United States Senator, Ted Cruz, a self-confessed Christian Zionist, echoed the same unsubstantiated and misleading claim of a genocide being perpetrated in Nigeria against Christian Nigerians. This mythological genocide, according to Ted Cruz, is also supported by the Nigerian government, aside being a stealth Muslim agenda to rid Nigeria of Christianity.
Ted Cruz is a man well known for his irresponsible and bigoted utterances verging on Islamophobia. In 2024, the Houston chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Houston) condemned the behavior of Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on “A Threat to Justice Everywhere: Stemming the Tide of Hate Crimes in America,” held on September 17, 2024.
The hearing was convened in response to the tragic murder of 6-year-old Wadee Alfayoumi, a Palestinian-American boy who was brutally stabbed 26 times in an anti-Muslim hate crime in Chicago. The two Senators, Cruz and Cornyn, chose to completely ignore two attempted murders of Palestinians in Texas with direct reference to their Muslim or Arab identities while being attacked.
CAIR-Houston, alongside other Texas Muslim organizations, later sent a formal letter to Senators Cruz and Cornyn to express their collective condemnation of their actions, with CAIR-Houston also demanding a public apology for their dismissive and disrespectful behavior during the critical hearing.
Barely two months ago, the Texas, New York and national headquarters of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), America’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, called on Senator Ted Cruz to apologize to the family of slain NYPD officer Didarul Islam and New York Governor Kathy Hochul for mocking her decision to respect Islamic custom by wearing an hijab, at the religious funeral service for the murdered officer.
During his failed presidential campaign in 2016, Cruz’s foreign policy team included people who had called for all mosques to be shut down across America. People who claimed that America was being subverted by the Muslim Brotherhood and decried all followers of the Islamic faith as jihadists.
His foreign policy advisory team included some of the most outspoken Islamophobes of the post-9/11 period. In fact, the most prominent anti-Muslim among Cruz’s set of advisers was Frank Gaffney, whose Washington-based think tank the Center for Security Policy is listed by the monitoring group the Southern Poverty Law Center as an extremist organization devoted to conspiracy theories.
Gaffney’s security think tank funded the website run by Pam Geller, a flamboyant Islamophobe and leader of the opposition to the Ground Zero Mosque. He also helped stoke right-wing ridiculous claims that President Obama is Muslim. This is the man now trying to inflame the anxieties of many Nigerians and using his office to promote a new conspiracy theory.
Senator Cruz is well known in the United States as an ardent Islamophobe, a hardened bigot with a life committed to demonising Islam and attacking Muslims. Together with others who share his worldview and those driven by hatred for Islam, they continue to push the dangerous and divisive rhetorics to distort the truth about Nigeria security crisis, in order to fuel religious tension.
As stated in our recent official press release, Nigeria’s security crisis is not religious, but terrorist and criminal in nature. Terrorist groups have killed Muslims, Christians, and people of no faith alike. In fact, more Muslims have been victims of Boko Haram and banditry since the rise of terrorism in Nigeria. Also, there have been many cases of Christian militia elements targeting Muslims and in premeditated attacks, wiped out Muslim families in the most callous manner.
An important fact that must be mentioned is this: the surge in terror attacks in Nigeria can be traced back to the 2011 NATO-led military intervention in Libya, which destabilized the region, unleashed extremist networks, and flooded Africa with sophisticated weapons.
The ripple effects continue to threaten West Africa’s peace and Nigeria’s stability. If Senator Cruz and his co-travellers are serious about the incidents of terrorist attacks in Nigeria, they should turn their attention to United States that took NATO to destroy Libya, leaving Africa to deal with the consequences of their actions.
Also, those who genuinely care about persecuted Christians should look to Gaza, where both Muslims and Christians face collective extermination under a brutal occupation and genocide- supported and enabled by the same Western governments and actors now feigning moral outrage over Nigeria.
We hope that the Nigerian government will do more than watch mercurial personalities like Senator Ted Cruz and their local collaborators try to set the country ablaze with their dangerous rhetorics and fantasies. The campaign to drive a wedge between the faith communities in Nigeria by people within the Islamophobic networks should not be overlooked.
The greater danger is when their calls reach farther, including to frightened people, and their influence penetrate into the mainstream, making frightened people become more frightened. And frightened people often do very dangerous, and bad things.
MPAC’s mission is to contribute to a just society, promote dialogue and the culture of peaceful coexistence among cultures, ideas and people.
MPAC, Nigeria.