Hassled Christians

Open Doors:

Of the top 10 countries on the 2011 WWL, eight have Islamic majorities. Persecution has increased in seven of them. They are Iran, which clamps down on a growing house church movement; Afghanistan, where thousands of believers cluster deep underground; and Saudi Arabia, which still refuses to allow any Saudi person to convert to Christianity.

Others are lawless Somalia, ruled by bloodthirsty terrorists threatening to kill Christian aid workers who feed Somalia's starving, impoverished people; tiny Maldives, which mistakenly boasts it is 100 percent Islamic; Yemen with its determination to expel all Christian workers; and Iraq, which saw extremists massacre 58 Christians in a Baghdad cathedral on Oct. 31. Of the top 30 countries, only seven have a source other than Islamic extremists as the main persecutors of Christians.

After the jump-break at the end of this article is "Christianity arguably the most persecuted religion in the world "

The top 10 in order are North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Maldives, Yemen, Iraq, Uzbekistan and Laos, which has a Communist government. Iraq is new to the top 10 list while Mauritania dropped out, going from No. 8 to No. 13.

The country that saw the greatest deterioration of Christian religious freedom in the reporting period from Nov. 1, 2009, through Oct. 31, 2010, was Iraq, jumping from No. 17 to No. 8. The country has seen a Christian exodus in recent years, with an estimated 334,000 Christians remaining in this ancient cradle of Christianity, a drop of more than 50 percent since the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime. The main reason why Christians are fleeing is organized violence by an extremist militia, especially in the northern city of Mosul and in the capital Baghdad, in an attempt to cleanse these areas of its Christian presence. At least 90 Christians were martyred last year in Iraq while hundreds more were injured in bomb and gun attacks. More killings have taken place in the past two weeks. [Mission accomplished, GWB!]

The country with the largest Christian community on the WWL's top 15 is Pakistan with more than 5 million believers. Pakistani Christians also faced a sharp erosion of their religious liberty with the country leaping from No. 14 to No. 11 on the current list. Twenty-nine Christians were martyred in the reporting period with at least one killing occurring every month. Four Christians were sentenced to long terms in jail for blasphemy against Islam, at least 58 Christians were kidnapped, more than 100 Christians were assaulted and 14 churches and properties were damaged.

Other countries that rose markedly on the new WWL were Afghanistan, up from No. 6 to No. 3, especially in the wake of ugly demonstrations when footage of Muslims being baptized was shown on network television. Dozens of Christians from the tiny Afghan church have had to move due to subsequent death threats, and in August a 10-person medical aid team from a Christian organization was slaughtered. [Nice work, President Obama. The "surge" is working!]

The year's grisliest headlines were found in No. 26 Nigeria, however, where a staggering 2,000 Christians lost their lives in riots caused by Muslim extremists in some of the northern states in the country. Tension has been growing for more than a generation in northern Nigeria, and escalated after 1999 when 12 northern states adopted Sharia (strict Islamic law). On Christmas Eve Compass Direct News reported the killing of a Baptist pastor and five other Christians in northern Nigeria. More killings of Christians were also reported in the last two weeks. [Christianity is the white man's religion; Islam brings equality and justice. But which religion is it that's killing the most black people every year?]

Egypt is ranked No. 19 on the WWL and could be a focus of persecution this year as 21 Christians were killed in a bomb blast on New Year's Day outside the Church of Two Saints in Alexandria. [Pope Benedict, stop interfering. We've got the situation under control.]

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Christianity arguably the most persecuted religion in the world
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/901492--christianity-arguably-the-most-persecuted-religion-in-the-world

Published On Sat Dec 4 2010EmailPrint


Bullet holes on a stone relief of the Virgin Mary which decorated the entrance to the Sayidat al-Nejat Catholic Cathedral, or Syrian Catholic Church, in central Baghdad on Nov. 1, 2010, the day after seven security force members and 46 Christian worshippers were killed.



AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Ron Csillag

SPECIAL TO THE STAR

Earlier this month, Christians who are free to observe their faith gathered in churches around the world for the annual International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. They recited pre-written invocations for fellow Christians who face violence and oppression.

Maybe pew-bound Christians should instead heed the sentiments of escaped American slave Frederick Douglass: “I prayed for 20 years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”

Certainly, there are many reasons to take action:

Terrified Christians in Iraq are still mourning the 50-plus deaths in an Oct. 31 attack against worshippers attending mass at Our Lady of Salvation church in Baghdad, in which a militant group called the Islamic State of Iraq sprayed the sanctuary with bullets.

• StarAsia Bibi, a 45-year-old Christian mother of five in Pakistan, remains on death row — after spending more than a year in prison — for allegedly blaspheming the Prophet Muhammad. Last week, a court blocked a presidential pardon until an appeals court hears her case. Also in Pakistan, police said two Muslim extremists shot a Christian to death in Punjab province shortly after the victim was granted bail in a “blasphemy” case — and less than a week after Islamic militants in the same province killed four members of a Christian family for their faith.

