”War” does not mean a unified campaign directed by a single co-ordinating mind. But it is no exaggeration, Vatican analyst John Allen argues in his new book, The Global War on Christians, because it represents a ”massive, worldwide pattern of violence and oppression directed against a specific group of people, often explicitly understood by its perpetrators as part of a broader cultural and spiritual struggle”. If we are not honest enough to call it a war, we will not face it with the necessary urgency, he says.
What is happening? Why are Christians especially at risk, and why are Western governments, media and churches so reluctant to acknowledge it, let alone act? And, as some observers suggest, is religious persecution heading back to the West?
Religion is often only one factor in this violence, part of a combustible cocktail of racial, ethnic, economic and linguistic motives, but increasingly – such as with the rising tide of puritanical Muslim Salafists – it is the main or only reason. And in the countries where the problem is most severe, persecution has accelerated and deepened in the past two years.
The international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need last week launched its 191-page report Persecuted and Forgotten, challenging the international community’s willingness to stand up for religious freedom.
The report calls the flight of Christians from the Middle East an exodus of almost biblical proportions. ”Incidents of persecution are now apparently relentless and worsening: churches being burnt, Christians under pressure to convert, mob violence against Christian homes, abduction and rape of Christian girls, anti-Christian propaganda in the media and from government, discrimination in schools and the workplace.”
Long-time religious liberty analyst and advocate Liz Kendal says when she began monitoring religious violence 15 years ago, ”I was reporting on an attack here or there, usually a militant who came in and attacked a missionary. Now it’s pogroms where people massacre their neighbours with machetes and with impunity”. Kendal is the Melbourne-based advocacy director of Christian Faith and Freedom.
This is a frightening new feature, that neighbours join or lead the brutality. ”One of the disturbing things about Syria is not just all the al-Qaeda-linked groups, but that local Muslims welcome them. They want their Christian neighbours to leave,” Kendal says.
Persecution can be a nebulous term. Both Christians and Muslims in the West have used it to refer to non-life-threatening discrimination. American scholar Charles Tieszen’s definition is a good one: any unjust action of mild to intense levels of hostility, directed at people belonging to a religion resulting in varying levels of harm, in which the victim’s religious identification is the main motive.
Todd Johnson, of Gordon Conwell’s Centre for the Study of Global Christianity, estimates 70 million Christians have died for their faith, 45 million of them in the 20th century.
John Allen notes that ”this boom in religious violence is still very much a growth industry. Christians today are by some order of magnitude the most persecuted religious body on the planet,” suffering not just martyrdom but all forms of intimidation and oppression in record numbers.
The US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which monitors religious persecution and names the worst offenders in an annual report, listed 16 nations guilty of ”heinous and systematic” offences in its 2012 report.
Only one group is under attack in all 16 nations: Christians.
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And why does mainstream Western media miss the big picture? ”That’s the million-dollar question, and I don’t know,” Kendal replies. She suggests it is a combination of ignorance by journalists about the historical and political context of persecution and a political correctness that will not allow them to criticise Muslims for fear of being labelled racist or Islamophobic. ”It’s just too hot to handle,” she says.
”Turn on your TV and there is a young BBC reporter in Syria saying ‘these freedom fighters are fighting for democracy’. And behind him are bushy-bearded jihadists waving a black flag and shouting ‘Allahu akbar’ [God is great], fresh from cutting throats.”
In Burma, Kendal says, Western journalists believe the regime’s talk of reform and don’t realise Aung San Suu Kyi has been silenced, or the religious hatred that is directed against ethnic minorities. In Sudan, the Islamic regime is running a declared jihad against the African Christians, who are sitting on the last of the country’s oil. ”It’s genocide taking place before our eyes, and we’re not talking about it.”
Paul Marshall, author of Blind Spot – When Journalists Don’t Get Religion, thinks another factor is that so few journalists are Christian. Thus they tend to think that religion doesn’t have any intellectual content, it is merely feelings and emotion, so it’s not worth the effort to learn about it.
Marshall, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute for Religious Freedom in Washington, says the churches, in turn, are not very good at talking to journalists. It’s easy, too, to overlook that opponents such as Osama bin Laden have had a coherent, intelligent view of the world, even if we disagree with it.
Meanwhile suffering Christians might find scant consolation in the knowledge they were warned – Jesus says, in the Gospel of John: ”In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”
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