[NOTE: It makes me sick that there is so much news coverage centered on the Secret Service scandal. Really! THAT'S a major news story for a week now?!!or is it just another convenient distraction?]. Even in news on the Middle East, I strongly doubt you will have heard anything in the mainstream news outlets like the ones you will read below (2 articles). In truth, it almost seems as though there's a news blackout about anything concerning Christians (unless of course it is something scandalous or otherwise negative, of course). No, that's not cynicism, just the TRUTH OF THE MATTER. P.S. - Please sign the action point/petition noted at the end of the first article as I have.]
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- By Julie Stahl, CBN (Christian Broadcasting Network -cbn.com)News Middle East Correspondent; Friday, April 13, 2012
JERUSALEM, Israel -- While Saudi Arabia is one of the worst persecutors of Christians in the Middle East, it is a problem that's getting worse throughout the region.
Since 2003, Islamic radicals have bombed 70 churches in Iraq alone. And that's only the beginning."We're seeing a very vicious attack on Christians in a number of countries. In fact, in many places in Iraq we're seeing a religious cleansing," Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom, told CBN News."That's a euphemism. It means that Christians are being killed and driven out," she said.Shea said the phenomenon has affected the two largest Christian populations in the Middle East. "About two thirds of the Christians in Iraq have already left," Shea said.
In Egypt, we're just beginning to see those with green cards, those with visas are fleeing. Those who can leave are leaving." "They're very, very worried about their future because there's an Islamist parliament now," she said.
For years, Middle East Christians lived under the protection of long-time dictators. The so-called Arab Spring ended that with the overthrow of regimes like that of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "The old secular order -- even though it was a dictatorship, military dictatorship at that, very oppressive for them -- they nevertheless, were able to have churches and to pray as Christians," Shea told CBN News. "Now they're concerned that they can no longer do that."
In Saudi Arabia [a long-time American ally], most Christians are foreign workers. No churches are allowed. And Shea revealed that, now, the government is even hunting down people who pray in their homes."There was an incident in December of 2011 against 35 Ethiopian Christians. These are Ethiopians who are working as domestics for the most part in Saudi Arabia, and 25 of them were women. They were abused in prison. They were simply holding their weekly service, prayer service," she explained.
Shea noted that it's not just the Middle East that's seeing Muslim radicalization. "There is a radicalization of Islam going on throughout the world and this is having an impact on the tolerance that there is for non-Muslims. So Christians are very much threatened throughout the world," she said. Those countries include Nigeria, North Korea, China, Vietnam, and Pakistan.
"Anyone who defends them who are Muslim -- they're being attacked and killed. And of course the blasphemy law in Pakistan carries a death penalty," Shea said.
Yet this widespread persecution is largely ignored by the mainstream media. A rare exception is this Newsweek article by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is described as a Somali-Dutch feminist, writer and politician. Hirsi Ali wrote that the world often hears complaints about Muslims victimized by the West, "but, in fact, a wholly different kind of war is underway." "(It's) an unrecognized battle costing thousands of lives," Ali told CBN News. "Christians are being killed in the Islamic world because of their religion. It is a rising genocide that ought to provoke global alarm." Ali said the West needs to use financial and diplomatic pressure against offending countries.
Shea specifically points to the United States as not doing enough, especially in Egypt. "We have to start speaking out and we can use quiet diplomacy," Shea suggested. "We can use more public statements to signal that it matters to us, that we're not indifferent, not a green light for them to continue killing Christians and disrespecting their worship." "So I think that we have a lot of levers to pull and we just need to start doing it," she said
ACTION POINT: Say "No" to US Giving $800 million Radical Islamist Groups Overseas
Please go to the following website:
http://www.truthinaction.org/index.php/money-to-muslims?utm_source=TIA_Import_11_21_2011&utm_campaign=017c4df820-4-11-12+Muslim+%231&utm_medium=email
...and sign the petition which states:
"As a U.S. citizen and a member of your congressional district, I am asking you to vote “no” to the section of the administration’s recently submitted 2013 budget that calls for $800 million in economic aid to “Arab Spring” countries.I believe this is a grave misuse of American dollars and puts our country in danger as we could potentially fund the activities and actions of radical Islamic militants who oppose democracy and hate the United States.I call on the House of Representatives to eliminate this proposed $800 million in aid from the 2013 Federal Fiscal Year Budget"
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Israel a Christian Haven amid Islamic PersecutionBy Erick Stakelbeck,CBN News Terrorism Analyst - Wednesday, April 11, 2012
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/insideisrael/2012/April/Israel-a-Christians-Haven-amid-Islamic-Persecution/
...Growing Islamic Threat
Before Islam's prophet Muhammad died in 632 AD, he declared that no two religions could co-exist on the Arabian Peninsula, meaning Islam must reign supreme in the region. Muslim leaders there today take Muhammad's words seriously. Saudi Arabia's [once again a U.S. ally] Grand Mufti recently issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, that all churches on the peninsula must be destroyed. The decree was a stunning statement by Saudi Arabia's top religious authority. Yet it received little attention in the mainstream press and the Obama administration has yet to comment.
"This is giving license to the destruction of churches, by the way, at a time when churches are being burnt in Egypt, in Nigeria, Iraq, Pakistan, Indonesia, country after country -- sometimes with the worshipers inside them," Cliff May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said. May told CBN News the Saudi mufti's statements are part of a troubling pattern."What we have right now--and this is, I think, one of the biggest stories taking place in the world that most of the media are refusing to cover--is increasing and widespread persecution and cleansing of Christians throughout the so-called Muslim world," May said.
Middle East expert Raymond Ibrahim recently wrote that in the month of February alone, churches and Christian monasteries were attacked or destroyed in nine different Muslim countries.During that same time frame, Ibrahim noted, dozens of Christians were murdered, beaten, or harassed across the Muslim world. Those were just the incidents that were reported.
Last Mideast Safe Haven The so-called Arab Spring, which has seen radical Islamic groups like the Brotherhood rise to power, has only made things more difficult for the region's Christians. In Israel, however, it's a different story.
While Christians are fleeing the Muslim Middle East in droves, their numbers have increased by a thousand percent in Israel since the nation's re-founding in 1948. "Christians are in every aspect, every realm of Israeli society. They're in the Knesset. They're on the Supreme Court; they're in academia," Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren said. "The Israeli Defense Forces was at one point printing out Hebrew versions of the New Testament because there's so many Christians swearing in for duty," he noted.
Oren told CBN News that Arab Christians living in the Jewish state are among the most educated and prosperous in the Middle East. And all Christians, citizens and tourists alike, have free access to their holy sites."And we protect them," Oren said. "Several years ago there was an attempt to build a mosque in Nazareth right over the Church of the Annunciation, and Israel intervened and stopped that from happening." Things aren't always perfect. Jewish believers in Jesus have experienced difficulties over the years.
Yet Israel's overall acceptance of Christians is like night and day when compared with the Palestinian-controlled areas of Gaza and the West Bank, where Christians are frequently persecuted and even killed.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
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