Thursday, November 4, 2010
[The following, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from The Rubin Report.]
Christians in Iraq have been, and not for the first time, deliberately targeted in a major terrorist attack. Indeed, from Indonesia to Pakistan to Iraq, from the Gaza Strip to Egypt to Sudan to Nigeria, Christians are being assaulted, intimidated, and murdered by militant Muslims.
Yet virtually never do Christians in any of these countries--perhaps with some occasional exceptions in India--attack Muslims. In the West, there have been no armed terrorist attacks on Muslims or the deliberate killing of Muslims. There does not exist a single group advocating such behavior.
Have you seen any of this in the Western mass media? Have any Christian church groups--some of which find ample time to criticize Israel--even mentioned this systematic assault? Indeed, on the rare occasions that the emigration of Christians is mentioned, somehow it is blamed on Israel, as one American network news show did recently.
I'm not writing this to complain about double standards, since one takes this problem for granted, but out of sheer puzzlement. Presumably, much of the Western media and intelligentsia--along with a lot of the church leadership, assumes that it is impossible for a non-Western, "non-white" group to ever be prejudiced. There is also a belief that if one dares report the news about pogroms carried about by Muslims against Christians it will trigger pogroms by Christians against Muslims.
The Catholic Church is quiet because it fears that complaints will increase persecution. Indeed, at a recent high-level Synod for the Middle East, leading Catholic clerics from the region blasted Israel and talked about how wonderfully Christians are treated in Muslim-majority countries. Indeed, Iraq was singled out as a country where there were no problems in Muslim-Christian relations. Apparently, appeasement isn't working.
The al-Qaida terrorists said that all Iraqi Christians would be "exterminated" if two "Muslim women" in Egypt were not freed. Apparently, these were young both wives of Coptic Christian priests--unlikely to have decided suddenly to become Muslims--who were kidnapped and forcibly converted to Islam.
Thus, aggression against Christians is turned into a rationale to persecute Christians, a pattern we have often seen used elsewhere by Islamists. Yet many of the attacks in these countries are not carried out by revolutionary Islamist groups but simply by regular people, sometimes in large groups.
Here's a very partial chronology of such attacks and for the situation in Egypt go here.
According to the Iraqi terrorists' statement, the church was a, "Dirty place of the infidel that Iraqi Christians have long used as a base to fight Islam." Increasingly, Islamists are making it clear that any presence of Christians in Muslim-majority countries is unacceptable, just as the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East is unacceptable.
I just cannot understand how this factor and these attacks so often go unnoticed, and certainly unprotested. Isn't it time for Christians to try to help their persecuted brethren before they are wiped out--or at least forced to flee--altogether?
PS: I'm tempted to write an article entitled, "Why Do Feminists Remain Silent About the Persecution of Women in Muslim-Majority Societies." But Phyllis Chesler has already covered that subject extensively.
i don't know why the catholic never says anything about these killings. however there has been a real leftist growth in the power structue of the catholic church over the last several decades in the united states. since the muslims and the marxists have reach a "politics makes for strange bedfellows" alliance this might have something to do with it.
Religion housed in cultural mores hardly constitutes a spirit of justice until that culture is threatened directly within its immediate area. When they (Christians in the West) meet their maker He will ask them to account for their silence in regards to the East. Christians here have had it too good for too long and have forgotten what their faith's patriarchs suffered to make their now wealthy states prosper. Religion in America is compartmentalized in cubicles of arrogance, ignorance, independence, and indifference. Church bells ring but it doesn't mean everyone who attends the gathering really hears the same message or cares for their neighbor. These types have become the very same religious leaders that crucified their messiah. Learned, but insensitive. Outwardly pious, but inwardly rotten. Christianity in the West needs a wake up call and the radicals who they befriend and partner with against Israel will later be their masters.
The liberal denominations have certainly been quiet about this. Interestingly, it was the Mennonite Central Committe (sounds positively Soviet, doesn't it?) which came to the rescue of Pentecostal Russians who were being persecuted in the late 1980s and got them out of the USSR. I was interpreting with them in 1990, and every mountain was moved to get these people out of the USSR and the other countries where they were in limbo. I hear nothing from the MCC about Middle Eastern Christians. It could be that Coptic and Assyrian Church organizations are doing things quietly to get them out, and I have heard many things through Compass Direct, Voice of the Martyrs and The Barnabas Fund on the plight and murder of Middle Eastern Christians.
What I find troubling, is that our state department is willing and able to drop Somalian refugees in small towns in America, without so much as warning the natives nor preparing the refugees for life in America. As if it were almost done for pure and wicked spite. And the Catholic Church has been quite accommodating of this, without regards to the consequences.
