(RNS) For too long, too few people have been willing to openly discuss the persecution and killing of Christians in the Middle East and Africa by Islamic extremists.
Spineless apologists for radical Islamic groups in the U.S. and Europe ignored, or even excused the growing number of lethal assaults. Their answer too often is that “angry” Muslims attack Christians because they represent Western imperialism and modern-day Crusaders, which itself is an old story: victims’ behavior cause their own victimization.
Recent attacks in Iraq and Egypt, thankfully, have prompted a different response, and the callous, look-the-other-way attitude may finally be changing.
Christian leaders — including Pope Benedict XVI, the World Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops — have publicly denounced recent Muslim attacks on Christians. They’ve been joined by many Jewish groups, as well as the Islamic Society of North America.
The suicide bombing of a Coptic church in Alexandria, Egypt, at a New Year’s Eve Mass killed 25 worshippers and injured more than 100 others. (The Copts trace their history in the region to the first century, 500 years before the birth of Prophet Muhammad.)
The Egyptian government has blamed Palestinian terrorists from Gaza. A year ago, six Christians and a Muslim security guard were killed in a drive-by shooting on the Coptic Christmas Eve in the town of Nag Hammadi.
Leonard Leo, chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, dropped the usually guarded diplomatic-speak in describing the threat to Egyptian Christians:
“At present, there is no real deterrent for those who target Egyptian citizens because of their religious identity,” he said. “Until there is justice and accountability, the Christian minority, and other minorities in Egypt, will remain vulnerable to extremists and terrorists.”
Extremists attacked a Baghdad church last October and killed more than 50 Iraqi Christians, and at least 38 Christians died in Christmas Eve attacks in Nigeria. Extremist Muslim groups are suspected in both cases.
The Islamic regime in Iran recently arrested 25 Christians and detained nearly 70 others. Some have been released, but rounding up Christians is becoming something of an annual Christmas/New Years tradition in Iran.
The Iranian Christians are evangelicals and are not members of a state-sanctioned religious community. They practice their faith in fear and secrecy in a country where Christians, Baha’is, Zoroastrians and Jews are tiny minorities.
For anyone needing proof that ugly public words have ugly public consequences, Tehran Gov. Morteza Tamadon last year compared the arrested evangelicals to — are you sitting down? — the Taliban.
“Just like the Taliban … who have inserted themselves into Islam like a parasite, they (Iranian Christian evangelicals) have crafted a movement in the name of Christianity,” he told state-run news agency, IRNA. An Iranian Protestant pastor is awaiting execution after his death sentence was upheld in September.
But not to worry. Egyptian journalist Ammar Ali Hassan of the daily newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm revealed the real perpetrator of the attacks upon Christians: “With careful consideration … the incident could lead to other interpretations, especially the application of the Zionist conspiracy against national unity in Egypt.”
That’s right. It’s the Jews’ fault. Of course.
Essam El-Irian of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has combined conspiracy with delusion to avoid blaming fellow Muslims for the campaign against Christians. He believes “the Israeli Mossad was behind the incident,” and he does not rule out the possibility that al-Qaida may now be under Israeli operational control.
It would all be laughable if it weren’t so deadly serious.
The thing that so many conveniently overlook is that, in the midst of Christians fleeing the Middle East, Israel is the one nation in the region with a growing Christian population.
Phillipe Fargues, director of the Euro-Mediterranean Consortium for Applied Research on International Migration, reports that in 1914, Christians constituted 26.4 percent of the total population in what is today Israel, the Palestinian areas, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria; by 2005, they represented at most 9.2 percent.
However, between 1995 and 2007, Israel’s Christian population increased from 120,600 to 151,600 — 25 percent growth. The number continues to climb, but the canard that the Jewish state is hostile to Christians remains a constant refrain among Israel’s adversaries.
Fortunately, many Christian leaders now recognize, and are speaking out against, the real enemies of their faith community.
(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of the recently published “Christians & Jews, Faith to Faith: Tragic History, Promising Present, Fragile Future.”)
