A lie, by definition, conceals the truth. And when unpleasant but vital truths remain hidden, they go unacknowledged, unaddressed, and ultimately unresolved.
This principle underscores one of the most consequential falsehoods of our time: the claim that violence committed in the name of Islam is wholly unrelated to Islam itself. This widespread denial has enabled what is, at its core, an ideologically vulnerable religion to become one of the most persistent sources of global instability, with no end in sight.
Consider the most recent example: On June 22, Islamist militants launched a suicide attack on a church in Damascus, Syria, killing 25 Christians — mostly women and children—and injuring nearly 100 others.
The central question under current discussion is not why the attack occurred, but rather which group carried it out. The regime of Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa — formerly the head of the jihadi faction Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — initially attributed the assault to ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). Yet two days later, a lesser-known group, Saraya Ansar al-Sunna — an offshoot of al-Sharaa’s own organization — claimed responsibility.
While analysts and media outlets debate which group was behind the bombing, there is near-unanimous agreement on one point: regardless of which faction committed the atrocity, it is not to be seen as representative of Islam. The act is instead portrayed as a “hijacking” of the faith. Accordingly, discussion remains confined to the individual groups — not to Islam itself.
My immediate response is this: There sure appear to be a remarkably high number of organizations “hijacking” Islam — especially when compared to the conspicuous absence of any comparable phenomenon within Christianity or other major religions.
Remember When…
The following examples, far from exhaustive, offer a brief but sobering reminder for those in the West with short institutional memory:
- Democratic Republic of Congo (February 2025): The Allied Democratic Forces rounded up 70 Christians, marched them to a church, and decapitated them with knives.
- Burkina Faso (Aug. 25, 2024): Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin executed 26 Christians inside a church by slitting their throats.
- Philippines (Jan. 27, 2019): Abu Sayyaf militants bombed a cathedral, killing at least 20 Christians and injuring over 100.Indonesia (May 13, 2018): Jamaah Ansharut Daulah bombed three churches, killing 13 Christians and wounding dozens.
- Sri Lanka (April 21, 2018): On Easter Sunday, National Thowheeth Jama’ath bombed three churches and three hotels. The coordinated attack killed 359 people — mostly Christians — and wounded over 500.
- Egypt (April 9, 2017): On Palm Sunday, ISIS-linked Egyptian terrorists bombed two churches packed with worshippers. At least 45 Christians were killed and more than 100 injured.
- Pakistan (March 27, 2016): Following Easter Sunday services, Jamaat ul Ahrar bombed a public park frequented by Christians. More than 70 Christians — mainly women and children — were killed. Just one year earlier, the same group killed at least 14 Christians in coordinated attacks on two churches.
These incidents — while only a fraction of the whole — illustrate a critical point: The groups in question have little, if anything, to do with each other. They are based in widely different countries across sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and East Asia. They differ in race, language, and sociopolitical context.
What they do have in common is their religion: Islam, which directs them to kill Christians. And yet this is the one factor we are collectively instructed to ignore. It is the one variable mainstream narratives insist is wholly benign and synonymous with peace.
Ignoring the Obvious
This brings us back to the core problem: that deeply unsettling truths, when denied or buried, are never addressed or corrected.
Recognizing that these disparate terror groups are in fact ideologically unified by Islam is considered taboo. This reality is systematically denied by the West’s self-appointed “guardians of truth” — whether in the mainstream media, academia, Hollywood, or politics — all of whom often seem interchangeable in their messaging.
Instead, the public is continually reassured that such atrocities are perpetrated not by Muslims inspired by Islamic doctrine, but by marginal, aberrant groups “hijacking” Islam. The result is a false sense of security. By treating each group as an isolated, localized, and temporary phenomenon, the broader pattern is ignored. Defeat the specific group, we are told, and the threat will disappear.
Take Syria. Whether one believes the attack was carried out by remnants of ISIS or affiliates of the new president’s former militia, the working assumption is that once the specific group is dismantled, the danger will dissipate.
Meanwhile, some 2,400 miles west of Syria, in Nigeria, Christians face an ongoing genocide. There, two Christians are killed for their faith every single hour. By 2021, at least 43,000 Christians had already been murdered (with thousands more in the subsequent years), and some 20,000 churches and Christian schools had been destroyed.
Ordinary Muslims
According to prevailing narratives, the perpetrators are groups like Boko Haram — yet another faction that openly defines itself in Islamic terms, routinely targets churches during Christian holidays, and is nonetheless described as having “nothing to do with Islam.” Again, the suggestion is that Boko Haram is a distinct, localized problem. Defeat it, and the crisis ends.
More recently still, Fulani herdsmen — nominally unaffiliated with any formal terror group — have become the primary agents of anti-Christian violence in Nigeria. Because they are not formally branded, and are often perceived as “ordinary” Muslims, their actions are attributed to “climate change” or “land disputes,” even as they express the same jihadist hostility toward Christians as more infamous terrorist brands.
The pattern repeats elsewhere. Approximately 5,000 miles west of Nigeria, in the United States, Americans were told that al-Qaeda was responsible for the September 11 attacks, which killed 3,000 civilians. The threat, it was claimed, would end with the group’s destruction.
Indeed, after the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011, terrorism expert Peter Bergen and others declared, “Killing bin Laden is the end of the war on terror… It’s time to move on.”
Yet an even more brutal group, the Islamic State, soon emerged.
Many Strata of Data
The denial runs deeper still. The problem is not only the refusal of the media and experts to connect these incidents to Islam; it is their failure to acknowledge that many attacks are not carried out by formal terror groups at all, but by unaffiliated Muslims — ordinary individuals or mobs — who commit similar atrocities far more frequently, though less spectacularly.
While the above examples involved some of the most high-profile attacks, countless acts of persecution are committed by Muslims on a daily basis.
The data is unambiguous. According to the 2025 World Watch List, Muslims — across various strata of society and spanning races, nationalities, languages, and economic conditions — are responsible for persecuting Christians in 37 of the top 50 countries where such persecution is most severe.
These findings are consistent with a rarely cited Pew Research survey, which concluded that in 11 Muslim-majority countries alone, anywhere from 63 million to 287 million Muslims support ISIS. Likewise, 81% of respondents to a recent Al Jazeera poll expressed support for the Islamic State.
In short, the activities of “extremist,” “terrorist,” or “militant” groups — which we are routinely assured have “nothing to do with Islam” — represent only the visible tip of a much larger iceberg. For over a decade, I have documented these patterns in my monthly series, Muslim Persecution of Christians, launched in July 2011. Each installment catalogs dozens of incidents that, if Christians perpetrated them against Muslims, would command wall-to-wall media coverage.
Calling It Out
Thus, the mainstream narrative not only misrepresents the motives of high-profile terrorist groups; it also systematically ignores the daily persecution suffered by non-Muslims at the hands of ordinary Muslims — whether individuals, mobs, police, or governments (including those counted among the West’s “allies”).
These omissions have had devastating consequences. They have permitted the continued persecution of vulnerable minorities throughout the Muslim world while facilitating the spread of similar ideologies into the West — most recently through mass migration.
In conclusion, and to restate the central premise: No problem can be solved unless it is first acknowledged. The uncomfortable but necessary truth is that Islam — not this or that terrorist group — provides the ideological framework that inspires hostility and violence against non-Muslims. Unless this reality is faced head-on, the cycle of denial will only continue — along with the persecution and loss of countless lives.
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West and Sword and Scimitar, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.