By Moses Oludele Idowu
[ Follow this link for the first part of this essay. In this second part the author examines Reno’s claims and thoughts on Political religion, jihads and the Crusades. Enjoy it.]
Lie No. 4: More people have been killed by Christians than by Muslims
The next lie arose from the false premise and obfuscation which he put himself into on political religion earlier in 3 in the part 1 of this article . It is not surprising he fell into a deeper error. According to Reno, “More people have been killed during the Christianization of Europe, Latin America and other parts of the world than have been killed in Islamic Jihad.”
This is the worst and most atrocious lie ever told against Christianity. Do you see why I consider a Nigerian politician an existential danger or threat?
Reno is a pastor or gospeller, as he claims. As I have found occasion to write once the average Nigerian pastor especially of the Pentecostal variant is so ahistorical and weak in knowledge of History that you could consider him an embarrassment.
Our friend is confusing the Western European colonization with Christianity. He is mistaking Western imperialism for missionary evangelism and missionaries for imperialists. That is how much our “deep thinker” and “table shaker” knows.
It is an historical fact that lots of atrocities were committed in the course of colonization of several nations by the Western powers. Terrible atrocities were committed which I cannot deny and which I do not discountenance. Europe usually sent some of her worst men out on Colonization and they behave badly.
But this process of colonization and the expansion into or occupation of nations was not, strictly speaking, because of Christianity and was not undertaking for the sake of Christianity but to expand their own national dominion and for the motive of profit and national gain.
Was Columbus looking for Jesus in America in 1492? No, he was on exploration for his nation.
When the Berlin Conference held in 1885 and Africa was parcelled and shared and partitioned was it because of Jesus and was it to extend Christian dominion?
The British fought and backed wars in South Africa forcing the Great Trek but was these wars because of Christianity or for the sake of gold?
Were all white men and colonialists Christians and were they all working for Christianity?
If these questions cannot be answered in the affirmative then Reno told a lie against Christianity that he needs to apologize for.
It is true that in some cases the missionaries were supported by their nations in the same way a government will support its citizens outside the country elsewhere. But for most of the time the missionaries were supported by independent agencies that had no ties to Government.
Colonialism and imperialism were both instruments of the government of Western nations in their quest to dominate and rule the world not for the sake of expanding the Christian Gospel.
Where they partnered with Christianity it was simply to use the religion to further their own aims and objectives.
They even worked against Christianity in many occasions and promoted their country’s wishes and ambition above that of Christianity. Here is a fact many do not know:
Islam even benefited more from Colonialism in West Africa than even Christianity. Read Michael Crowder, West Africa Under Colonial Rule ( 1968) It was even colonialists that prevented missionaries from operating in the North based on agreement they signed with the emirs which worked against Christianity.
In point of fact many Western nations merely used Christianity as a cloke to even further their power.
It is therefore wrong to record the evils of Colonialism on Christianity. It is a grievous error based on ahistoricism.
Lie No.5: Christian nations caused the deaths of 100 million people
Because he erred in the previous case because he didn’t know the difference between colonization and missionization he carried the same error forward and charged it on Christian account as a poor accountant would have done.
According to Reno, the bloodiest wars in history of the world were the two World Wars which led to the death of 100 million people “caused by Christian nations.”
This is another deeper error clothed on half- truth. When politicians want to deceive to score popular points they change the logic and category of their averments.
Notice he shifted from accusations on Christianity to Christian nations.
Should I hold Reno’s Itshekiri people and Delta State people responsible for the millions of deaths that occured during the Civil War because Chukuma Nzeogwu who triggered the coup of 1966 that led to the War was from Asaba – Reno’s capital city? He would curse me if I did that.
That is specifically what he has done with his last two errors.
Some Muslims and even “scholars” have used this line of logic and argument to justify why Muslims are still killing, – perhaps to score up the tally.
Let us now examine the facts.
