Every year, an organization called Open Doors publishes its “World Watch.” It includes a list of the fifty countries in the world guilty of the worst persecution of Christians. This year, North Korea and Somalia topped the list. Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan rounded out the top five.
That means that the United States is heavily involved with three of the five worst offenders in the world. Further, Libya was placed in the category of “Extreme Persecution” and Egypt received a “Severe Persecution” rating. The U.S. helped the rebels overthrow the government in Libya and the Administration helped bring Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt.
Before the “Arab Spring” uprising, Syria was known for its religious tolerance (not its political tolerance). Though President Bashar al-Assad has plenty of blood on his hands, the violence toward Christians in Syria is not being perpetrated by the government. The killing and torturing of Christians is primarily the work of the Syrian rebels — the U.S.-supported Syrian rebels. It’s almost incomprehensible to me that the side supported by the United States in the Syrian civil war is the one murdering and pillaging Christians.
Likewise, in Egypt the severe persecution and attacks on the ancient Coptic Christian population is the work of Muslim factions in the country and encouraged by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Middle East and Islam expert Raymond Ibrahim made a startling observation: “Whenever the U.S. intervenes in an Islamic nation, Islamists come to power… (and) Christian minorities suffer ‘extreme persecution.'”
The “Arab Spring” has turned out to be one of the great disasters of human history, yet there seems to be no accountability. The U.S. pours billions of dollars into these countries or into the opposition forces, yet seems to have no influence with them or refuses to use it on behalf of any persecuted Christians.
Why do we empower forces hostile to Christianity when those forces are also inevitably hostile to all things western, especially the United States? As a nation, we are destroying ourselves — and allowing the destruction of millions of others — with the notion that Christianity and Islam are essentially the same.
Not only is this idea false, it’s deadly.
Just as alarming as America’s unwitting support of Christian persecution around the world is the immediate prospect of that same persecution coming to the one nation that all the world describes as “Christian.” But, then, it’s hardly surprising to see the rise of corruption when the best influence to the contrary — the Bible — is being discarded as if it were a deadly infection.
