A Nigerian journalist imprisoned for reporting on Christian persecution says Americans must fight the rise of Islam in the United States if they want to preserve their freedom.
Luka Binniyat issued the warning while speaking about a five-year legal battle that saw him spend over 80 days in prison after officials took issue with a story he wrote on an attack on a Christian village by Islamic militants. Binniyat, from the religiously divided, mineral-rich Nigerian state of Kaduna, is haunted by the violence he has witnessed.
“You should not allow Islam to gain root in America. They’ll come there with values that are not your own, and even if they are a minority, they will eventually try to enforce their own religion, their own beliefs over the community,” the 60-year-old Binniyat told The Daily Wire in an interview. “In Nigeria — here in the Muslim-dominated areas — Christians do not have rights.”
The warning is personal for Binniyat, who has seen firsthand the violent implementation of Sharia law. Northern Nigeria is largely Islamic, and the southern part of the country is Christian. The middle, where Binniyat has spent most of his time reporting on, is divided. What he has witnessed, he told The Daily Wire, is genocide.
“When you select a group of people for extermination, based on their race, based on their belief, or based on their ideology, you select them for mass murder. That is what genocide is all about,” he said. “That is what we’re experiencing.”
In many of the attacks he has reported on, he said the “Muslim community is not touched” while “it is the Christian community that is attacked.”
World Watch Monitor.
Binniyat’s use of the term genocide got him into legal trouble in October 2021, when he published a story in The Epoch Times that quoted a local politician accusing an official of covering up attacks on Christians. The official accused Binniyat of defamation while the local politician denied making the comment.
In November 2021, officials charged him with using a computer to transmit knowingly false information “for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred, ill will, or needless anxiety to another.”
The resulting legal battle, which lasted until May 2026, saw Binniyat spend months in prison. He said he was kept in a small, insect-infested prison cell with dozens of other inmates where they were forced to poop in buckets and given food Binniyat described as “punishment.”
In October 2024, Binniyat’s defense filed a “no case submission,” which was approved by the Federal High Court in Kaduna in November 2025, but no written decision was issued until May 26, 2026. His defense throughout the case was assisted by the Alliance Defending Freedom International.
The decision found that there was “no evidence to prove the essential elements of the alleged offense” and said the evidence presented against Binniyat was “manifestly unreliable,” according to ADF International.
“Luka Binniyat did nothing more than accurately quote a Nigerian legislator’s own words. This ruling is a vindication for Luka, but it should also be a wake-up call: Accurate reporting on atrocities is not a crime, and journalists covering religious persecution deserve protection, not prosecution,” Sean Nelson, senior counsel for Global Religious Freedom at Alliance Defending Freedom, told The Daily Wire.
ADF International has another case pending before Nigeria’s Supreme Court looking to strike down its stringent blasphemy laws.
Binniyat’s case was championed by the United States Council on International Religious Freedom and other watchdog organizations, including the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders.
“I’m walking as a free man today. Thank God for the pressure around the world that was put on the government,” he said.
Thousands of Christians across Nigeria are killed annually with many advocates faulting the government for not doing enough to crack down on the violence. The continuous state of violence led to the Trump administration labeling Nigeria as a country of particular concern in 2025, putting it under greater international scrutiny.
Several militant Islamic groups typically are behind the violence, including insurgent group Boko Haram, the largely nomadic Islamic Fulani herdsmen, and the Islamic State of West Africa.
The scene outside a school where gunmen abducted children (KOLA SULAIMON/AFP via Getty Images.)
While not describing himself as a typical “born-again” Christian, Binniyat said it is his mission to expose violence against Christians, even if it means writing reports critical of the government. His home state of Kaduna demonstrates a “clash of values” that could not be more different.
Binniyat said that the Muslims want to impose Sharia law on the whole middle Nigerian region over Christians who want to embrace Western values with traditional African practices sprinkled in. A Christian converting to Islam can be killed for that conviction and many of the Muslim children do not attend schooling.
“They believe in violence. They say it’s a religion of peace,” he said of Islam. “As far as we know, it is a religion of violence.”
There is one attack that he said haunts him to this day. He said he showed up on the scene and found the smoldering bodies that were burnt during an attack targeting a Christian wedding. He said he helped locals gather over 20 bodies and bury them in a mass grave.
“It is something that I don’t want to recall. You could smell the flesh of humans burning. We had to bring out bodies that were roasted like animals — children, women,” he said.
Injured men lay in a van as they arrive for treatment after a wave of suicide attacks in Nigeria (AUDU MARTE/AFP via Getty Images.)
With his legal battle over, Binniyat says he plans to continue writing on the plight of Christians, which he says has not improved during his journalism career. He said he would consider entering politics and push for policies that would provide more protection for Christians.
As someone who has seen the violence of a society dominated by militant Islam, Binniyat wants Americans to be careful.
“Americans should not take the liberty and the freedom which they are enjoying now for granted. If they allow Islam to establish a root in America, you are going to lose your country,” he said. “That is [why] I want the Americans to protect their religion, to protect their culture, and to assert their values on every immigrant that comes.”