The First World War was triggered as a result of the unfortunate fatal shooting of a Duke and his wife by a teenage ideologue full of zeal. This was what triggered the war which could happen to any nation. It was not about Christianity or about the Bible or to extend the frontiers of the Gospel. And it was not directed or targeted against unbelievers or idol worshipers or against other peoples because of their beliefs like jihads
The Second World War arose as a result of the unresolved issues of the First War. This time it was propelled by Hitler and the ideology of Nazism.
It was between Allied Powers and Axial Powers. Japanese, Asians, Arabs were involved. These were not Christian nations. Poor Reno.
The war was not about Christianity or extending the values or Gospel of Christianity; it was about Germany’s Nazism, Italian Fascism and Japanese Militarism. Not about Christianity.
If Reno has read anything about the Nazis or the Fascist Manifesto of Mussolini in Italy you will see the goals are not about Christianity. They are in fact diametrically opposed to Christianity.
It is no wonder that the same nations of the West that rose against them in the Allied Powers were also Christian nations. They saved the world from unspeakable tyranny and needless woe.
It is therefore a great libel to hang or attach the blood of a hundred million people on Christianity when Christianity has nothing to do with the goals, aspirations and desires of the warriors who started the war.
Are we to justify hegemonic wars for spaces by demented freaks in power as faults of Christianity? Can you compare a war that was fought based on fringe ideologies that has no bearing on Christianity or historic teachings of Apostolic Christianity with actual jihads and pogroms that were ordered by Koran and directed since the days of its prophet?
Some argue that Hitler was a Catholic and a communicant and he had a meeting with the pope. This is nonsense. Was he acting for Catholic Church? We know the teachings of Catholic Church, do they sound like the doctrine of Nazism? Why then did Hitler shut many churches and imprisoned the several priests of the same church?
All these do not and can never conceal the demonic influences behind Nazism and their wide disparities between it and Christianity.
So how is Christianity guilty or responsible for the two World Wars?
Where is logic in your scheme of thinking? I am ashamed that a pastor penned this illiterate statement; I am troubled that a man who advised a President of a nation and “a bestselling author” mouthed this nonsense.
None of the two wars was fought for the sake of Christianity. Please stop this libel. In God’s Name stop, Reno.
If you want to impress your new found friends and masters in the Muslim – Muslim (MuMu) mandate government for rehabilitation there are better ways to do it rather than spreading falsehood against Christianity. Soon you will be rewarded with an ambassadorial position then you can continue to eat again.
Please don’t lie against Christianity because you want to eat. Remember there is life after eating.
Lie No. 6: Muslims only kill for blasphemy and sorcery and murder
Reno seems to believe in Islam and the goodness of Muslims more than Muslims themselves seem to believe in their own religion. Because his record of Islam appears even better than those recorded by Muslims themselves. According to Reno the “only reason for which a true Muslim will kill you is if you blaspheme the name of Allah and Muhammad and engage in sorcery or murder.”
Either Reno is ignorant or he is simply mischievous. This is even worse than amnesia, it is dementia.
It shows he is not even aware of his own nation’s history.
In the process he admitted his own complicity. So Reno agrees that a true Muslim can kill for blasphemy? Since he is learned he should tell us when it becomes the right of a citizen to take the life of another all by himself without any sanction of law. Which court condemned Deborah Samuel for blasphemy before he was killed by “true Muslims”?
The scores that were killed here in the wake of Danish cartoon protest what blasphemy or sorcery did they practice? Or the innocent who were killed on the heels of Miss World pageant in 2003?
The RCCG lady evangelist who was butchered by Islamists for preaching every morning in Abuja, what sorcery did she commit?
The farmers in Reno’s home state in Edo and Delta that are being killed in their farms by gun- wielding Fulani jihadist and pastoralists what sorcery or blasphemy did they commit?
Even a little opening of the pages of Islamic history in the first 300 years disproved that.
My brother Reno, I am distressed for thee as David wailed over Jonathan.
What came over you? “Ruffler of the feathers of Obidients”, “Buhari tormentor”, have you lost the script?