• In Uzbekistan, a Christian man has been fined the equivalent of seven years' salary for possessing a movie about Jesus.

• The Vietnamese government has announced the continuation of a massive military operation to “wipe out” Christians in the central highlands who refuse to join the state-approved church.

Christianity is arguably — and perhaps counter-intuitively — the most persecuted religion in the world. And the reason for the blissful obliviousness to that fact of well-fed Christians in the West is “ignorance,” says Michael Horowitz, a U.S. Jewish activist who has written on Christian persecution. Horowitz contends this lack of awareness “is fostered by preconceptions and conventional wisdoms that lead many in the West to dismiss anti-Christian persecution as improbable, untrue, impossible.”

Persecution of Christians just doesn't compute. After all, it's the faith of record in the world's richest and most powerful countries, where Christians have been ensconced for centuries.

And given Christianity's well-documented history of brutality, modern-day elites are more conditioned to think of Christian believers as the persecutors, not the victims, says Horowitz.

But the face of Christianity has changed drastically. “There's still the mindset that Christianity is white, Western and European,” says Paul Marshall, of the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., and a former senior fellow at the Center for Religious Freedom.

Today, he points out, two-thirds of the world's Christians live outside the West. “The average Christian, if one can use that term, is now a Nigerian woman,” Marshall says. And numbering 2 billion, there are plenty of Christians to oppress.

Virtually every human rights group and Western government agency that monitors the plight of Christians worldwide arrives at more or less the same conclusion: Between 200 million and 230 million of them face daily threats of murder, beating, imprisonment and torture, and a further 350 to 400 million encounter discrimination in areas such as jobs and housing. A conservative estimate of the number of Christians killed for their faith each year is somewhere around 150,000.

Christians are “the largest single group in the world which is being denied human rights on the basis of their faith,” the World Evangelical Alliance has noted.

In a report to a conference on Christian persecution hosted by the European Parliament last month, the U.S. Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life put it this way: while Muslims and Jews worldwide and Baha'is in Iran certainly suffer too, Christians were “harassed” by government factors in 102 countries and by social factors, such as mob rule, in 101 countries.

“Altogether, Christians faced some form of harassment in two-thirds of all countries,” or 133 nations, the report said. Muslims also face “substantial” harassment, the Pew report found, but in fewer countries.

Christians face harassment in more countries “than any other religious group,” a Pew Forum spokesperson told the Star.

Put in sharper focus, “at least” 75 per cent of all religious persecution in the world is directed against Christians, the conference was told.

The euphemistic term “harassment” encompasses vigilante and terrorist attacks against Christians in more than a dozen Muslim countries. In Sudan, an estimated 1.5 million Christians have been murdered by the Islamic Janjaweed militia, including some who were crucified. In Nigeria, 12 states have introduced sharia law. Thousands of Christians were killed in the ensuing violence.

In Saudi Arabia, the only faith permitted by law is Islam. Christians are regularly imprisoned and tortured on trumped-up charges of drinking alcohol, blaspheming or owning religious artifacts.

In Egypt, Coptic Christians are still reeling from a church attack last January in which eight worshippers were killed. “The situation is deteriorating and is very tense,” Sam Fanous, a leader of Toronto's Coptic community, told the Star from Cairo. He said that after Friday Muslim prayers, streets fill with anti-Coptic protests.

In historically tolerant Indonesia, Islamic militias have bombed churches in majority Christian regions and killed or forcibly converted thousands.

China, meantime, continues to shutter “underground” churches and ship pastors to prison.

Open Doors International, a group that reaches out to persecuted Christians, lists the 10 most repressive countries for minority religions and Christians in particular: North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Maldives, Afghanistan, Yemen, Mauritania, Laos and Uzbekistan.

The plight of Christians in Communist and formerly Communist countries is “slowly easing,” says Marshall, but getting worse in India and across the Muslim and Arab world, where even to own a Bible means courting danger.
The reasons for this torment are complex, but generally in these places Christianity is seen as a proselytizing faith and a vehicle for Western imperialism and colonialism. “There is a tendency to associate Christianity with the West,” Marshall says.

So why aren't Christians marching in the streets and demanding action the way Jews did on behalf of their Soviet brethren in the 1970s and '80s?

“Because most of the persecution of Christians is not happening in our own backyard and the issue is not generally reported in the mainstream media,” says Corey Odden, CEO of The Voice of the Martyrs Canada, which is dedicated to raising awareness and support for persecuted Christians around the world.

“The lack of understanding comes from a lack of knowledge.”

Marshall, co-author of a 1997 book about Christian persecution, Their Blood Cries Out, has another reply: “I kick myself [and] ask myself that all the time.”