombing campaign against the Islamic State (ISIS) to Libya, Khizr Khan, the Gold Star father who gave a powerful anti-Donald Trump speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), has criticized U.S. wars in Muslim nations as leaving us in a "quagmire," "more vulnerable," and creating "chaos for ourselves." But Khan's take on the war on terror is unlikely to be amplified by corporate media, as one political writer points out.
Khan, a Muslim, Pakistani-American, and father of a U.S. Army captain who was killed in Iraq in 2004, made waves last week for his speech at the DNC. Standing beside his wife, Ghazala, he directed his criticism at the Republican presidential nominee, and said, "You have sacrificed nothing and no one," and asked, "Have you even read the United States Constitution?"
As the New Yorker's Amy Davidson wrote, "Khan, though his speech centered on the loss of his son, had made the case against Trump more powerfully than almost any other speaker."
Since the convention, Khan "has become something of a media celebrity," writes Ben Norton, politics staff writer at Salon. The portrayal often used in these accounts, Norton continues, focuses on patriotism. One such example can be seen here, as posted on CNN Money on Tuesday:
Here was an in-the-flesh example of Muslim assimilation--a man who had lost his son, yet who espoused patriotism to the point of literally brandishing a pocket-sized copy of the Constitution. Not only was the couple's grief universal and relatable, but the Khans put a face on Muslims who are pursuing the American Dream just as countless other ethnicities have done.
On Monday, the same day the U.S. started its new campaign in Libya--a move one antiwar group said will only further "entrench divisions and intensify violence" in the region--the Khans gave an interview on MSNBC's "Hardball."
Asked by host Chris Matthews, "What do you think when you, or feel, when you see us attack Iraq or go into Afghanistan after Osama bin Laden, or we go attack with bombs Libya? We're bombing Syria now--all Islamic countries. What do you feel as an Islamic man?"
Khizr Khan replied, "As a Muslim-American, not just as Islamic man--as a Muslim American, I feel that these policies are not in the interest of United States of America, and we see the result of it. We are more vulnerable now. We have created a chaos and--for ourselves."
"Well, you know you're speaking to the choir," Matthews responded. (In fact, "Matthews' record isn't entirely consistent" on being against either the war in Iraq or on avoiding a military approach to confronting ISIS, Norton notes.)
"I wish this country would have listened to Chris Matthews when he was talking, when he was preaching," Khan said, "we could have saved ourselves from this quagmire."
This section of the interview, Norton points out, "is not included in the isolated clips for the episode on MSNBC's website. One has to watch the full episode to see it."
The situation may remind some of how the corporate media chose to portray Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel laureate and children's education advocate who was attacked by the Taliban. She met with President Barack Obama at the White House and told him that "drone attacks are fueling terrorism." Yet, as Peter Hart wrote at FAIR in 2013, that "didn't register in a corporate media that followed Malala's visit, and her story, very closely." Hart continued:
This is in keeping with other media patterns we've seen. Earlier this year, Farea al-Muslimi, a Yemeni writer and activist, came to Washington to deliver moving testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the effect of drone strikes on his country: "What the violent militants had previously failed to achieve, one drone strike accomplished in an instant. There is now an intense anger against America." His words received scant coverage in the US media (FAIR Blog, 4/24/13).
If Americans wish to understand how US wars are experienced by those on the other side of the military attacks, it is important to hear these voices. But will US media allow these voices to be heard?
Meanwhile, the U.S.-led coalition's strikes on ISIS continue with deadly consequences. According to the transparency group Airwars, July 2016 had the highest number of reported civilian deaths in Syria from coalition strikes since the bombing campaign began nearly two years ago.
Also this week, the U.S. has said it will begin, based on credible evidence, a second probe into whether its strikes near Manjib, Syria killed civilians.
The second formal investigation centers around a July 28 strike, which, according to the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, left at least 28 civilians dead.
The first formal investigation, which the Pentagon announced last week, will look into a July 20 strike which, according to the monitoring group, may have killed scores.
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