Blessed are the Persecuted: Where persecution is real, it’s intense

ICC Note

“The most intense religious persecution today is not governmental persecution, but rather persecution brought on by religious zealots of other religions or faiths,”

By Robert Marus

12/31/2009 Islam (ABP)-During the holiday season every year, America’s dutiful culture warriors spar over things like whether ecumenical holiday greetings are appropriate for retailers or Christian Nativity scenes should be displayed on courthouse lawns that Jews, Muslims and atheists also pay taxes to maintain.

Inevitably, when department-store chains or courts decide against privileging Christian hegemony on these cultural practices, some Christian leader or group claims it’s an act of persecution.

Christians are being persecuted in various places around the world. “Many Christians are not even doing what is expected, which is to pray and to speak for those who have no voice,” according to Baylor professor Chris Van Gorder

“Since I began to answer this e-mail, I have been writing non-stop for the last two hours, and still I am only scratching the surface of your multivalent questions,” wrote Chris Van Gorder, a Baylor University religion professor and expert in global persecution of Christians, responding to an e-mail query about religious persecution.

“For example, I have not even yet mentioned the situation for Christians in Indonesia , Malaysia , the Maldives and other places where Christians are suffering for their faith to greater and lesser degrees. I had so many things to do today and so many pressing issues to attend to that, like many North American Christians, I felt too busy to stop and consider the plight of our sisters and brothers in chains of difficulty and lack.”

For example, consider Afghanistan . “During Taliban rule, persecution of Christians was government policy and this is no longer the case even though the few Christians that remain in the country continue to face very dangerous pressures,” Van Gorder said, noting the 2006 apostasy trial and conviction of an Afghan man who converted from Islam to Christianity—and faced the death penalty for doing so. He was freed only after an international outcry against the sentence.

Another is Iraq . “ Iraq was once a haven for Christians under the more secular Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein, who once praised Christians as the ‘little flowers of Iraq ’ and who gave a number of Christians high-ranking positions in his government,” Van Gorder said. “Since 2003, the situation for Christians has deteriorated rapidly. Muslim terrorist groups (have) targeted Christian churches and bombed Christian-owned business, which had all been protected under Saddam Hussein. Many Iraqi Christians were the target of kidnapping and these problems have encouraged over a million Christians to flee the country, many going first to Syria . On July 13, 2009, seven churches were bombed, four people were killed and 30 Christians were wounded in these attacks.”

“The most intense religious persecution today is not governmental persecution, but rather persecution brought on by religious zealots of other religions or faiths,” he noted. “Orissa in India is one such place where some significant persecution of Christians and Muslims is occurring by extremists in the region. The same has been true fairly recently in East Timor .”