Why does Britain’s fight for religious freedom stop at Dover?

‘We don’t do God,’ was Alastair Campbell’s put-down when his charge, Tony Blair, was tempted to raise the issue of his faith. Unfortunately, it seems to have become the motto of David Cameron’s government. It is a month now since 276 girls were kidnapped from a school near the town of Chibok in northern Nigeria, and still the Foreign Office’s statements on the crisis read like a deliberate exercise in missing the point.

‘Continuing murders and abductions of schoolchildren, particularly girls in Nigeria by Boko Haram, are a stark reminder of the threat faced by women and girls in conflict-prone areas,’ Mark Simmonds, minister for Africa, said this week. ‘Young children are being denied universal freedoms such as an education.’ That may be true for many girls in Africa, but not ones abducted from a school. What Mr Simmonds failed to say is that the girls were almost all Christian, kidnapped by Islamists who threatened to sell them into sexual slavery.

Why can’t our government make that point? It is not as if there were any doubt over the matter. Boko Haram is not shy about its objectives. It has been waging war against Christians in Nigeria for years. On Christmas Day 2011 it killed at least 50 and injured hundreds more in a series of attacks on churches. The toll would have been far higher if two bombs had not been successfully defused. The following May, a spokesman for the terrorists said: ‘We will create so much effort to have an Islamic state that Christians will not be able to stay.’ This is in Nigeria, the richest country in Africa.

This week Mr Simmonds flies to Abuja to join a team of Foreign Office staff who are offering their help to resolve the crisis. Perhaps someone there will explain to him its religious nature.