Not Much Of A Merry Christmas In Muslim Majority Countries

There can be little doubt but the advocates of violent political Islam have determined that no Christian shall remain above ground anywhere in Muslim majority countries.  From Morocco to the Philippines, from Egypt to Nigeria, it is a very risky business to be a practicing Christian.  It is nearly as lethal to be a practicing Christian in the Muslim dominated states today as it was to have been a Jew in Nazi Germany.

Having purged Jews from their midst to a degree which would have warmed the hearts of Hitler, Himmler and Co., the Muslims now have set their very deadly sights on the Christian communities.  As events of recent vintage in Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt, and other, nearby locations have made plain, there is a slow motion sort of holocaust underway.

And, the reactions of Christians generally?  The response of major American denominations?  The US government?

With the notable exception of a few articles of protest and a handful of Congressional Resolutions, the word best characterizing the push back by Christians in the US as well as the US government is "none."

Nor is the lack of outrage, of protest, of sharp rebuttal limited to American denominations and officials.  The Pope in his Christmas address to the faithful made a low key reference to the plight of Iraqi Christians while reserving his big rhetorical guns to support the Catholics in China who resist the official, government approved pseudo-hierarchy   The Archbishop of Canterbury, who is the head of the world wide Anglican communion, took his Christmas opportunity to demand that the rich share in the sacrifices of governmental austerity.

Perhaps so few religious and political leaders care much because the Christians under attack generally are not members of well established, well-known denominations either in the US or Western Europe.  Copts and Syriac Christians are not long standing communities of faith in the US or Western Europe.  Few who occupy the pews of American churches are aware of the long history of these groups, how they trace their roots back to the days shortly after Paul and the other Apostles shook the dust of so many towns across the Middle East, leaving behind the seeds of a potent view of life and God which would give rise ultimately to these denominations now under terminal threat.

In dogma and doctrine, the Christians of Iraq, Syria, Egypt and elsewhere may differ markedly from Western denominations, but in their basic confession of faith they share identity with all the myriad Protestant churches as well as both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox communities.  They are Christians as have been their ancestors in the region for the past two thousand years.  Only Jews have been constantly present in the Mideast for longer than these Christian confessions.

And, like the Jews, these Christians have been the target of Muslim hostility since the all conquering scimitar first cut through the clear air of the region spreading the words of the Prophet not by force of reason but by sheer force of arms.  In recent times, resurgent political Islam has taken up the scimitar with even deadlier intent and consequence.

The ancient approach of "convert or die" has been replaced by the simpler, "die, Christian."  And as the blood flows and fear grows, the West watches in silence.  The Christians of the West as well as the governments of the purportedly Christian majority Western states watch, wring their hands, and neither do nor even say anything in protest, in opposition, or in support of their badly beleaguered Brothers and Sisters in Christ.

What a far and shameful distance this behavior is from the days of the Cold War when all Christian denominations as well as the governments took sharp issue with the treatment of Christians meted out by the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe.  Those of a certain age can remember well the days of prayer, the petitions of protest, the resolutions of condemnation focusing on the Christian martyrs to their faith and the persecution they suffered from the atheistic governments of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact states.

The American Congress was so motivated by the atheistic nature of Communism and the concomitant persecution of Christians that it inserted the words, "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.  Public schools, not simply those of a parochial nature, invited speakers whose subject was the relentless oppression of Christianity and Judaism by the Communists.

All together the subject of Christian persecution by Communists was a constant theme of American culture through the Fifties and most of the Sixties.  It was a very big deal, a sort of social and political definer, a way of expressing the superiority of Western (particularly American) ideals and values.

None of that exists today.  Nor, given the triumph of faux-sensitivity and its operational handmaiden, political correctness, can it be expected to exist.  Not without intense, focused effort on the part of Christians of genuine commitment to their faith.

The simple fact that President Obama condemned violence in Iraq following the savage attack on the Baghdad church without once using the words "Christian" or "church" is telling.  It bespeaks the utter failure of commitment or even sensitivity to the rights and dignity of a group--Christians--which is subject to lethal attack simply because it is Christian.

Once before American leaders and Christian congregations were silent in the face of evil predicated upon religious belief.  That time was the Thirties when the first intimations of the foul antisemitism which would produce the extermination camps of the Holocaust were printed in American papers.  In the face of mounting evidence that the Jews of Germany and Europe generally were at risk of being wiped out, most American denominations kept silent.  The same was true of the US government.

It was because of the silence in the run up to the Nazi slaughter that American churches and government alike became so vocal in the denunciation of Communist persecution of Christians and, later, Jews.  We had learned the dangers of silence, of business as usual, of fearing to make a bad situation even worse.

Now, we Americans apparently have forgotten the truth of the Thirties and are somehow embarrassed by our collective behavior of the anti-Communist days of the Fifties and Sixties.  It is telling that today's leaders both in pulpit and politics were young in the worst days of the Cold War, were exposed unceasingly to the rhetorical overkill of those days.  We learned, falsely it seems, that speaking out is somehow ill-mannered and insensitive, somehow boorish and unsophisticated, in some mysterious way damaging to the self-esteem of the haters, the persecutors, the killers.

In the instant case, the Muslims, or at least those who are either exponents of political Islam or by their silence tacit supporters of those who preach hate, demand "death to Christians."  The situation today is far closer to that which prevailed in Germany during the Thirties and that makes silence by us in the West either personally or through leaders who fear to take a stand complicit in the crimes committed in Muslim majority states.

It is long past time for American denominations to stand up and demand an end to the butchery being done in the name of Islam.  At the very least American churches should insist that our government take a principled position against the slow motion holocaust underway in so much of the Muslim world.  American Christians should be insisting that our government use all the instruments at its disposal to stop the persecution, end the killings, succor the hurt, give refuge to those who must flee literally for their lives.

Anything less is not only anti-Christian it is most assuredly un-American.

(Full disclosure: The Geek is not a member of any denomination or community of faith.)