Where are the Christians?

 

By Stuart Kaufman
CharlsetonMercury.com

“ISIS Terrorists Crucifying, Burying Iraqi Children Alive”

“ISIS video appears to show beheadings of Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya”

“ISIS Declares War On 'The Cross': 21 Christians Beheaded”

The above are just three of dozens headlines of recent vintage describing acts of savagery committed by Islamist terrorists against Christians.

If you type thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/ChristianAttacks.htm into your web browser, you will find a list of 1233 separate attacks by Islamists on Christians between September 11, 2001 and February 14, 2015, not one of which had anything to do with war, combat or insurgency. The victims in each one of these incidents were innocent Christians who were specifically targeted and abused by Islamists solely because they were Christians.

During the Holocaust, the world stood by and did nothing while the Nazis murdered six million Jews. The claim has repeatedly been made that most people didn't know what was going on. However, this has been effectively disproved by news stories from early in the war. For example, on June 12, 1942, the London Daily Telegraph featured this headline: “Germans murder 700,000 Jews in Poland” (see theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2015/jan/27/daily-telegraphs-holocaust-article-in-1942-that-went-unheralded). That story pulled no punches; it talked about “traveling gas chambers” and mass murders. Of course, it was unusual that the story was published at all. As evidence of the place it occupied in the priorities of the day, the story appeared on page five of a six-page issue. There are no excuses that will suffice for the indifference of the civilized world to what the story referred to as “the greatest massacre in the world’s history.”

Regardless of how we writhe, trying to escape the impalement of conscience, we have no legitimate excuses today either. Every day the news reports and corroborating images of the wholesale slaughter by Muslims of thousands of Christians (men, women and children) that is happening right now are being answered by resounding yawns from the rest of the world. Last year, when the Islamist barbarians who call themselves Boko Haram kidnaped 200 teenaged girls from a Nigerian school, how did our State Department respond? By tweeting “#BringBackOurGirls”! The world has permitted Boko Haram to grow virtually unchallenged. They control fully half of Nigeria and are now beginning incursions into neighboring Chad.

What about the Christians in Iraq? In the 21st century, we have seen the Christian population of Iraq drop from almost 1.5 million to fewer than 300,000. Last year alone, ISIS forced 400,000 Yazidis and other Christians to flee from Mosul and its environs to Kurdish-controlled areas where there is temporary safety.

In Syria, the civil war has resulted in more than half a million Arab Christians being killed or otherwise driven out of the country. The same story is repeated in country after country in the Middle East — from Lebanon, to Egypt, to the Sudan. The latest atrocity (as of this writing) was the choreographed simultaneous beheading by ISIS of 27 Coptic Christians in Libya who were guilty of nothing more than being Christians.

Why are the mainline Christian organizations such as the World Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches, the Presbyterians, Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists and others not calling for something serious to be done to protect these innocents? They seem to have neither time nor inclination to exert their moral authority. Instead, these institutions spend their time and effort calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions of all things Israeli (themselves a target of the Islamists), while ignoring the viciousness of Islamists towards everyone who is not one of them.

We have grown accustomed to the silence of the world in the face of persecution of the Jews — that is old news; but where are the Christians standing for their brothers and sisters who on a daily basis are being kidnapped, raped, beheaded, crucified and burned alive in the name of Islam? Where are the protest marches and demonstrations? Where are the resolutions presented to the United Nations? Where is the president of the United States? Christians are being murdered on a wholesale basis, the world is doing nothing, and no one drawing breath can claim “we didn’t know.” We are inured to the horrors that appear daily on Facebook and other social media.

Christian friends frequently ask me: “But what can I do? I am just one person.” You must stand up and scream from the rooftops. Force your churches and religious institutions to face that which they have been avoiding. If they lay claim to moral authority, then their hypocrisy is laid bare if they continue doing business-as-usual while their fellow Christians are persecuted all over the world. Start organizing your friends and acquaintances. Put pressure on your political representatives. Organize loud rallies at which you call your religious and elective leaders to account for their failure to move against the evil that is being committed against Christians in the name of Islam. Educate yourselves, spread the word and make yourself a total pain-in-the-neck to those who would ignore you.

 On March 14, 2015, Breitbart News, The Center for Security Policy and High Frontier will host a forum in Columbia entitled “The South Carolina National Security Action Summit” in which policy makers, legislators, law enforcement leaders and citizen activists will get together in four panels to discuss the threats posed by Islamists and how we should respond to these threats. To register for the Forum, please go to highfrontier.org/scnsas and join us for the day.

There is much that you can do! Take the first step.

Stuart Kaufman is a retired lawyer, investment banker and businessman. He relocated from New York to Mount Pleasant in 2012. A friend recently told him that he has been a South Carolinian all of his life ... but he just didn’t know it.