Anti-Christian Oppression Around the World Atrocious — and accelerating. Jack Kerwick
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/anti-christian-oppression-around-world-jack-kerwick/
Whether it is true that attacks against Jews are, as we’ve been hearing from certain Jewish leaders, activists, and commentators within some quarters of the media, actually on the rise may or may not be true. The very same people—American blacks—who are overwhelmingly responsible now for preying upon Jews have been harassing, insulting, pummeling, and, in some instances, murdering Jews for many years.
Nevertheless, that this pattern of predatory conduct on the part of black thugs is a national outrage that should be resoundingly, unequivocally condemned by all decent people should be self-evident.
And it has indeed been so condemned, but not just by Jewish figures, but as well by no small number of non-Jews, specifically those of a Christian background.
At the same time, though, it’s easy to forget—if anyone in the United States (or elsewhere throughout the West) ever noticed it to begin with—that Christians throughout the world constitute by far and away the single largest persecuted religious group.
In other words, it is “Christophobia,” not “anti-Semitism” and most assuredly not “Islamophobia,” that, globally speaking, is the most pervasive and cancerous form of anti-religious bigotry.
In fact, given that about a quarter-billion Christians worldwide are made to endure for their faith incarceration, the confiscation and destruction of their property, bodily torture, and physical violence, including rape, and even murder, it is quite possible that so-called “Christophobia” is the most virulent and endemic of all forms of bigotry.
Open Doors, an organization that exists for the sake of serving persecuted Christians throughout the world, has just published its 2020 World Watch List (WWL) report of the 50 countries “where it’s most dangerous to follow Jesus.” The report informs readers that the number of Christians who experience “high levels of persecution”—about 260 million—has actually increased by 6% since a year ago.
During this period:
2,983 followers of Christ were murdered. This means that on average, 8 Christians were murdered every day;
9,488 churches or Christian buildings were violated; and
3,711 Christians have been detained without trial; arrested; sentenced, and imprisoned.
Other telling facts include the following:
(1)The single most dangerous place for Christians has consistently been North Korea, a country with an atheistic, communist regime.
Here, Christians suffer “extreme persecution,” the worst degree of persecution recognized by Open Doors.
In North Korea, Christians are subjected to “constant stress” and “constant threats.” From the WWL report:
“If North Korean Christians are discovered, they are deported to labor camps as political criminals or even killed on the spot. Driven by the state, Christian persecution in North Korea is extreme and meeting [with] other Christians to worship is nearly impossible unless it’s done in complete secrecy.”
It adds: “A recent increase in diplomatic activity, starting with the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, has not changed anything for Christians in the country.”
(2)Those two countries with the largest populations on the planet, China and India, are both hostile to Christianity. China is ranked as the 23rd most dangerous place for Christians, and India the 10th. Yet both nations are distinguished on account of the fact that they are “Surveillance States” inasmuch as their governments are deploying the mass resources at their disposal to develop technology that will enable them to differentiate “good” citizens from “bad” ones.
In some parts of China, this has already, yet predictably, resulted in proposals to identify and penalize those who have “illegally spread Christianity.”
The facial recognition system that the government of India plans upon devising will doubtless render that much more efficient its campaign to oppress its Christian citizens.
(3)Seventy-percent, or seven out of 10, of the world’s 50 most dangerous countries for Christians are Islamic.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the persecution is as brutal as it is ubiquitous.
And it is intensifying.
Islamic militants are “killing, kidnapping and sowing chaos with impunity.”
In Burkina Faso—a place that, being but the 61st most oppressive country for Christians just a year ago, didn’t even make the top 50 list in 2019—is now ranked as the 28th most dangerous country for Christians. The latter, in fact, claim that “they are in a fight for their survival” as scores “of Catholic priests have been killed” and “Protestant pastors and their families have been killed or kidnapped [.]”
Mali, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, and Nigeria are all among those Islamic-dominated African nations that are most dangerous for Christians. Islamic militants target Christians for rape and murder as a matter of course.
But it isn’t just in Africa that the Islamic oppression of Christians occurs. It is occurring as well throughout parts of Asia. The WWL report informs us that the “influence of radical Islamic ideology has dispersed not only across sub-Saharan Africa, but has also emerged in completely unexpected atrocities.”
For example, in Sri Lanka, which was ranked as the 46th most dangerous country for Christians just a year earlier, but which has now become the 30th most dangerous, “250 people died and more than 500 were injured in attacks on Catholic and Protestant churches and hotels on Easter Sunday.”
In Pakistan, the fifth most dangerous place on the planet for Christians, Christians are imprisoned for violating the government’s “blasphemy laws.”
In Iraq, the 15th most dangerous country for Christians, the ancient Christian community has been all but obliterated over the span of the last 17 years since the American invasion in 2003. At that time, approximately 1.5 million Christians called Iraq home. Today, about 202,000 Christians inhabit the country.
That is, there has been close to a 90% reduction in the Christian population of Iraq.
Over the last nine years, since the outbreak of its civil war, Syria—which is the 11th most dangerous place for the followers of Christ—has witnessed a drop in its Christian population from 2.2 million to about 744,000.
In drawing the reader’s attention to the ubiquity and brutality of the oppression endured by Christians around the globe, my intention is not to marginalize either the suffering inflicted upon the members of other religious groups or, for that matter, the attacks against Christians and upon Christian churches that have occurred within this country, within America.
Rather, the objective here is fivefold:
First, I want, simply, to acquaint readers with these ugly facts, hideous realities to which they would otherwise remain oblivious if they had only the American (mostly leftist) media upon which to rely.
Second, I want for readers to realize that they would indeed remain oblivious to these facts if they had only the media to rely upon.
Third, I want for readers to recognize the curious nature of a journalistic/media class—comprised of analysts, reporters, commentators—that has long since exchanged truth-telling for advocacy, the reporting of facts for the cause of “Social Justice,” now, in effect, turning a collective blind eye to the real, systematic oppression of this one group, Christians, around the world.
Fourth, it is my hope that readers will resolve this mystery for themselves and discover that a story within which overwhelmingly non-white, anti-Christian actors are oppressing overwhelmingly non-white Christians has none of the political and ideological advantages (for those producing, purveying, and distributing the “news”) as one with white Christian oppressors and non-white victims.
Finally, readers, hopefully, will now have perspective when the media relays accounts of attacks upon those of other faiths.
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