Islamist
terrorists and fanatics are methodically exterminating the 2,000-year-old
Christian civilization of the Middle East through oppression, threats,
appropriations and deadly violence.
Our media ignore
the intensifying savagery against Christians in Muslim Brotherhood-controlled
Egypt. Unconfirmed reports assert that, last month, Muslim Brothers dragged
Christian protesters to a mosque and tortured them — but our reporters won’t
look into an Islamist Abu Ghraib.
For a century and
a half, the varied strands of Middle East Christianity have faced increasingly
fierce pogroms and, for the Armenians, outright genocide. But with the rise of
Wahhabi and Salafist terror, the long, slow-motion Holocaust accelerated.
Western liberals
romanticize barbaric cultures but have no interest in the destruction — before
their averted eyes — of a great and brilliant religious civilization. It’s as
if they accept the Islamist creed that Christians don’t belong in the realms of
Islam.
But the Middle
East was more than just Christianity’s birthplace. The faith we knowmaturedin the Middle East and North Africa, from
Ephesus and Antioch to Alexandria and beyond. St. Augustine, the most
influential church father after St. Paul, was a North African.
Rome was a
latecomer to Christian authority. Through the Middle Ages, substantially more
Christians lived east of Constantinople (now Istanbul) than in Europe, the
faith’s backwater, whose northern reaches had yet to be evangelized.
Christianity’s
greatest thinkers, greatest monuments and greatest triumphs for its first 1,000
years rose in the Middle East. Even the Muslim conquest and relative servitude
could not dislodge Christianity. In the worst of times, Christianity turned the
other cheek and endured. Some Christians flourished.
Today, the end is
in sight.
In Iraq, cities
such as Mosul and Saddam’s hometown, Tikrit, were once vital centers of
Christianity. But the country’s Christian population, estimated at up to 2
million a decade ago, has fallen by half — perhaps by three-quarters.
Over 2 million
Christians in Syria dread Islamist terror and religious cleansing so much, they
lean toward the vicious Assad regime, which at least shielded minorities. Those
who can, flee the country.
Christians were
early supporters of Arab nationalism. One of the fiercest Palestinian leaders,
George Habash, was a Christian, as was the wife of Yasser Arafat. Their thanks?
Two-thirds of the West Bank’s and more of Gaza’s Christians have been driven
out. They’re now a small minority even in Bethlehem (a situation ignored by our
visiting president).
Egypt has the
region’s largest remaining Christian population, at least 10 million Copts.
With rare exceptions, they’ve long been confined to squalid quarters and
treated as third-class citizens. Now the Salafist fanatics have been unleashed.
The nation’s Muslim Brotherhood rulers could put a stop to anti-Christian
violence, but appear willing to let the Salafists do the dirty work for them.
They’re playing bad cop, not-so-bad cop.
And we’ll send the
regime at least a billion dollars this year — with no stipulations or
conditions except that military-related funds must purchase US-made or
US-licensed equipment. With Egypt’s economy in desperate straits and the
Brotherhood’s popularity fading, we’re propping up religious-cleansing bigots.
Christians in
Iran? Gone. Turkey? Almost gone. Saudi Arabia? The once-thriving Christian and
Jewish populations of Mecca and Medina were finished off centuries ago.
And in Lebanon,
the only Middle East country that until recently had a Christian majority,
Christian rights have been so threatened by Sunni fanaticism that some
Christians have reached out to Shia Hezbollah in their desperate hunt for
allies.
Far to the east,
in Pakistan, Christians face trumped-up charges of insulting Islam or rape,
beatings, murder and church bombings. And west still pour
billions into Pakistan.
It’s the end of a
world as we know it.
If Islam is a
“religion of peace,” it’s time to show the evidence to the endangered Christians
of the Middle East.
Of course, not all
Christians are angels, nor are all Muslims demons. Most humans of any faith
just want to get through the day. And some Christians have collaborated with
odious Baathist regimes (usually, to ensure their community’s survival). Nor
are most Muslims active supporters of the religious cleansing of Christians
from their shared homelands.
But
disappointingly few Muslims actively defend religious minorities. It’s not
unlike Nazi Germany, where most Germans didn’t want to murder Jews, but were
complicit through their silence.
If a Michigan
mosque is defaced with graffiti, it makes national news and the Justice
Department views it as a hate crime. It’s time for our government and media to
apply the same standard abroad on behalf of Christians.
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