When Will Obama Admit, "It Is The Religion, Stupid!"

With the savagely lethal attack on the Chaldean Catholic church in Baghdad, the war being waged against Christians in Muslim majority states from Nigeria to Indonesia has exploded out of the media shadows where it has been concealed for several years now.  The statement issued by the Muslim entity behind the attack specifically called the worshipers and their church a "foul den of idolaters."  A pathetic lie was proffered in justification of the slaughter when the Mighty Warriors Of Allah alleged the Christians used the church as a place from which to wage war against Muslims.

The accusation was not only pathetic in its poverty, it was a lie of a magnitude which would have made even Joe Stalin or Dr Goebbels blush.

The totally expectable and quite pro forma denunciation issued by Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani in no way mitigates the ground truth that the attack was simply the latest in a long series of outrages committed against the once vibrant Christian community in Iraq.  The extent of the butchery and resultant fear suffered by Christians merely because of their faith is shown in one cold number: There are only 500,000 left from a total of nearly 1,500,000 when the Americans invaded seven years ago.  The rest, at least those who were not killed, left for distant and hopefully safer places.

Nor is the situation in Iraq unique.  In Egypt, the Coptic Christians, a faith community which dates back to the very beginnings of Christianity, has been under daily attack.  Copts have been killed.  They have been kidnapped.  Assaulted.  Raped.  Their churches have been vandalized.  Burned.  Blown up.  As in Iraq, there have been numerous reports of police and other security forces standing by, hands in their pockets, quite indifferent to the brutalization of their fellow citizens.

The brutality of Muslims against Christians has continued these past few years throughout the Muslim majority world.  Palestinian Christians have become an endangered species.  So have those in Syria.  Life is not better for people of the Cross in Jordan or across North Africa, just a tad less lethal.

In Pakistan violence against Christians--again often with security forces inactively present--is rampant.  The assaults, even the killings, barely merit notice in the public press.  Those who attack are rarely arrested, let alone prosecuted.

At the antipodes of the Muslim world, Nigeria and Indonesia, pogroms directed at Christians are commonplace.  In both countries as well as many in between these two pillars, churches are pillaged, burned, destroyed.  The authorities always seem baffled, at least to the extent that arrests are as infrequent as hot weather at the South Pole.

Throughout the lands dominated by Muslims, the ancient choice of convert or die echoes on the lips of the mob and the clerics behind them.  In a twist on this old theme, one of the gunmen in the Baghdad church told one of his priestly victims that he could convert but he was going to die nonetheless.

While it is self-evident that not each and every Muslim among the reputed one and a half billion is directly involved.  Still, those who do not personally hold the gun, wield the knife, hurl the bomb, or pound Christian flesh do not rally publicly and loudly against those of their brethren who do the dirty work.  In this case of Muslim excess as in so many others, silence equals agreement, equals support, equals empowerment.

Where is the presumed Muslim majority?  Why is this purported enormous percentage of Muslims not demanding that their governments take swift and decisive action against those who slaughter and terrorize in the name of the Prophet?

Is the deafening silence of the Muslim majority due to basic sympathy with the objectives of the perpetrators of violence?  This is not out of the realm of probability.  The history of Muslim dominated Spain is replete with examples of persecution onto death directed against both Christians and Jews.  Nor is the history of the Ottoman Empire devoid of similar examples.

Pogroms, persecutions, mass murders, all on the basis of faith.  And, it must be pointed out, regardless of the fact that the victims were protected peoples of the Book, members of Abrahamic faiths who paid their protection taxes, wore distinguishing clothing, and were otherwise living according to the humiliating requirements of Muslim law as provided in the Koran and Shariah.

History has powerful inertia.  As a result, the examination of the past, the real past and not the artifacts of apologists and other makers of myth, gives an excellent indication of present and future behavior by members of the same culture, society, or religion.  In the case of the contemporary persecution of Christians as in the DNA predicated hatred of Jews, the past is prologue.  That is the ground truth.

Then there is the problem of those in the US and the larger West who steadfastly and quite without a basis in reality refuse to connect the dot marked "Islam" with those unpleasant blotches of blood red marking acts of terror and murder.  The event at the Baghdad church due to the blunt honesty of the killers demands that we in the West without exception recognize the identity of those who seek to prevail, those who seek to cleanse not just Iraq but the world generally of people who do not share their unique dedication to the strictures and imperatives of Islam.

The bloody gauntlet has once more been slapped in our collective face.  Turning the other cheek may be an admirable goal expressed by those of the Christian faith but there is no requirement in that faith or any other to submit to terrorists and murderers.  There is no requirement that we refuse to both know and name the truth.

Quite the opposite.  There is a positive obligation that we not give in to the fear of offending those who tacitly wish us harm.  We have no choice on this world, in this life, other than calling out the killers for what and who they are--Muslims who take their faith too seriously, who invest too much of their human identity in it, who cover and conceal a base quest for power in the garb of belief.

Truth in blogging statement.  The Geek is not a member of any denomination of any faith tradition.

We must make no mistake about the dynamic expressed by the Prophet's Butchers.  They will not stop and we will know no peace until those who desire to shed innocent blood in the greater glory of Allah are themselves stopped.  Period.