When some concerned members of Congress tried to create a special envoy for religious minorities in the Near East and South Central Asia, and their legislation passed the House by a huge margin, Democrat senator James Webb put a hold on it and prevented it from passing.43
Before the bill died, “Representative Frank Wolf said he ‘cannot understand why’ the hold had been placed on a bill that might help Coptic Christians and other groups ‘who face daily persecution, hardship, violence, instability and even death.’” The ultimate source of opposition was the State Department, which had told Webb, “we oppose the bill as it infringes on the Secretary’s [Hillary Clinton’s] flexibility to make appropriate staffing decisions,” adding that the “the new special envoy position is unnecessary, duplicative, and likely counterproductive.”44
But as Wolf responded, “If I believed that religious minorities, especially in these strategic regions, were getting the attention warranted at the State Department, I would cease in pressing for passage of this legislation. . . . Sadly, that is far from being the case. We must act now.... Time is running out. ”45
Speakers at Coptic Solidarity’s third annual conference in Washington, D.C., in June 2012—featuring several concerned lawmakers, including the United Kingdom’s Lord Alton, Senator Roy Blunt, Congressman Trent Frank, Congressman Joseph Pitts, and Frank Wolf himself 46—were clear that Hillary Clinton was ultimately behind the killing of the bill.
That conference also shed light on the fact that even outside the context of the “Arab Spring,” the position of the Obama administration has been see-no-Christian-persecution-by-Muslims. Nigerian lawyer Emmanuel Ogebe described the sheer carnage of thousands of Christians at the hands of Muslim militants and lamented that the Obama administration’s response was to pressure the Christian president of Nigeria to make more concessions—including building more mosques (the very places that “radicalize” Muslims against “infidel” Christians).47
The “Arab Spring” is not applicable to Nigeria. But despite Boko Haram’s self-declared goal of cleansing Nigeria of all Christian presence—and the countless churches intentionally bombed and burned, and thousands of Christians intentionally slaughtered, as recounted in the pages above—the Obama administration still refuses to designate the group as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO),” even as several U.S. politicians and NGOs pressure it to do so.48
Instead, in May 2012, the administration agreed to spend $600 million on a USAID initiative launched to ascertain the “true causes” behind Boko Haram’s jihad49—as if the organization has not been perfectly clear about its goals: the enforcement of Sharia law and elimination (or at least subjugation) of all infidels, chief among them Christians. The group has voiced its Islamic supremacism countless times and under many formulations. For example, in August 2012, Boko Haram leader Abu Bakar Shekau appeared on video ordering Nigeria’s Christian president Good-luck Jonathan to “repent and forsake Christianity,” that is, convert to Islam; otherwise the jihad—which began in earnest after Jonathan, a Christian, won Nigeria’s fairest presidential elections to date—would continue.50
The fact that Boko Haram’s motives are clear-cut and obviously religious (according to Sharia, a non-Muslim like Jonathan may not rule over Muslims) has not stopped the Obama administration from pointing to anything and everything else to explain the violence in Nigeria. The very next day after Boko Haram bombed Christian churches celebrating Easter in April 2012, killing dozens, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson stressed that “religion is not driving extremist violence either in Jos or northern Nigeria [where churches were and continue to be bombed].”51
As far as former U.S. president Bill Clinton is concerned, “inequality” and “poverty” are “what’s fueling all this stuff”—a reference to Boko Haram’s jihad to enforce Sharia and eliminate Christians. Clinton further called on Nigerians to “embrace their similarities,” adding, “It is almost impossible to cure a problem based on violence with violence”52—apparently a suggestion that Nigeria’s government not retaliate with any severity in response to Boko Haram’s mass murderers.
