The news is bleak and stacking up:
‘World Council of Churches stands by as Christians perish, churches wither’ – gatestoneinstitute.org.
‘Murdered Christian children – The price of Obama’s pro-Moslem Brotherhood jihad and the degradation of Christian women under Islam; Muslim persecution of Christians: June, 2013 by Raymond Ibrahim.”
Few days ago I attended a Forum and Rally evening event, organized by American Freedom Alliance (AFA) that was held at the Luxe Hotel in West Los Angeles. Though 76.5% (159 million) of Americans identify themselves as Christian, though the subject was ‘The Worldwide Persecution of Christian Communities’ has an urgency tone to it, though the speakers’ panel was impressive, the room was not even full. People are in denial, asleep or both.
Paul Marshall, a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom and the author and editor of more than twenty books, Lela Gilbert, the authors of the books ‘Persecuted’ and ‘Saturday People, Sunday People: Israel through the Eyes of a Christian Sojourner’, Raymond Ibrahim, the author of ‘Crucified Again, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, the founder of the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny (BOND), an organization dedicated to ‘Rebuilding the Family By Rebuilding the Man’ and Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, of the Simon Wiesenthal Center words were alarming.
Reality Check
The enemy is Islam. Moslems’ morality appears to be substandard; they are not the people of the Ten Commandments and are not about truth. Moslems do not believe in the same God that Christians and Jews worship, they are children of darkness. Moslems’ torrent of religious intolerance has reached historical heights in all corners of the world. We see wholesale attacks on Christianity all over the Moslem world where Moslems live. Islamo-antisemitism is on a fast rise where Jews and Moslems reside.
Today, throughout the world, Christian communities are suffering greater persecution than at any time since the days of the early Roman Empire. Statistics indicate that approximately 100 million Christians suffer violence related to their faith, subjected to persecutions of all sorts. Mass slaughter, church burnings, suicide bombings, expulsions, intimidation and ritual killings have been reported from Nigeria to Egypt; from Pakistan, Indonesia, Iraq to Syria there is a systematic killing of Christians. Centuries old Christian communities are disappearing before our very eyes and the world seems to be shrugging its shoulders. It simply apathetic.
Christians in Muslim countries, in particular, are paying with their lives for their identification with their religion – most noticeably the Christian Copts of Egypt, whose trials under both the secular regime of Hosni Mubarak and the Muslim Brotherhood, have shaken that society to its core. By withdrawing US aid funds to Egypt the Obama administration is now punishing the victims of the Moslem Brotherhood. Obama in his own foolish way is aiding and abetting the persecution of Christians.
This is not an issue for Christians alone. Jews, were the target of persecution for 2000 years while stateless. Today the nation state of the Jewish nation, Israel is a target of bigotry and anti-Semitism, boycotting and demonization; Buddhists, Bahai and followers of other world religions are persecuted as well.
Religious persecution is not new in our world. History attests that where Jews lives, due to persecution synagogues were turned into churches and according to our world’s new reality churches are now being turned into Mosques.
Christians are second class citizens in Moslem countries. Christians are forced to pay jizya, which is a per capita tax levied on a section of an Islamic state’s non-Moslem citizens. Jizya is a mafia tactic, a substitute to saying, I pay you to remain alive. Apostasy and blasphemy end up in death in Moslem societies.
In North Korea the state head thinks he is God. In Iran, the ruling mullahs think they are God. We need to tell them they are not. If they are seen as the king with no clothes, their Godly power will end. They are threatened because all other religions bow to a higher than them power. In Iran many are most unhappy with the Moslem regime. If the regime represents what Islam stands for, they do not wish to be part of it and growing numbers are seeking to belong to a new faith and Christianity is on the rise.
Jews cannot claim that the world was not with them, turned a blind eye while they were massacred, during WWII Holocaust if they are not now there for others in need. For to bury our heads in the sand and ignoring persecution of this nature may come to haunt the world for decades to come and result in even broader persecutions.
If Jews are trying to wake up Christians, Christians better listen.
We must get over the fear. It is time that all religions come together and make the tidal wave of persecution of Christian communities their own cause. Popular pressure and sanctions work. Good example for it is the newly founded country South Sudan with majority Christian population. South Sudan achieved sovereignty because of effective international pressure after the genocide of 2 million Christians in that region due to decades of persecution by Moslems.
In the Middle East where Islamic supremacy trumps humane behavior and human rights, Israel is the safe bay for all religions; a country in which all religions are equally respected and thrive.
We must learn from history. The ongoing persecution the Jews experienced while they were stateless and scattered all over the world for 2000 years, that culminated in the Holocaust, is a vital proof to the importance of the existence of the State of Israel, especially to every Jew and in general to every member of any other faith.
Solutions
It is a topsy-turvy world. Canonically the world is in a spiritual and religious world war. Today’s leading forces are Jews and Christians, the United States and Israel. We need to pray and we need to irritate the daylight out of our government’s representatives so they act right. We also need to educate, which is vital and most important to a good outcome.
If Jews and Christians do not depend on each other to fight persecution, especially from Moslems, they will find themselves hanging next to each other sooner than soon.
