Christians persecution is real … but Muslims are NOT to blame
SHAFAQNA – Christians across the Middle East have suffered a great deal over the past years – hunted down by radical militants, communities have been displaced, their places of worship defiled and many of their people murdered, or enslaved. Being a religious minority in the Middle East has never been more dangerous … yet we have grossly failed to identify those powers which have engineered such violence.
A recent report in FrontPageMag simply and categorically pinned the blame on Islam, and Muslims, arguing that Christians have died by the hands of Muslims across the region on account they seek to built an absolute Islamic empire.
Referring to a report which list acts of violence against Christians across the world, FrontPageMag writes: “The report finds that “Islamic extremism” is the main source of persecution in 41 of the top 50 countries—that is, 82 percent of the world’s persecution of Christians is being committed by Muslims. As for the top ten worst countries persecuting Christians, nine of them are Muslim-majority—that is, 90 percent of nations where Christians experience “extreme persecution” are Muslim.”
What it fails to mention however is that Muslims have really nothing to do with this wave of violence, but rather Wahhabi militants – a group which claim to have religious exclusivity on Islam when in fact its sits and stands outside its tenets in its bigotry, intolerance and taste for bloodshed.
An another important point FrontPageMag failed to elaborate on of course is the fact that alongside Christians, Muslim minorities have suffered the same hate, and the same wrath. Thousands of Shia Muslims, Sufi Muslims and Alawites have died in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain by the hands of Wahhabi mercenaries … Yazidis were forced out in drove from their towns in villages … thousands were enslaved on account their prayers were not deemed worthy of Wahhabist Saudi Arabia.
FrontPageMag continues: “The difference between Muslim and non-Muslim persecution (e.g., communist) of Christians is that the latter is often rooted in a particular regime. Conversely, Muslim persecution of Christians is perennial, existential, and far transcends this or that regime or ruler. It is part and parcel of the history, doctrines, and socio-political makeup of Islam—hence its tenacity; hence its ubiquity.”
Again here bias and ignorance lie at the root core of such statement. Islam does not reject Christianity. It does not reject Judaism either … Islam does not call for the eradication of any faiths, it only calls for the Truth, which Truth people are left free to follow or not, to embrace or not.
The Quran says: “To me my religion, to you yours.” Moreover “There could be no compulsion in religion.” Those are the principles enounced in the Holy Scriptures. Those are the values Muslims, true Muslims are called to abide by and respect of they want indeed to walk the path.
If Islam was so inherently against Christianity then how can we explain how for over a millenium Muslims, Christians and Jews cohabited in the same land, under the same sky in the Middle East?
If persecution there has been it is because Wahhabis promoted it. It is because Wahhabism came to tarnish and re-engineer the teachings of the Quran, calling for violence and intolerance instead of justice and compassion.
The real enemies of humanity hide in Saudi Arabia, where a Wahhabist clergy stands protected by the house of Saud’s billions of dollars.
By Catherine Shakdam for Shafaqna