There is a final point to be made concerning Barrack Hussein Obama, the man. Based on his own personal background—an education in the Islamic schools or madrassas53 of Indonesia and a Muslim father from Kenya, both of which nations have figured prominently in this book—he of all U.S. presidents should be more sensitive to, or at least more cognizant of, the realities of Christian suffering under Islam. And yet, of all U.S. presidents, his policies have done the most not only to ignore but to enable their suffering, especially through his unqualified support for Islamists in the guise of the “Arab Spring,” which former presidential candidate Newt Gingrich called “such a total grotesque failure,” correctly referring to it as an “anti-Christian spring.”54
The same mainstream media obfuscation of and governmental indifference to the Muslim persecution of Christians also prevails in Europe. In October 2011, Ann Widdecombe, a conservative British politician, criticized the U.K.’s obvious double standard: “David Cameron’s government have threatened to cut the overseas aid budget for countries which persecute homosexuals.... Fair enough. But what about Christians? When do we qualify for such protection or don’t we? . . . You stand a better chance of earnest representation [in the U.K.] if you are a hedgehog [than a Christian].” Among other things, she pointed out that U.K. aid to Pakistan—where countless Christian and other minorities are imprisoned on (mostly false) charges of “blasphemy”—will double even as the U.K. cut aid to Malawi because “two homosexual men were sentenced to 14 years of hard labor” there.55
The United Nations’ assiduous avoidance of any talk of Christian persecution has also occasioned some surreal moments. In July 2012, for example, Fox News reported, “The UN’s newest candidate to sit on the Human Rights Council is led by an African strongman accused of genocide by the world body’s top war crimes court. Sudan, led by President Omar al-Bashir [responsible for a genocide that saw millions killed in Khartoum’s bid to enforce Sharia law], is set to join what the UN bills as its foremost arbiter of human rights abuses, in just the latest absurd example of the [sic] a UN selection process that repeatedly places rogue states in global leadership positions.” As one observer pointed out, “‘Electing Sudan to the UN body mandated to promote and protect human rights worldwide is like putting Jack the Ripper in charge of a women’s shelter. . . . But it’s the way the UN works.’”56
The mainstream media and the Western political establishment have shown themselves unable or unwilling to accept the admitted motivation of Islamic groups around the world—namely, the establishment of Sharia, which is distinctly hostile to non-Muslims. They are simply unable to factor ideological, religious, or existential motives into their thinking about violence around the world. Instead they see only material motives (money, land, politics, and so forth). Their almost instinctive conclusion is that Muslim violence is proof positive of legitimate Muslim grievance. These attitudes are so ingrained that they have eroded the influence of Western civilization and its capacity to act.
But is this true of Western Christians, as well? Are they also part of this paradigm—blind or indifferent to the sufferings of their coreligionists around the world? While it might be expected that secular media and politicians would turn a blind eye to Christian persecution, are Western Christians also indifferent?
Some Western Christians, to be sure, do sympathize with their fellow Christians living under the threat of Muslim violence. Western Christians of all denominations do seek to ameliorate this growing humanitarian crisis. And considering that nearly 80 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians,57 they are in a very strong position to influence the sort of policies their elected representatives enact.
Yet this crisis is a priority for only a small minority of American Christians. It seems that by and large Christians in the U.S. accept the mainstream narrative. They hear the same mess
age that is drummed into the ears of all Americans—that historically Christians are the intolerant group, responsible for untold sufferings around the world, and they should take the log out of their own eye before they presume to take the speck out of their brother’s. Such a misreading of the situation has clearly infiltrated and contaminated the worldview of many American Christians, and particularly of their leaders, causing them either not to see or to be embarrassed to talk about the reality of global Christian persecution. According to a November 2011 survey, while three out of four American Christians have expressed a desire to learn more about the persecuted church, half of America’s pastors refuse to mention it.58
When German chancellor Angela Merkel stated the fact that Christianity is “the most persecuted religion worldwide,” she was strongly condemned by many lawmakers and even human rights organizations.59 The pressure to refrain from mentioning uncomfortable facts about the persecution of Christians is enormous. Little wonder that so many Christian leaders are reluctant to speak about persecution, even when most of their flock wish to hear about it.
Even something as minimal as instituting a short prayer for persecuted Christians, a practice that would at least increase awareness of the situation, is shunned. After all, such a prayer would raise uncomfortable questions—such as who is primarily behind this persecution, and why—that few American Christian leaders want to confront. Commenting on the general lethargy and apathy that reigns in many American Christian churches, Open Doors USA president Dr. Carl Moeller recently said,We would think of the American church as a napping church and that we would elbow it and it would wake up and rouse itself and do something [about the persecution of Christians]. . . . In my mind today, the picture I have is a church in a diabetic coma that has gorged itself on the sweets of affluence, materialism, and the idolatry of worshipping the materialistic world. That diabetic coma is now life threatening. We as a church are at the point of death—not the church in the Middle East. We are the ones who can no longer rouse ourselves to even pray for an hour on behalf of things that God would have us pray for.60
Some have suggested that American Protestants and Catholics are indifferent to the sufferings of persecuted Christians around the world because of sectarian differences—because they do not see such Christians as Christians. This argument overlooks the fact that, while most indigenous Christians in the Middle East are Orthodox, the majority of the 100 million Christians (at least) being persecuted around the world are either Protestant or Catholic. As a matter of fact, many of them belong to Christian populations whom Protestant and Catholic missionaries from the West originally proselytized. Sadly, we have a situation where Western Christians go to Islamic lands, convert Muslims to Christianity, and then turn their backs on them when they get persecuted for being Christians. In any case, all sectarian and semantic differences aside, all Christians around the world are suffering first and foremost for their belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God—the cornerstone of all Christian theology, whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant.
In fact, the argument that American Christians are indifferent to the sufferings of global Christians because of sectarian differences is wholly invalid. After all, American Christians habitually evoke the human rights of non-Christians—particularly non-Christians for whom the mainstream media has approved the status of “persecuted”—even when these same non-Christians themselves persecute the Christian minorities in their midst. For example, in October 2012, fifteen leaders from U.S. Christian denominations—mostly Protestant, including the Lutherans, the Methodists, and the United Church of Christ, denominations that rarely if ever mention Christian persecution—asked Congress to reevaluate U.S. military aid to Israel, since “military aid will only serve to sustain the status quo and Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian territories.” In other words, U.S. military aid will contribute to the oppression of the Palestinians, most of whom are Muslims, and some of whom persecute the Christian minorities in their midst.
