Churches Burn and Christians Face Beheadings in Africa

Radical Islamic groups are targeting and killing Christians in multiple African nations. 

An ISIS affiliate, known as Islamic State Mozambique Province, is taking responsibility for recent beheadings of Christians in Mozambique and setting fire to homes and churches, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute, a research organization based in Washington, D.C. 

On July 28, the Islamic State Mozambique Province claimed responsibility for capturing two Christians and beheading them. The ISIS-affiliated group said it attacked a Christian village on July 24, killing one person and setting fire to multiple homes, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute.  

“What we see in Africa today is a kind of silent genocide or silent, brutal, savage war that is occurring in the shadows and all too often ignored by the international community,” Alberto Miguel Fernandez, vice president of the Middle East Media Research Institute, recently told Fox News Digital.  

Just between July 20-28, attacks from armed groups in Mozambique displaced over 46,000 people, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The U.N. does not specifically say the attacks are on Christian communities.  

“I’m no fan of the United Nations in general,” Fernandez tells Fox, “but I think what they’re doing is kind of the lowest common denominator. It’s kind of easy to be vague like that. The fact that some of this, and some of the worst of it is happening, because of a deep anti-Christian animus, hatred of Christians, religiously-based hatred of Christians is something that the U.N. usually doesn’t like to talk about.”  

Fernandez warns that ISIS-aligned terror groups are not “in a position to take over not one, not two, but several countries in Africa,” according to Fox. “It’s very dangerous for the national security of the United States, let alone the security of the poor people who are there—Christians or Muslims or whoever they are.”  

Allied Democratic Forces, also an ISIS-affiliated group, attacked a church in the Democratic Republic of Congo and killed 43 people, including nine children, and kidnapped others, Fox News reported this week. The ISIS group burned the church as well. 

From July 7, 2024, to June 26, 2025, ISIS claimed to have “killed or wounded a total of 4,943, among them 1,480 ‘Crusaders’ in Christian communities, namely in Nigeria, [Democratic Republic of Congo], and Mozambique,” according to the Middle East Media Research Institute.  

The D.C.-based research organization explains, “ISIS attacks on Christian communities in Mozambique, the [Democratic Republic of Congo], and Nigeria continue to fuel up the group’s ideology of expansion in the African Continent.”