Plight of Middle East Christians should concern us all
- December 02, 2013
Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, a Muslims calls the persecution of Christians by members of her religion "a global crisis".
Source: AFP
JESSI Boulus was a happy girl and only child of her parents. The
10-year-old was walking home from a bible study class a few weeks ago
when a man approached and killed her with a single gunshot to the chest.
Jessi's mother, Phoebe, has no doubt Jessi was killed for the "crime" of being Christian."She was my best friend. My everything. Jessi was just becoming a young woman," she said.
"Every woman dreams of becoming a mother, and for 10 years I was lucky enough to be a mum. I'll miss Jessi calling me mum - I know I won't ever hear it again."
Already Jessi is an almost forgotten footnote in what can only be described as a war that strands Middle Eastern Christians somewhere between the Exodus and a Holocaust.
In a vile campaign often unwitnessed by the West, some Muslims fanatics have turned on ancient Christian communities with a blood lust all too common in Arab lands.
Fundamentalists in the region are usually murderously absorbed by the longstanding local derby: Shia versus Sunni. That feud has been going on for 1381 years and is over who succeeded Muhammad. It is the great schism of Islam. Negotiations between the warring parties don't break down. There are none.
Most of the world's Muslims are Sunni, the great tectonic plates of this troubled religion grating violently around Iran and Iraq whose populations are majority Shia.
But many Shia and Sunni Muslims share a hatred of Christians. Too often they believe harassing them, even executing them, is justified, tolerance not always being Islam's strong suite.
Christians in the Middle East daring to observe their religion are often ostracised, tortured, raped and killed by angry Muslim extremists opposed to the creeping intrusion of modernity.
For modernity read the West. For the West read Christian.
Christian values that support equality, education, social welfare and the separation of church and state have given the West a huge advantage over societies that might not wish to see women educated, or drive cars, that are intolerant of minorities and that would gas children whose parents' views differ from those of their genocidal leaders.
Some resentful Muslims envious of lives they will never lead are lashing out at Christians who, if they survive, are fleeing in record numbers.
In recent weeks there have been repeated murderous attacks on Copts in Egypt, where they were once the Christian majority, and in Pakistan 85 Christians were murdered by Muslim suicide bombers at the historic All Saints Church in Peshawar.
So where is the deafening international outcry over these fanatics murdering of law-abiding Christians?
Pope Francis has noted the "great cost" Middle Eastern Christians have endured, adding he will not rest while anyone's dignity is undermined or if they are "deprived of the basic requirements for survival, robbed of their future, or forced to live as fugitives or refugees".
"We must not resign ourselves to thinking of a Middle East without Christians," he insisted.
He received support from an unlikely quarter: Sayeeda Warsi, a Muslim of Pakistani descent living in Yorkshire.
Mrs Warsi calls herself a working mother, but she's much more than that and perhaps one of the world's bravest women.
She is a leading member of the Conservative Party, was appointed by British Prime Minister David Cameron to the House of Lords and serves as Senior Minister of State and Minister of State for Faith and Communities.
She calls the persecution of Christians by members of her religion "a global crisis".
"There are parts of the world today where to be a Christian is to put your life in danger," she says. "Christian populations are plummeting and the religion is being driven out of some of its historic heartlands."
The evidence is she's right. There were 1.2 million Christians in Iraq in 1990, but only 200,000 remain and the religious "cleansing" of that country by extremists continues.
It's reported that a third of Syria's Christians have fled after being targeted by rebels who are massacring them and destroying their churches.
Baroness Warsi plans to host an international conference next month to draw up plans to save Middle East Christians.
She might also invite a representative from the easily offended Indonesian Government. Our nearest neighbour needed a little mollycoddling last week after apparently losing face over the Australian spying leaks.
Losing face? What about all the lost Christian lives at the hands of Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country?
The UN estimates that during its occupation of East Timor, up to 202,600 locals were killed or died of famine - 97 per cent of them Catholic - and that Indonesians were responsible for 70 per cent of the violent deaths.
At home, Indonesia's Christians also encounter threats. In Sulawesi a few years ago, three Christian schoolgirls were murdered, the girls' heads dumped in plastic bags with a note that read: "Wanted: 100 more Christian heads, teenaged or adult, male or female."
The Christian response? No faux indignation. No riots. No arson. No murders. Just an unfathomable sadness that this could happen on our doorstep.
Alan Howe is Herald Sun Executive Editor
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