In response, the American Jewish Committee, “outraged by the Christian leaders’ call,” got it right when they pointed out that, at a time “When religious liberty and safety of Christians across the Middle East are threatened by the repercussions of the Arab Spring, these Christian leaders have chosen to initiate a polemic against Israel, a country that protects religious freedom and expression for Christians, Muslims and others.”61
It is simply not popular to talk about Christian persecution—even from the pulpits of America’s churches. Better to express Christian compassion for anyone and everyone other than fellow Christians. Just as most liberal Americans strive to disassociate themselves from their European heritage—seeing it as the root of all evil, eagerly championing the rights of non-whites—many liberal American Christians also strive to disassociate themselves from their Christian heritage, eagerly championing the rights of anyone and everyone other than their coreligionists. Hence Americans are concerned for Muslim Palestinians—even as the few remaining Christians under Palestinian Authority continue to be oppressed, especially by Hamas.62
Even so, there is one urgent reason that the West in its entirety—Christians and non-Christians, liberals and conservatives, deists and atheists—should take note of and respond to Muslim persecution of Christians: it is a reflection of what Islam has in store for them. While this book has focused on Christians under Islam, there should be no mistake that the same treatment is in store for all non-Muslims wherever and whenever Muslims achieve hegemony. Christians are only the most obvious victims, for the various reasons discussed earlier—including that they are the largest religious minority group under Islam, and the most prone to fall afoul of Islam’s laws against basic human freedoms. Fundamentally, however, the sufferings of such Christians are a reflection of Islam’s global approach to non-Muslims under its control—a reminder of how Islam behaves when it is in power, on its own home turf, untrammeled by outside influences.
In other words, the West must learn to connect the dots and understand the interconnectivity of Islam, which has been a major theme of this book. The fundamental reason for Muslim hostility to Christians is that they are non-Muslims, infidels, and Islam’s Sharia—its way—calls for subjugating all infidels. To ignore this fact, or, worse, to empower Islam—whether through mainstream media dissembling or Western policies in support of the “Arab Spring”—is not only to perpetuate the sufferings of Christians and others under Islam. It is also to prepare the way for the West’s own demise. Islamists around the word are still working to fulfill the Muslim mission that began nearly 1,400 years ago: global hegemony. As a Christian patriarch in Syria put it, after pointing out that the slaughter and displacement of Syria’s Christian population is the work of jihadis, “The jihadis will not stop here, the war will spread to Europe. What will England be like in ten or 15 years?”63 Indeed, the Islamic jihad knows no bounds, nor is it a respecter of anything or anyone non-Islamic.
The return of the persecution of Christians under Islam is the most visible aspect of a larger and more dangerous phenomenon: the return of Islam as a global force. The West ignores those being crucified again at its own peril—bringing to memory the words of German pastor Martin Niemoller, who came to understand—but only after being sent to a concentration camp during World War II—what it meant to face a totalitarian ideology hostile to all who reject it:First they [the Nazis] came for the communists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the socialists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Catholic. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.
NOTES
A NOTE TO THE READER
1 Many top officials from the Coptic Orthodox Church assert unequivocally that there
are more than 16 million Copts in Egypt (without counting the many secret apostates or non-Coptic Christians). Recently, human rights activist Naguib Ghobrial insisted that there are 16.5 million Copts in Egypt and an additional 3 million Copts living abroad—and that the Coptic Church has all the necessary documentation to prove these figures. Ghobrial was responding to the Egyptian government’s minimizing the Coptic population of Egypt, claiming there are only 3 million Copts in the country in order to justify their lack of representation in the government. Arabic-language video of the interview, “Ghobrial: Number of Copts in Egypt is 6 ½ Million” (translation by the author) is available at wafd-news, September 27, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqQ0EZ9e0nI.
2 Raymond Ibrahim, “Saudi Grand Mufti Calls for ‘Destruction of All Churches in Region,’” Jihad Watch, March 14, 2012, http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/03/raymond-ibrahim-saudi-grand-mufti-calls-for-destruction-of-all-churches-in-region.html.
PART ONE: LOST HISTORY
1 Tom Heneghan, “About 100 million Christians persecuted around the world: report,” Reuters, January 8, 2012, http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/01/08/us-religion-christianity-persecution-idINBRE9070TB20130108.
2 “200 million Christians in 60 countries subject to persecution,” Catholic News Agency, June 19, 2007, http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/200_million_christians_in_60_countries_subject_to_persecution/.
3 “SOCIOLOGIST: EVERY 5 MINUTES A CHRISTIAN IS MARTYRED,” ZENIT, June 3, 2011, http://www.zenit.org/rssenglish-32747.
Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians Page 28
