Posted on 03/22/2014 9:45:21 AM PDT by knighthawk
The Torch (Christians United for Israel’s Magazine, Winter 2014)
“To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting Him to public disgrace”—Hebrews 6:6
The United Nations, Western governments, media, universities, and talking heads everywhere insist that Palestinians are suffering tremendous abuses from the state of Israel. Conversely, the greatest human rights tragedy of our time—radical Muslim persecution of Christians, including in Palestinian controlled areas—is devotedly ignored.
The facts speak for themselves. Reliable estimates indicate that anywhere from 100-200 million Christians are persecuted every year; one Christian is martyred every five minutes. Approximately 85% of this persecution occurs in Muslim majority nations. In 1900, 20% of the Middle East was Christian. Today, less than 2% is.
In one week in Egypt alone, where my Christian family emigrated, the Muslim Brotherhood launched a kristallnacht—attacking, destroying, and/or torching some 82 Christian churches (some of which were built in the 5th century, when Egypt was still a Christian-majority nation before the Islamic conquests). Al-Qaeda’s black flag has been raised atop churches. Christians—including priests, women and children—have been attacked, beheaded, and killed.
Nor is such persecution of Christians limited to Egypt. From Morocco in the west to Indonesia in the east and from Central Asia to the north to sub-Saharan Africa to the south; across thousands of miles of lands inhabited by peoples who do not share the same races, languages, cultures, and/or socio-economic conditions, millions of Christians are being persecuted and in the same exact patterns.
Muslim converts to Christianity and Christian evangelists are attacked, imprisoned, and sometimes beheaded; countless churches across the Islamic world are being banned or bombed; Christian women and children are being abducted, enslaved, raped, and/or forced to renounce their faith.
Far from helping these Christian victims, U.S. policies are actually exacerbating their sufferings. Whether in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, or Syria, and under the guise of the U.S.-supported “Arab Spring,” things have gotten dramatically worse for Christians. Indeed, during a recent U.S. congressional hearing, it was revealed that thousands of traumatized Syrian Christians—who, like Iraqi Christians before them are undergoing a mass exodus from their homeland—were asking “Why is America at war with us?”
The answer is that very few Americans have any clue concerning what is happening to their coreligionists.
Few mainstream media speak about the horrific persecution millions of people are experiencing simply because they wish to worship Christ in peace.
There, is of course, a very important reason why the mainstream media ignores radical Muslim persecution of Christians: if the full magnitude of this phenomenon was ever know, many cornerstones of the mainstream media—most prominent among them, that Israel is oppressive to Palestinians—would immediately crumble.
Why? Because radical Muslim persecution of Christians throws a wrench in the media’s otherwise well-oiled narrative that “radical-Muslim-violence-is-a-product-of-Muslim-grievance”—chief among them Israel.
Consider it this way: because the Jewish state is stronger than its Muslim neighbors, the media can easily portray Islamic terrorists as frustrated “underdogs” doing whatever they can to achieve “justice.” No matter how many rockets are shot into Tel Aviv by Hamas and Hezbollah, and no matter how anti-Israeli bloodlust is articulated in radical Islamic terms, the media will present such hostility as ironclad proof that Palestinians under Israel are so oppressed that they have no choice but to resort to terrorism.
However, if radical Muslims get a free pass when their violence is directed against those stronger than them, how does one rationalize away their violence when it is directed against those weaker than them—in this case, millions of indigenous Christians?
The media simply cannot portray radical Muslim persecution of Christians—which in essence and form amount to unprovoked pogroms—as a “land dispute” or a product of “grievance” (if anything, it is the ostracized and persecuted Christian minorities who should have grievances). And because the media cannot articulate radical Islamic attacks on Christians through the “grievance” paradigm that works so well in explaining the Arab-Israeli conflict, their main recourse is not to report on them at all.
In short, Christian persecution is the clearest reflection of radical Islamic supremacism. Vastly outnumbered and politically marginalized Christians simply wish to worship in peace, and yet still are they hounded and attacked, their churches burned and destroyed, their women and children enslaved and raped. These Christians are often identical to their Muslim co-citizens, in race, ethnicity, national identity, culture, and language; there is no political dispute, no land dispute.
The only problem is that they are Christian and so, Islamists believe according to their scriptural exegesis, must be subjugated.
If mainstream media were to report honestly on Christian persecution at the hands of radical Islamists so many bedrocks of the leftist narrative currently dominating political discourse would crumble, first and foremost, the idea that radical Islamic intolerance is a product of “grievances,” and that Israel is responsible for all Jihadist terrorism against it.
For those who are not following the war in Syria closely, yesterday, al-Qaeda attacked an Armenian Christian village in Syria right on the Turkish border by crossing from Turkey. It’s impossible for them to have done this without the full support and cooperation the Turkish government. More al-Qaeda terrorists crossed the border today, although their attacked failed and they were mostly killed.
Turkey has also been cooperating with al-Qaeda to attack Kurdish controlled areas of Syria.
Let’s hope the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Turkey falls soon.
The MSM thinks that if they don’t report it, it didn’t happen. They try to keep the public ignorant of what’s really happening. Just look how they are protecting Barrack Houssain bin Obama.
I teach about it in the class I teach on Sunday mornings. Sadly though some don’t like to hear about it. It’s not a positive message.
In answer to the question ... Because that’s sorta like reporting in headlines news, in your local paper, that the sun rose this morning!
I mostly disagree with the reasoning of this article. The mass media’s (NYT and WashPost especially) anti-Jewish bias is not the primary reason why the media covers up all the Islamic murders and tortures and massive subjugation of Christians. That actually sounds like a bit of a “stretch” in reasoning, in my humble opinion. I doubt the mass media thinks its biases through to second and third levels of consistency. That’s just too much for their collective (minimalistic) brains. Rather, I believe the mass media just does not care, it is that simple, they just do not care about murdered and tortured people in general ... and we all know the central cells of the mass media often display (on a continuing basis, I mean) a generalized anti-Judeo-Christian bias ... they simply do not want to hear about, think about, or deal with the concept that there are Biblical moral values....values that would impact (limit) their personal lives, (sexual behaviors included). This comes from the so-called “secularization” of the mass media, the education and population of many of its positions with secular, non-religious people. Moral values, including concern or caring for others who are suffering...goes pretty much out the window when the principle moral guide for our civilization (scripture) is ignored. It is that simple. What do they have to replace just even the Biblical moral teachings? Alinksy? Community Organizing course 101? Ethnic studies? Global warming scams? “International law” and the United Nations? answer: all of the above, not ONE of which helps nurture and develop a conscious, a moral or ethical concern for others, and certainly none of these “replacement scriptures” provides any reason for their adherents to have any positive regard or concern for ... specifically... followers of the very source (Bible0 they replace — Christians and Jews. To the contrary...
Well, it is, but I think it is more than that. The media are in favor of the persecution, but can't come right out and admit it, but that may happen in the future too.
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