The Dangers of Being Christian
Religious Freedom in the Islamic World

August 17, 2006

Earlier this year on Good Friday, a man entered Mar Girgis Church in Alexandria, Egypt, and stabbed one worshipper to death and wounded two others. He then went to another church and stabbed three other Christians.

The events in Alexandria were a reminder of the, at best, tenuous status of Christians in the Islamic world.

The Egyptian government immediately dismissed the possibility that animus toward Christians played a role in the attacks. Egypt’s Interior Ministry said that the attacker suffered from “psychological disturbances.” How convenient.

Egyptian Christians, known as Copts, did not buy it, and for good reason: Police officials had a different version, announcing that “three men had been arrested in four simultaneous church assaults.” According to the police, these assaults had killed one and injured another seventeen.

That sure sounds like a coordinated attack to me. CBS News put it this way: The Egyptian government has a history of “[playing] down incidents that can be perceived as sectarian in nature.” By “sectarian,” it means violence against Christians.

This isn’t the only manifestation of the Copts’ second-class status. Copts, who constitute at least 10 percent of Egypt’s population, are discriminated against in employment, especially in government. And to add insult to injury, they face “severe restrictions” when it comes to building or repairing their churches.

The Copts aren’t the only besieged ancient Christian community in the Islamic world. Iraq’s Christian community, often called Assyrians or Chaldeans, dates back to at least the second century. If any group has an historical claim to their part of Iraq, they do.

Yet sadly, an increasing number of Iraqi Christians have concluded that “there is no future” for them in Iraq. According to Lawrence Kaplan of the New Republic, “Sunni, Shia, and Kurd may agree on little else, but all have made sport of brutalizing their Christian neighbors.” Christians “routinely disappear from the sidewalks of Baghdad;” others are kidnapped and held for ransom. They are, as Kaplan puts it, “today’s victims of choice.”

Since, as one Christian put it, “we have no militia to defend us,” and neither Iraqi nor Americans officials are willing to protect them, Christians are leaving their ancestral home.

Christians in other Islamic countries are treated even worse. In countries like Saudi Arabia, Christians must practice their faith in secret. While being a Christian, in and of itself, isn’t illegal, saying or doing something that lets others know it is. And, as we witnessed with Abdul Rahman in Afghanistan, conversion from Islam to Christianity is a crime punishable by death, as it is in many parts of the Islamic world.

The Islamic world’s treatment of its Christian minority raises crucial questions for our effort to export democracy as a way to combat terrorism�an effort I support. But if democracy means anything, it means the protection of fundamental human rights like freedom of religion. So long as Christians remain targets of religious persecution in the Islamic world, not only will there be no future for Christians; there will be no future for true democracy, either. Our government and Christians must keep up the pressure.

Appreciated this essay. I have intentionally neglected to comment on Israel-Lebanaon because I am frustrated by it. Both sides proclaim they want to destory the other and I find the reasons to be arbritrary. They are fighting not over detained soliders or of principle or out of self-defense but because they have always hated each other. In the meantime, I am praying for the safety of the innocents, the mutual-destruction of the malice-filled, and for God’s will to prevail.

From Chuck Colson’s Breakpoint article “One-Way Sympathy” (8/15/06)

“Since the start of the Danish cartoon controversy earlier this year, Vatican officials have expressed sympathy with Islamic outrage over the depictions of Muhammad. This sympathy comes from knowing what it’s like to have your beliefs treated with disrespect and even contempt. Yet in much of the Islamic world, that sympathy isn’t a two-way street.

That’s why the Vatican issued a statement “urging Islamic countries to reciprocate by showing more tolerance toward their Christian minorities.” As Angelo Soldano, the Vatican’s Secretary of State put it: “If we tell our people they have no right to offend, we have to tell the others they have no right to destroy us . . . “

Destroy is not too strong a word. The anger originally directed at Denmark is increasingly being directed at Christians. In Turkey, a priest was murdered in an attack that the Turkish media has connected to the cartoon controversy. In Pakistan, protesting mobs have ransacked churches and beaten Christians. In Beirut, which, unlike Pakistan, has a large Christian population, a Christian neighborhood was attacked by a Muslim mob.

By far the worst attacks have occurred in Nigeria. In the state of Borno, attacks left as many as fifty-one Christians dead, including a priest. The Christian property destroyed included at least six churches, both Catholic and Protestant, the Bishop’s home, and a Christian bookstore.

The rioters, who went on a rampage after hearing a Muslim cleric denounce the cartoons, sent a clear message with their choice of targets: These are our true enemies, the Christians. This led to a deplorable, yet predictable, response: Nigerian Christians retaliated against Muslims, killing one and burning a mosque. This is tragic…”

This blog seems to gravitate towards religious freedom and I appreciate the awareness created by Colson.

LONDON, Aug. 12 — As a Muslim, Qadeer Ahmed says, he believes that violence against civilians is never justified. But as a British Muslim, he is not surprised to find the country once again at the center of a reported terrorist plot by homegrown extremists.

