A publication attributed to the Islamic State (ISIS) has appeared in its weekly magazine An Naba with graphic and textual material that documents the execution of at least two people shot at close range in northern Nigeria. The victims, according to the jihadist propaganda, were immobilized on the ground and executed with no possibility of defense.

The same bulletin claims responsibility for the death of 17 Christian civilians and four Nigerian soldiers in additional operations, along with the burning of two entire localities in the region.

One of the actions described took place in the village of Kautekari, where terrorists armed with automatic rifles burst into a residents' meeting and opened fire.

The jihadist text does not limit itself to boasting about the massacres. It includes an explicit doctrinal justification: "Islamic law gives Christian infidels two options among three options: Islam, a tax, or murder." The victims, according to the terrorists, "chose their fate."

This rhetoric reproduces the classic dhimmi ultimatum that ISIS applied in Iraq and Syria: forced conversion, payment of the jizya (the humiliating protection tax) or death. The propaganda also includes images of beheadings of Nigerian Christians and mentions kidnappings in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, all framed in a narrative of Islamic supremacy and holy war.This is not an isolated event.

The African branch of ISIS, known as the Islamic State in the West Africa Province (ISWAP), has been consolidating its presence in northeastern Nigeria for years, where it competes with Boko Haram in brutality against Christian communities.

Thousands of the faithful have been murdered, churches burned, and entire villages razed in what religious freedom defense organizations describe as systematic persecution. ISWAP itself has claimed responsibility in the past for executions of Christians, offering them precisely the same three "options" that it now repeats in An Naba.

The Western left and much of the mainstream media continue to maintain a deafening silence in the face of this reality. While they mobilize for any narrative that fits their ideological agenda, the genocide of Christians in Africa and the Middle East barely deserves a paragraph.

It is the "genocide that matters to almost no one," as dissident voices have denounced. Nigeria, with one of the largest Christian populations in Africa, is living through a religious war that radical Islamists wage without qualms, while the West looks the other way or blames "economic" or "ethnic" factors to avoid naming Islamism.

We previously reported on this in Gateway Hispanic about the jihadist massacre committed by Fulani militias on Palm Sunday, where dozens of Christians were murdered in the very heart of Holy Week in Plateau state, confirming once again the continuity of this wave of violence against the Christian faith in Nigeria.