By Ben Cohen & Dmitriy Shapiro on October 30, 2025
Concern is growing over the whereabouts of Kevin Rideout, an American missionary abducted on October 21 in the West African state of Niger. The seizure of this 48-year-old pilot, who works for the U.S.-based organization Serving in Mission, has highlighted the ongoing plight of the people he serves—the region’s Christians, who face increasing violence at the hands of predatory jihadists.
Rideout is said to have been snatched by three armed men outside a hotel in the Chateau 1 neighborhood of the capital, Niamey—an area that is reputedly more secure than the rest of the city because it contains the country’s presidential palace. Rideout, who has lived in Niger since 2010, has not been heard from since his phone was last tracked in an area around 50 miles north of Niamey, where terrorists belonging to the Islamic State-Sahel Province (ISSP) maintain a large presence.
News of Rideout’s kidnapping has spread through Christian communities around the world, with many churches offering special prayers for his safety. Those monitoring his fate will be acutely aware of a pattern of kidnappings and ransom demands by jihadists in the region stretching back over a decade.
Kidnapping is a favored tactic of Islamist groups, as repeatedly witnessed in recent decades in Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East. It has been similarly prevalent in the Sahel and West Africa more broadly, with one case—the kidnapping of nearly 300 Christian girls aged 16-18 by the Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram—becoming an international cause célèbre in April 2014.
Since the early 2000s, ISSP and its Al-Qaeda-affiliated rival, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), have also kidnapped Westerners. Those seized have included several missionaries, stoking fears that Rideout was abducted because he is a Christian involved in missionary work as well as for any ransom that might be paid out on his behalf. In 2022, for example, an American nun in her 80s, Suellen Tennyson, was kidnapped by militants from her convent in Burkina Faso and freed five months later. Another American missionary, Jeff Woodke, was kidnapped by ISSP in Niger in 2016 and sold to JNIM before his release in 2023.
Rideout’s ordeal may yet end in a similar fashion. His hoped for release, however, will not alleviate the deeper issue of the persecution of Christians, a sorely underreported global phenomenon that manifests as far afield as Iran, China and North Korea, as well as across the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa.
According to Open Doors International, an organization that monitors and supports persecuted Christians, eight out of the 10 deadliest countries for Christians are in sub-Saharan Africa, where a reported 16.2 million Christians have been displaced.
Testifying before Congress in March, Nigerian Bishop Wilfred Anagbe said that the terrorist groups were implementing a “long-term, Islamic agenda to homogenize the population … through a strategy to reduce and eventually eliminate the Christian identity of half of the population.”
The troubles of Christians in this region of Africa have attracted the attention of some U.S. legislators. Commenting on the “deadly threat” posed by jihadist groups in the immediate aftermath of Rideout’s kidnapping, Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, noted that “ISIS, JNIM and their affiliates [are] tightening their grip across the Sahel and West Africa. They are seizing territory, escalating their brutal attacks, and abducting innocent civilians year after year, with Westerners and Christians as prized targets.”
In July, meanwhile, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Rep. Riley Moore (R-W. VA) introduced a resolution excoriating the fate of Christians in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. “Our country was founded on religious liberty,” Hawley declared. “We cannot sit on the sidelines as Christians around the world are being persecuted for declaring Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.”
Much more needs to be done, both in terms of raising awareness and crafting policy-based responses. Compared to other burning international issues, the persecution of Christians receives pitifully little focus. The near total silence of those politicians and pundits who claim to defend Christianity, among them influencers like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens and legislators like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), all of whom are obsessed instead with alleged Israeli wrongdoings, is most disturbing. Equally, on the political left—fearful of accusations of “colonialism” and “racism,” the terror confronted by Christians in the Sahel and other parts of Africa is dismissed as a regional peculiarity of no import.
This myopia should not deter the rest of us from defending these persecuted believers. Washington has a special responsibility to secure the safe release of Rideout, an American citizen, from captivity. Together with other Western allies, the United States should also use the Rideout case as an opportunity to counter an appalling threat that, left unchecked, could wipe out the Christian presence in much of Africa.
Ben Cohen is a senior analyst with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) and director of FDD’s rapid response outreach, specializing in global antisemitism, anti-Zionism and Middle East/European Union relations. Follow Ben on X @BenCohenOpinion.
Dmitriy Shapiro is a research analyst at FDD. Follow him on X @dmitriyshapiro.
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