Lie No.7: Christians started the conflict with Muslims. Muslims were only defending themselves. Crusaders were the aggressors
Again Reno compounded his lies against the Church when he made Christians the aggressors and Muslims the defenders. Hear him in his own words:
“A lot of the mistrust between Christians and Muslims started during the Crusades. The Crusades were directed and financed and initiated by the Catholic Church against Muslims. Muslims were not the aggressors they were defending themselves.”
That was the historical “gospel” from Reno Omokri. This is the same nonsense and lies that have been spewed for centuries to tarnish Christianity and especially the Catholic Church since the days of Voltaire and Edward Gibbon.
Let us take this systematically.
It is not true that the mistrust started only during the Crusades, it started much longer right from when Muslims began with their Jihads against Christendom and displaced Christianity from its traditional centres and origins.
He said the Crusades started the mistrust, so what caused the Crusades? A student of History who is unbiased ought to ask the question. If the Crusades was the problem why were Crusades held, what prompted them and why was it financed by Europeans? [It wasn’t the Catholic Church that financed it, that was another lie.]
These are the questions many have failed to ask themselves preferring to instead blame the Church and blame Christianity for launching wars against the Muslims.
You can hear even Reno blaming Christians as the aggressors and Muslims as only defending themselves. That is the extent of miseducation and falsification of History. The History of the Crusades has been distorted.
Now let us examine the facts with dates.
- In 636AD Muslims without any provocation entered and invaded Syria, a Christian nation.
- Two years later the same Jihadist gangs sacked Jerusalem completely from Christians.
- A year later in 639 AD the same unruly hordes of a “religion of peace” laid waste Egypt and took Alexandria the second largest city in Christendom – not by preaching but by the sword.
I don’t know the kind of history people are being taught today and the teachers teaching them because Omokri shouldn’t have so criminally distorted the facts. But we can’t blame him, that is what goes on today in many schools and colleges in the face of Political Correctness and Cultural Marxism that has taken over the universities and especially the teaching of History. - In 698 AD Carthage was captured by Muslim forces and burned to the ground, killing most of its inhabitants.
- In 846 AD Muslims entered and sacked Rome.
- In 923 AD Caliph Abd- Er- Rahman III destroyed Cordova, Zarajoza and Merida with all adult males executed and all women and children enslaved.
One convenient lie that has been told throughout ages is that the Muslims only became brutal because of the Crusaders. Reno Omokri repeated the same lie in his letter.
So if that were the case where did they learn all the atrocities committed above since the Crusades had not been inaugurated then?
With Jerusalem taken and Syria and Egypt taken and pilgrims to the Holy Land robbed and raped by the hordes and bandits – the forerunners of the same hooligans wreaking havocs on farmers and travellers today in our nation – there was no other options left but for Christians too to take up arms. - There were worse provocations but the greatest provocation occured in 1009 AD when Muslims at the direction of Fatimid Caliph al- Hakim destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem – the splendid basilica that Constantine had erected over what was believed to be the site of the tomb where Christ lay before the Resurrection. Worse still they attempted to destroy the tomb itself, leaving only traces of the hollow in the rocks.” [ See Rodney Stark, The Case for the Crusades, Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 20.2 (2016):9-28]
The news of this sacrilege caused great consternation and anger all through Europe and in the whole Christendom. One thing about Muslims is they always end up overdoing things, excess, until they finally bring a deadly backlash that they can’t contain.
This was what informed Pope Urban’s great oration in November 27, 1095 summoning the Christians to retake all Holy Lands from the Muslims. This is the background the distorters of historical scholarship who keep the gates of academic scholarship in our universities would not tell you except to blame the Crusaders for their barbarity and the Catholic Church for financing holy wars. Stupid.
The earlier jihads that had laid waste Christian’s domains for three hundred years do not concern them. It is the reaction or over-reaction that bothers the revisionists of history.
It is false that Muslims were innocent, they were not. They caused the Crusades. They brought it upon themselves. Let the truth be told. There is no smoke without fire.
This was what really happened and it is recorded in History but to the children of error they see only what they want to see.
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© Moses Oludele Idowu
April 30, 2025
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