In a recent article at the Daily Beast, Kirstin Powers decried the silence of American Christian churches in the face of overwhelming Christian persecution all across the globe.
Christians in the Middle East and Africa are being slaughtered, tortured, raped, kidnapped, beheaded, and forced to flee the birthplace of Christianity. One would think this horror might be consuming the pulpits and pews of American churches. Not so. The silence has been nearly deafening.
As Egypt’s Copts have battled the worst attacks on the Christian minority since the 14th century, the bad news for Christians in the region keeps coming. On Sunday, Taliban suicide bombers killed at least 85 worshippers at All Saints’ church, which has stood since 1883 in the city of Peshawar, Pakistan. Christians were also the target of Islamic fanatics in the attack on a shopping center in Nairobi, Kenya, this week that killed more than 70 people. The Associated Press reported that the Somali Islamic militant group al-Shabab “confirmed witness accounts that gunmen separated Muslims from other people and let the Muslims go free.” The captives were asked questions about Islam. If they couldn’t answer, they were shot.
Back in August, during the height of the terror campaign against Coptic Christians in Egypt, Powers reported:
The news coming out of Egypt is staggering. USA Today reports that “forty churches have been looted and torched, while 23 others have been attacked and heavily damaged” in one week. According to the Coptic Orthodox and Catholic churches in Egypt, 160 Christian-owned buildings have also been attacked.
The tally of torched Christian churches in Egypt has grown to more than 80.
American Christians are quite able to organize around issues that concern them. Yet religious persecution appears not to have grabbed their attention, despite worldwide media coverage of the atrocities against Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East.
It’s no surprise that Jews seem to understand the gravity of the situation the best. In December 2011, Britain’s chief rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, addressed Parliament saying, “I have followed the fate of Christians in the Middle East for years, appalled at what is happening, surprised and distressed … that it is not more widely known.” “It was Martin Luther King who said, ‘In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.’ That is why I felt I could not be silent today.”
The Obama administration certainly hasn’t done anything to stop it. In fact, they always seem to come out on the side of the persecutors.
Remember the reports a couple of years ago that alleged Muslim Brotherhood members had infiltrated the White House? (Or were perhaps invited in?)
Remember how horrifying and outlandish it seemed that a US President would actually take counsel from these dangerous, radical Islamists? Well, a couple of them are speaking out on the Christian persecution.
Via Jihad Watch:
Dalia Moghaed [sic], credited with helping President Obama draft his June 2009 Cairo speech about American relations with the Islamic world, recently downplayed attacks against Egypt’s Coptic Christians on a Facebook page.
More than 80 Coptic churches were burned by Brotherhood supporters after the Egyptian military’s crackdown last month on Muslim Brotherhood encampments in Cairo. A local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party appeared to sanction violence in retaliation for the Coptic Church’s backing of the Egyptian military.
Nonetheless, Mogahed pointed the finger at the Egyptian media.
“The Egyptian media took advantage of the Copts to achieve many personal/political gains, which has angered the West,” Mogahed said in a Sept. 22 post which appeared on the Facebook page of the Egyptian Americans for Democracy and Human Rights (EADHR).
The EADHR was founded by members of the Muslim American Society (MAS), which in turn was founded as an “overt arm” of the Egyptian Brotherhood.
Mogahed isn’t the only American Islamist tied to the Obama administration to slam the Copts on social media.
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Then there Mohamed Elibiary, who was one of the speakers at a December 2004 conference in Dallas titled “A Tribute to the Great Islamic Visionary.”
“The visionary in question”, Robert Spencer tells us, “was none other than the founding father of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini.”
When I questioned him about his appearance at such a conference, Elibiary claimed that he hadn’t known what kind of conference it was going to be, although he didn’t explain why he went ahead and appeared there anyway once he found out. Among those who found this explanation wanting was journalist Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News, whose skepticism angered Elibiary. The great moderate subsequently threatened Dreher, telling him: “Expect someone to put a banana in your exhaust pipe.”
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In a Sept. 15 Twitter post, Mohamed Elibiary, a member of the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Advisory Council, accused American Coptic activists of fanning hatred of Islam.
“For a decade since 9/11 attack extremist American #Coptic activists have nurtured anti #Islam & anti #Muslim sentiments among AM RT wing,” Elibiary wrote.
In earlier tweets, Elibiary attacked American Copts for protesting against how their relatives in Egypt have been treated by the Islamists.
“Good read by @mwhanna1 on need to reform #Coptic activism in #US including stop promoting #Islamophobia,” Elibiary wrote Sept. 14.
I think I’m going to be sick…
Hat tip: @TX_1
Nice Deb 