ICC Note: While Christians across the Middle East are facing some of the most intense persecution in their history, many feel that they have been forgotten. A grassroots effort has brought together over two hundred religious leaders to show that this is not the case. They have issued a pledge of solidarity and a call to action on behalf of Christians across Iraq, Syria, and Egypt.

By Nina Shea

05/20/2014 Middle East (Catholic Herald) – On the morning of April 7, Dutch Jesuit priest Frans Van Der Lugt was most likely in meditation, as was his custom, when gunmen burst into his monastery in the old part of the Syrian town of Homs. They grabbed the 75-year-old clergyman, beat him, dragged him outside and shot him twice in the head. The assassins were probably jihadis who then controlled Homs.
The priest was unarmed and for 50 years had come to be widely beloved for his humanitarian work. Was he murdered, then, simply as an “infidel”, one of only a dozen or so Christians remaining there, or because of his, and Syria’s Christians’, refusal to fight in the conflict, or because of his long dedication to inter-religious dialogue, anathema to extremists? What is certain, he did not die a by-stander, caught in the cross fire of Syria’s civil war. He was singled out for his Christianity.

Syria’s two million Christians follow some ten different faith traditions and no group has been spared persecution. For three years, they have seen their ancient churches deliberately destroyed in Maaloula and many other places, and many clergy and laypeople targeted for death, kidnapping, and intimidation. Two Orthodox bishops from Aleppo have been hostages for a year. In Raqqa, another renowned Jesuit and man of peace was abducted and reportedly executed last July. This year, 20 of Raqqa’s remaining Christian leaders were forced to sign a so-called dhimmi contract, agreeing to pay “protection” money, and submit to medieval Muslim blasphemy and social codes. Recently, extremists stopped and searched a bus, and from its group of largely Kurdish passengers separated out and beheaded two Armenian Christians. These are just a few examples.

Those of us who follow religious freedom issues are deeply alarmed. We have seen similar patterns of targeted violence by Islamic extremists against Iraq’s Christians over the last decade, with devastating results, and, last August, the worst single attack in 700 years hit Egypt’s Coptic churches. UK’s Coptic Orthodox Bishop Angaelos stressed to Congress that the attacks by “radical elements” are not merely aimed at individuals, but “the Christian and minority presence in its entirety”. Such persecution, coming on top of conflict and political turmoil that Muslims and Christians, alike, are suffering, has helped spur an exodus of many thousands of Christians from Syria, Iraq and Egypt — today home to the vast majority of indigenous Middle Eastern Christians. If this wave of persecution continues, the indigenous Christian communities may soon be exiled from the region of Christianity’s birth.

The West has largely ignored this crisis. Though promoting religious freedom is a key objective of US foreign policy and the tolerance of religious minorities, as President Obama emphasises, is a national security concern, two successive administrations, Republican and Democratic, have given short shrift to these Christians’ unique plight. Moreover, the Western Christian response has been noticeably muted. Last December in Rome, at a conference sponsored by two private American Christian universities, Iraq’s Catholic Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako spoke searing words: “We feel forgotten and isolated. We sometimes wonder, if they kill us all, what would be the reaction of Christians in the West?”

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