Jihadists in Mali give Christians an ultimatum: 'Support us, convert to Islam or leave'

(JNS) — An Islamist insurgency in Mali may destroy the country’s Christian communities. Recently, Islamic militants there told Christians that they must support the militants’ activities through money or soldiers—or flee their homes. In August, the organization Open Doors, an organization that monitors Christian persecution on a global scale reported that:

Christians in central Mali have been given an ultimatum by terrorists, either help in their fight against the country’s military power or leave their homes and communities.

Pastors in the Mopti region were summoned by the Islamic extremists and given three options if they wanted to stay in the area:

• Provide men to fight against the army

• Give the jihadists money to hire mercenaries, or

• Convert to Islam and close their churches.

Violence from Islamic militants is the major cause of persecution against Christians. Pastors were told that if they failed to comply with these conditions, they should leave their homes immediately.

Open Doors interviewed Pastor Charles Yabaga Diarra who told them that “Because the jihadists conquered the land, they feel it belongs to them, so they are telling the Christians to pay them a Zakat tax which is an Islamic tithe. Muslims and non-Christian practitioners of tribal faiths are already paying it.”

Mali is currently number 14 on the Open Doors World Watch List of states where Christians are persecuted.

The Islamist assault began in April of 2012 when Islamist militants overran government forces and took control of the whole of northern Mali. They set up a strict Sharia regime in the north, destroying churches and other Christian properties, schools, and health centers. Today, according to the International Rescue Committee, approximately 7.1 million people in Mali need humanitarian assistance, with nearly 400,000 among them being internally displaced.

A key to the eradication of Malian culture and Christian society is the takeover of educational institutions: According to Freedom House,

“As of the end of 2022, the security situation had forced 1,726 schools to close, disrupting the education of over half a million children. In areas controlled by Islamist militant groups, schools have been forced to use curriculums in line with the groups’ ideologies.”

The government of Mali has still not managed to regain control and assert its authority over those territories overrun by Islamists.

Since their insurgency began, jihadists have killed civilians as well as soldiers, government officials and U.N. peacekeeping (MINUSMA) forces. According to Open Doors,

“The jihadist violence is spreading southward, and the country’s institutions are breaking apart at a fast rate, further playing into the hands of jihadist groups.”

Mali gained independence from France in 1960. It is a majority Muslim country in Western Africa with a population of more than 22 million and a constitutionally secular political system. Freedom of religion is constitutionally guaranteed; religious discrimination is prohibited.

There are approximately 500,000 Christians, making up a little more than 2 percent of the entire population, and there are about 1,907,000 are ethno-religionists who practice tribal faiths and are neither Muslim nor Christian. The main drivers of Islamic oppression in Mali are militant Islamic groups who are mostly active in the northern part of the country but also conduct attacks and kidnappings in other regions.

The U.S. State Department reported in 2023 that the domestic and transnational terrorist groups that attacked Mali include Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and its affiliates Ansar al-Dine, Macina Liberation Front and al-Mourabitoune, united under the umbrella group JNIM (Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin/ “Support Group for Islam and Muslims”), and the Islamic State in the Sahel (ISIS-Sahel). These terrorists target those whom they “perceive as not adhering to their interpretation of Islam” and control significant territory in the northern and central regions.

According to Open Doors, Islamic militants have worked hard to destroy evidence of any Christian presence in territories they control. Christian foreign missionaries, especially women, are prime targets of jihadists. Béatrice Stöckli, a Swiss Christian missionary in Timbuktu, for instance, was kidnapped by jihadists in 2016 and murdered in 2020.

According to Open Doors, the lives of Christians in Mali have become almost unbearable. Some of the rights abuses Christians face in regions where jihadist groups enforce strict Sharia law and exert influence include the following:

• In regions under the control of Islamists, Christian converts are killed on the spot if their conversion is discovered or merely suspected.

• Christians are denied resources and prevented from accessing water and land to grow crops.

• Some Muslim religious leaders demanded that for the schools to open and operate, an Islamic dress code should be introduced, and Quran and Arabic instruction should be included in the school curriculum.

• Islamic militant groups kidnap girls and sometimes even married women and then forcibly “marry” or “remarry” them to some of their members, resulting in a life of sexual slavery. This is considered  a common tactic to spread Islam.

• Christian men and boys are particularly subject to violent, physical attacks including sexual assault, forced recruitment into armed groups, torture and forced conversion to Islam.

• Christians in Mali face significant limitations in traveling for faith-related reasons, particularly outside of the capital city, Bamako. There are serious risks associated with such travel, including kidnapping or even death.

Due to the authorities’ inability to stem the insurgency, two military coups were conducted in less than 12 months (in 2020 and 2021). Yet the junta regimes have also made little progress in containing the jihadist threat which continues to grow fast.

Meanwhile, Mali has taken major steps to distance itself from its traditional Western partners, particularly France and other Western countries. In 2022, Mali’s army-led government asked France to withdraw its troops from the country, and the French government complied with the request.

In June 2023, Mali called for the United Nations Security Council to withdraw its peacekeeping forces which occurred in December 2023. Mali’s distancing itself from Western troops has opened security vacuums exploited by jihadists. Human Rights Watch, when reporting on the period January-June of last year, said that,

“Islamist armed groups have carried out widespread killings, rapes, and lootings of villages in northeast Mali since January 2023 forcing thousands of people to flee.”

Two of the male victims said that “they fled Bourra with their families to Ansongo, one in February and the other in May, following repeated threats, looting, and harassment by ISGS [Islamic State in the Greater Sahara] fighters. They said that since 2022, the group’s fighters have ‘raped our women’ and imposed Sharia (Islamic law) on their village, requiring them to pay zakat [religious tax] and adhere to strict morality and dress codes.”

The security crisis Mali is in should be seen within the wider context of jihad against Africa. Open Doors explains:

“With the proliferation of jihadist groups like Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, the vast territory of Mali that is not under effective government control has become a sanctuary for Islamic militants who are a threat to the security of the entire region. As Mali is located in the Sahel, one of the hotbed regions for jihadists, the situation in the country cannot be seen in isolation; it is part of the overall rise of Islamic militancy and Wahhabism in the entire Sahel region. Therefore, the trajectory of the political and security situation in the whole region is crucial for the future of Mali. Furthermore, even if the government of Mali and other regional states manage to crush the armed Islamic groups like AQIM [Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb], the radicalization of the youth and society at large by this group is a more intractable problem and is creating a hostile environment for Christians for years to come.”

The insurgency and occupation of much of Mali’s territories by jihadists has led to the disintegration of Mali’s institutions. The country remains a fertile ground for jihadists to further expand and indoctrinate the general population advancing the Islamic radicalization in Malian society, multiplying the hostility towards non-Muslims. This will continue to have long-term effects on the whole Sahel region.