“When people say it’s Bush and Blair against the world, it’s difficult to argue with them,” said Mr. Ahmed, 37, a leader of the largest mosque in High Wycombe, where half a dozen young British Muslims were among the 24 arrested Thursday in what the authorities said was an elaborate plan to blow up planes on trans-Atlantic routes.

Despite government efforts over the last several years to reach out to community leaders — a tricky proposition, given that Muslims hardly speak with one voice — many Muslims have hardened their resentment of their country…”

Identity is defintely part of the problem. As a first-generation American-born Middle-Easterner, I believe my family raised us to be proud of our heritage but integrating with our new home. It probably also has something to do with the fact that my parents didn’t hate the country they were immigrating to as many Muslim immigrants seem to indicate.

If you are a Muslim in pursuit of a better life, that’s great. May you be welcome to whatever country you desire. However, you must contribute to that new society, help it, build it and at the very least not be a burden to it. (Or at the very, very least, not destory it but this is not the intention of this post).

It’s a NY Times article, it’s not anti-Muslim and I am not implying that all those Muslims polled are in terrorists (but some obviously are). But I am surprised of the attitude that they have towards their new countries and I suspect this is major part of the general problem, part of the attitude behind the “clash of civilizations” we discuss.

Found another related to the subject in today’s emails.
Young Muslim Rage Takes Root in Britain

Watched “World Trade Center” tonight. Found it to be touching. As odd as it sounds, the movie isn’t really about Sept. 11th, meaning you don’t really “learn” anything new aside from seeing it from teh rescuers’ perspectives. The story focuses on the lives of two men and their families.

Seeing this in New York was part of the experience (and about 20 miles from where the Towers were). There were a lot of tears and there was no talking. Eveyone knows someone who was affected. Even us. We have an aunt and a cousin that were in World Trade 1 and are grateful to the Lord that made it out but even so, it was difficult to watch.

I only recommend this movie to those who know they feel they want to see it.
If this movie bombs at the box office, fine. But I am glad Oliver Stone made this movie. I love going to the movies to laugh and to be moved so as long as we are making Scary Movies and Pirates … we ought to make movies that are about us too.

Christianity Today’s review of WTC

So barbaric. Nauseating.
I don’t see many thngs black and white but this seems rather obvious to me.
Though I don’t know why an 18 year old girl expecting to give birth goes to an abortion clinic to begin with, did no one in that building have a concept of life? How about law? Conscience? I wonder if the investigation will reveal if the “doctors” and “nurses” have slaves too.

If you read the article, read the comments too.

“OVER the last dozen years, the view from Gemima Mukashyaka’s small coffee garden in the lush emerald-green hills of southwestern Rwanda has changed. In 1994, after the genocide that killed 800,000 people, it was a site of devastation, chaos and abandonment. Five years ago, when worldwide coffee prices spiraled downward, her neighbors in the densely populated region near Butare were uprooting their coffee trees and planting quick-growing food crops to survive.

But today, there’s a clean coffee processing station nearby, and sprouted around it are two restaurants, a pharmacy, a bank, six hair salons, and just last week, the village’s first Internet cafe.

“My coffee gave me hope for a better future,” Ms. Mukashyaka, 29, said. At last harvest, her coffee, sold through a farmers’ cooperative to a gourmet coffee roaster in the United States, fetched three times the price it did five years ago.”

(link may require registration)

Highly recommend Sufjan and he’s going on tour this fall so check him out if you can. Saw him last fall and bought my tickets to see him again. I haven’t been reading as much as I was, but I am still listening to music. I’ve posted a couple things about Sufjan before and I am very excited about his latest release. These were the outakes of his last cd, Illinois. Further evidence that he is not only an amazing songwriter but an incredible arranger.

I haven’t actually read any of the Left Behind books (and God-willing, never will) but this article cracked me up.

Saw Ryan Adams at the Starland Ballroom in Jersey. Weird place.

I can’t help but like Ryan. He’s too good. Yeah, he’s cranky, rambles a lot, and knows he’s a rock star, I like his music, what can I do?

The last show I saw was him at the Electric Factory in ’05. He was frustrated with the buzz coming out of the speakers (or was it the AC as he would inquire for an awkwardly long time). Then he yelled at the talkers in the balcony for a while, start the song, stop, yell some more, stop, play, yell, whatever. Then he walked off.

This time, no worries.
Great set with the Cardinals, played for well over an hour and half, maybe close to 2, I don’t know. Realize a good deal is rambling about whatever but great music. He sounded great.

They played for an hour or so, took a break, came back with a set of 5 more, wished us good night, then the house lights came on. This not being our first concert, it’s 11:30, he’d been playing for a while, we started leaving. They coming running out, yelling to turn off the lights again, and flippping out on the sound boothe. Then he says, “We went out for a smoke and you shut it all down. It’s like working at Books a Mllion and after taking a break, you come back in and discover they took all the books away …” Well, all analgoies break under scrutiny but whatever.