Obama's Indifference to Christian Persecution

Christianity may have become the world’s religion with the greatest number of adherents, but there are still many places where Christians are persecuted, dispossessed, tortured and killed for their faith. Often this is the result of governmental or religious policy. Western media under-report these incidents, fearing to offend cultural sensibilities. As a result, much of the news of Christian persecution must be sought in secular human rights publications and from religious watchdog groups. The Open Doors World Watch in 2011 posted a list of the Top 10 Most Dangerous Countries for Christians : North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Maldives, Yemen, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Laos. ~~~~~ A lot has changed since then, with the rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The future for Christians in Iraq, especially, is not good, according to Juliana Taimoorazy, founder and president of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council. She says that the actions of ISIS in Iraq and Syria amount to ethnic cleansing as it takes control of towns and cities in Iraq and enforces a militant version of Sharia law. ~~~~~ And Turkey today would be a candidate for the danger list for Christians. Although Turkey is getting a lot of media attention lately, very little attention was given to the 2010 stabbing and decapitation of a Roman Catholic bishop serving as apostolic vicar of Anatolia by an assailant shouting “Allahu Akbar! I have killed the great Satan!” There were fewer than 60 Catholic priests in all of Turkey, yet Bishop Luigi Padovese was the fifth of them to be shot or stabbed in the four years starting with the 2006 murder of Father Andrea Santoro, also by an assailant shouting “Allahu Akbar!” An Armenian journalist and three Protestants working at a Christian publishing house -- one of them German, the other two Turkish converts -- were also killed during the same period. Why does traditionally secular Turkey, with its minuscule Christian community that represents just 0.2% of its population, persecute Christians? These violent acts reflect a popular culture increasingly shaped by Turkish media deliberately promoting hatred of Christians and Jews since the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) under Tayip Erdogan took power in 2002. According to a 2014 survey, 89 % of the Turkish population said that what defines a nation is belonging to a certain religion. Among the 38 countries that participated in the question -- Who believes in the importance of belonging to a specific religion [Islam] in defining the concept of a nation -- Turkey with 89% of its population agreeing, ranked number one in the world. "In some ways, Ankara's policies against Turkey's Christian citizens have added a modern veneer and sophisticated brutality to Ottoman norms and practices," wrote political scientist Dr. Elizabeth H. Prodromou and historian Dr. Alexandros K. Kyrou. In the words of an anonymous Church leader in Turkey fearful for the life of his flock, "Christians in Turkey are an endangered species." ~~~~~ From Egypt, to Syria and Iraq, ancient Christian communities -- among the world's oldest -- are under threat of extinction. "Christians and other minorities are in deep danger and we dare not be silent. The time to speak is now," said Katrina Lantos Swett, chairman of the US Commission on International Freedom. Swett delivered that message in late July at the 6th Annual Coptic Solidarity Conference on persecution in the Middle East, held in Washington, DC. Swett said religious extremism crosses oceans and continents."When Coptic Christians in Egypt are jailed for blasphemy or attacked by extremists for supposedly violating such laws and we are silent, we should not be surprised when attacks commence in the streets of Paris or elsewhere," she said. Representative Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, said," America is in a place to stop the persecution of Christians in numbers never before seen in the world. God has allowed us to be at that place." Middle East analyst and author Raymond Ibrahim blames the media for the lack of response : "We know about this ISIS thing because ISIS wants you to know. And the media, if anything, has responded by giving us a plethora of editorials trying to convince us that what ISIS is doing is not Islamic." Ibrahim said American leaders must speak the truth about the atrocities -- like the beheading of Coptic Christians in Libya. "According to the White House, it was just 21 Egyptians who were randomly killed, not because they're Christians, not because of their faith and so forth," Ibrahim said. US Religious Freedom Ambassador at Large Rabbi David Saperstein is urgently concerned about Iraqi and Syrian Christians. Their numbers have dwindled to a fraction of what they were just 20 years ago. Representative Diane Black, a Republican of Tennessee, agrees with Rabbi Saperstein. Black said people of the United States need to act : "We cannot stand by and watch this. We have a  moral obligation to act in defense of our brothers and sisters abroad." ~~~~~ So, Christian activists in Washington are once again speaking loudly reminding President Barack Obama and the US Congress that something needs to be done quickly to protect these ancient Christian communities from annihilation. ~~~~~ And well they might speak up in America. Fox News reports that near the Mexican border, for several months, 28 Chaldean Christians have had to pray behind the barbed wire fences of San Diego’s Otay Detention Facility. They are captives of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency and are facing deportation. A federal judge has already ordered deportation for 12, one a woman who had allegedly been granted asylum in Germany. The Aramaic-speaking descendants of one of the oldest Christian communities in the world came from Iraq and say they only want to practice their faith, free from the threat of ISIS. In Iraq, they only had three choices: convert to Islam, death by the sword or leave the country,” said Mark Arabo, head of the Minority Humanitarian Foundation : “They’ve refused to convert, escaped slavery and death - only to be imprisoned by our broken immigration system. These aren’t people who woke up one day and said, ‘Let me walk to America. They were forced out of their homes because of our inaction in the region. Because of our troop withdrawal. These are people who were sentenced to death because of our lack of involvement. They escaped near-certain death, but not the US court system. The disheartening thing is it seems that our border is open to anyone unless you’re a Christian fleeing genocide." Former Virginia congressman Frank Wolf, who is a a Senior Distinguished Fellow at the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative that works to protect religious freedom, says : “This administration is fundamentally anti-Christian." While illegal immigrants with criminal records run free on American streets committing crimes that the administration and the mainstream media try to ignore, Christians who want nothing more than the freedom to practice their faith are being detained. Since Obama abandoned Iraq in 2011, leaving it to its jihadist enemies, more than a million Iraqi Christians have been exiled. Only 300,000 remain, and they live in constant fear of displacement, rape, murder and other brutalities at the hands of ISIS. ~~~~~ Dear readers, President Obama is not just indifferent to the plight of the Iraqi and Syrian and Chaldean Christians. His continuing inaction and refusal to recognize the massacres of Christians reveal his anti-Christian position. Instead of helping Christians around the world, he lectures us about the Crusades. That was a thousand years ago and the errors have been corrected. The ISIS massacres are today. It is past time for President to do his duty by letting America save its Christian brothers and sisters from annihilation.