Thursday, August 2, 2012

Wall Street Journal: The Religious Silence on Christian Persecution

In the West, anyone who criticizes Islam is immediately labeled a racist, Islamophobic, hate-mongering bigot. Most people don't like being called racist, Islamophobic, hate-mongering bigots; hence, most people won't criticize Islam.

One of the horrifying results of giving Islam a protected status is that even Christian leaders in the West are reluctant to speak out on behalf of persecuted Christians in the Muslim world.

WALL STREET JOURNAL--This month the Christian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani marked his 1,000th day of incarceration in Lakan, a notorious prison in northern Iran. Charged with the crime of apostasy, Mr. Nadarkhani faces a death sentence for refusing to recant the Christian faith he embraced as a child. He embodies piety and represents millions more suffering from repression—but his story is barely known.

Mr. Nadarkhani's courage and the tenacity of his supporters, many of them ordinary churchgoers who have crowded Twitter and other social media to alert the world to his plight, bring to mind the great human-rights campaigns of recent years: the fight against apartheid in South Africa, or the movement to assist Soviet Jews seeking to emigrate from behind the Iron Curtain. As Nelson Mandela represented the opposition to South African racism, and Anatoly Sharansky exemplified the just demands of Soviet Jews, so Mr. Nadarkhani symbolizes the emergency that church leaders say is facing 100 million Christians around the world.

Yet Mr. Nadarkhani has almost none of the name recognition that Messrs. Mandela and Sharansky had. Despite the increasing ferocity with which Christians are targeted—church bombings in Nigeria, discrimination in Egypt (where Christians have been imprisoned for building or repairing churches), beheadings in Somalia—Americans remain largely unaware of how bad the situation has become, particularly in the Islamic world and in communist countries like China and North Korea.

The principal reason public opinion hasn't been galvanized around the persecution of Christians is that the various church leaderships either ignore or dance around the issue. If churches don't speak up forcefully, then it is unrealistic to expect the world's democratic governments to do the same. (Continue reading.)

6 comments:

Diptarko said...

This is not only with Christians bro..Same story with other religions also. I am a Hindu from India, here condemming Teroroist acts carried out by Musies instantly means unsecular and undemocratic. I have seen how Muslims treat their minorities in Muslim countries.. U wont even hear a murmur of protest. After all it is alright in their religion to do Katal of the Kafir.. ALl Non-Mulsims must unite to stand up against Muslims. Else the whole world is in grave danger.

Anonymous said...

I think the longer we stand idly by, the worse things get! We need to take a stand for God!

Ron said...

Certainly atheist humanists cannot be accused of not criticizing Islam, nor the antagonism caused by the dehumanizing teachings of montheistic religions in general.

David Wood said...

Nonsense. The "New Atheists" are some of Islam's biggest defenders (though they don't know it).

goethechosemercy said...

Atheists have no platform of attack against Islam.
They can say Muslim traditions are uncivilized and Muslim law is totalitarian, but they can't say Islam is in error, they can't call it profane.
In the atheist worldview-- there is nothing sacred, nor anything profane.
The atheist position against Islam is weak, his "doctrine" has no coherence, and Muslims know it.
They will frighten the atheist community, and the atheists, in spite of their principles, will submit.

Chinchilla PetVerse said...

Dear Brothers,

We are having a public refutation of Zakir Naik in Mumbai, India on Aug 25, 2012. Please do come for the programme if possible. Details are available on: http://www.youtube.com/user/SakshiApologetics

Please fwd the link to like minded people you know, post on your facebook account, etc... Thank you and GOD BLESS.

In Christ


Naren