You are right. Why isn't there more of an outcry? I don't know. But there is surely a reckoning.
I just looked at the MCC website, and what they have as far as Christians in the Middle East are concerned, are peace summits with Muslims, and other small notices, but nothing about the slaughter of their brethren...unless you include the news story of the murder of a doctor in Afghanistan by the taliban.
Dont throw all the Christians under the the same bus.
Many of the larger denominations are under the same pressure as was brought to bear on the would be Koran burner, that his actions would endanger Christians in Muslim majority lands.
And the more aggressive Evangelicals are speaking out about these things. That the Leftist Secularist media doesnt give a rats arse about voicing their complaints or that Christians are being persecuted in this world should come as no surprise to anyone.
That being said Liberation Theology (Marxist Thought) within the Catholic structure (which is anti Western White Euro) and the sorry state of Anglicanism and other major denominations which are adopting the mores of the secular Leftist zeitgeist and not Christianity are problematic.
Christian Persecution
http://www.christianpersecution.info/
Voice of the Martyrs
http://www.persecution.com/
Persecution - International Christian Concern
http://www.persecution.org/
As you well know Solomon, the Leftist Secularist Zeitgeist promotes (professionally, with positive media coverage, economically) those who hold correct opinions, and persecutes (see reverse of above including silencing, denigrating, or ignoring) those who hold incorrect opinions. And Christianity is an unfavored/disfavored incorrect opinion.
However those Christians that mimic Leftist Secularist talking points and abandon their beliefs and holy texts and traditions will be rewarded with some relevance within the powerful institutions in society (which the Left now dominates).
Of course Jews (especially American Jews) supported this disempowerment of Christianity, politically and intellectually.
You reap what you sow.
EV,
Take a look back at the 1970s Lebanon when several prelates from the Vatican and Orthodox Churches were helping the PLO, and in Cupucci's case running arms and explosives in his official car from Lebanon to the West Bank as the PLO was slaughtering Christians in Lebanon (e.g. 1976 - Damour).
The only hysteria was about Israel apprehending Capucci and putting him in gaol.
Plenty of examples of the Anglican Church's neglect (Ateek and Tutu are only concerned with replacement theology) of the Christian communities in the West Bank during the 1990s when they took control after the Oslo talks, with Israel being blamed while the actions of Arafat's thugs were ignored.
What is amazing that the the Lebanese and Syrian Christians who had emigrated to Brazil were very pro Palestinian during the 70s and 80s.
Amazing how the treatment of Christians in Gaza at the hands of Hamas gets no media attention let alone that of Western Christian denominations.
Hello. Jewish ACLU lawyers like Alan Dershowitz destroyed conservative American Christianity. And now you're puzzled why white-guilt American Christian leftists are quiet about the Moslem persecution of Christians?; let alone the persecution of Jews? 78% of American Jews voted for Christian leftist Obama who wants the Jordanian forfieted territories of Judea and Samaria Judenrein. You're all mashugah.
Cynic, there is plenty of concern about the persecution of Christians, by Muslims (and elsewhere).
It's just that those folks are ingnored and hated by the Western Left which dominates the media and institutions of Western Civilization.
Turn on CBC instead of CNN, and see for yourself.
Stakelbeck on Terror is a great place to start.
http://blogs.cbn.com/stakelbeckonterror/
We were discussing Western Churches, making a fuss in the West.
Here is the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHiqidzKNx0
The Copts are always under the gun.
Churches that have homosexual and women ordained preists (like the Anglican) are more likely to be hostile to Israel in the West, because they have adopted Leftist secularist mores.
Edit: That should be CBN above.
Cynic, did you hear about he Israeli Jews who burned a pile of New Testaments this past spring?
No.
So why didn't the Churches scream and shout about that?
Well I supposed they want to appear fair and balanced as they say nothing when the Saudis burned a whole lot of bibles belonging to Phillipine expatriates working there.
Neither did they when the US Army ordered bibles burned in Afghanistan for fear of the Muslims rising up.
As Ive pointed out, Christians do care about what is going on.
If they screamed about it, they would only be villified as demonizers of Jews and Muslims and hatemongers, racists, and so on and so forth. Because the institutions are now held in the Leftist zeitgeist.
Jews and Muslims can scream about it with impunity, because they are protected classes within Western European societies.
These groups are not protected...
Whites
Europeans
Christians
Males
It is OK to spew hatred and demonization at these groups with impunity. Any violence against these groups by others is understandable resistance to evil oppressors.
You should understand all this by now Cynic.