Ernie :
It is everybody even if Christians are getting it the worst.
Hindus, Buddhists, Baha'is, Ahmadis, Taoists, you name it.
Hindu population of Pakistan in 1948 = abt 25 %
" " " 2010 = 2 %
Christian population of Bethlehem in 1950 = about 80 %
" " " 2010
15 % or maybe still
as many as 20 %
You can almost say this goes on every day, somewhere.
Billy
-------------------------------------------------------------
message dated 12/22/2010 9:36:07 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
[email protected] writes:
_WORLDmag.com_ (http://worldmag.com/) | Community | Blog Archive | The
persecution of Christians in the ‘Muslim world’
_http://online.worldmag.com/2010/12/15/the-persecution-of-christians-in-the-
muslim-world/_
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The persecution of Christians in the ‘Muslim world’
_19 Comments_ (mip://02d589a8/default.html#comments)
Written by _Ken Blackwell_
(http://online.worldmag.com/author/ken-blackwell/)
December 15, 10:37 AM
The New York Times this week ran _a front-page article on Christian
persecution in Iraq_
(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/world/middleeast/13iraq.html) , noting, “A
new wave of Iraqi Christians has fled to northern Iraq or
abroad amid a campaign of violence against them and growing fear that the
country’s security forces are unable or, more ominously, unwilling to
protect them.”
The Times goes on to inform us that “more than half of Iraq’s Christian
community, estimated to number 800,000 to 1.4 million before the
American-led invasion in 2003, have already left the country.”
What is the Obama administration doing to put pressure on the al-Maliki
government in Baghdad to stop these murders of Christians? We have heard
endlessly of this administration’s “outreach to the Muslim world.”
That term—“Muslim world”—may itself be part of the problem. By telling
Shia and Sunni Muslims that the Middle East is their world, are we not saying
that Middle Eastern Christians and Jews don’t belong there?
The Christian community in Iraq has been there since the beginnings of the
Church. Bible readers will recognize Nineveh Province, one of the regions
in modern-day Iraq. Didn’t some biblical character named Jonah have a
rendezvous with destiny there? The Chaldean Assyrian Christians—note their
Bible
name—speak Aramaic, which is the language scholars tell us Jesus spoke. Yet
these people, too, are being driven away.
The Wall Street Journal also _has taken up the cause of Christian
persecution_
(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703727804576017920543854768.html)
and has done so eloquently:
“With the rise of radical Islam, this tradition of peaceful and productive
coexistence has been displaced by a practice of religious cleansing. It is
estimated that of the 100,000 Christians who once lived in Mosul, Iraq,
only some 5,000 are still there. In Egypt, Coptic Christians have been
brutalized. Assaults on churches increase around Easter or Christmas, as
worshipers attempt to observe holy days.”
Where is the U.S. State Department on all of this? Where is the White House
press office?
By constantly bowing to the idea of a “Muslim world,” the Obama
administration undercuts its own professed desire for peace in the region.
When was
the last time we heard anyone speak of “Christendom”?
President Obama recently compared his Republican opponents on Capitol Hill
to “hostage takers.” Are they Shia? Sunni? Could he list the number of
non-Muslim hostage takers the world has witnessed in the past 40 years?
Both Iraq and Afghanistan have constitutions that the United States helped
them craft following the U.S.-led invasions of their countries. Our own
State Department advisers insisted on including in these post-Saddam and
post-Taliban constitutions something strange called “repugnancy clauses.”
These repugnancy clauses say, in sum, that notwithstanding anything else in
this constitution, nothing may be done by this government that is
repugnant to Islam. Who gets to determine what is repugnant to Islam? Who has
historically determined repugnancy? Is it not the mullahs? And which mullahs
might that be? Why, the mullahs with more guns, of course.
By insisting on these repugnancy clauses, our own State Department advisers
have constitutionalized ethnic and religious strife. Not only are
Christians and Jews in mortal peril in the affected countries, we see that
off-brand Muslims are in danger, too. If you are a Shia in a Sunni-dominant
country, like Saudi Arabia, you can expect to be jailed.
If you are a Sunni in Iran, you’re likewise in trouble. And, of course, if
you’re a Sufi in any Muslim-dominant country, heaven help you.
Our nameless State Department types—those who insisted on and got these
repugnancy clauses—also ignored our own American contribution to religious
liberty. Thomas Jefferson was our first secretary of State. His closest
friend, James Madison, served as secretary of State for eight years in
President
Jefferson’s Cabinet. They knew something about diplomacy, as well as being
among America’s greatest advocates for religious freedom.
When they collaborated on the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, they
laid the foundation for civil liberty in a constitutional republic. It is
axiomatic that if you murder your neighbor because he worships differently
than you do, you will never enjoy democracy. Why don’t our State Department
functionaries understand this?
It does not matter how many millions of purple-fingered voters approved
these fatally flawed constitutions. If those same voters go to the polls and
elect politicians who refuse to protect the very lives of Christians in
their midst, it is all for naught.
“I expect that a month from now not a single Christian will be left in
Mosul,” the Times reports Nelson P. Khoshaba as saying. Khoshaba is an
engineer who worked in the Iraqi city’s waterworks. Is he not just the kind of
educated citizen that Iraq needs in its post-Saddam era? But if Khoshaba and
his family must flee their historic homeland, what does this say about our
enterprise in Iraq?
Wasn’t there something we read in dispatches from our Pentagon about “
Operation Iraqi Freedom?” What freedom is this? Freedom to flee?
Why have Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama been deaf
to the cries of persecuted Christians? Why don’t they seem to care?
Topic: _Commentary_ (http://online.worldmag.com/cat/commentary/) ,
_Religion_ (http://online.worldmag.com/cat/religion/)
Keywords: _Afghanistan_ (http://online.worldmag.com/tag/afghanistan/) ,
_christians_ (http://online.worldmag.com/tag/christians/) , _iraq_
(http://online.worldmag.com/tag/iraq/) , _islam_
(http://online.worldmag.com/tag/islam/)
, _Persecution_ (http://online.worldmag.com/tag/persecution/) , _U.S. State
Department_ (http://online.worldmag.com/tag/u-s-state-department/)
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