A displaced Yazidi woman looks out
from an abandoned house where she is taking refuge in the Turkish town of
Silopi
CHRISTIANS are being murdered,
tortured, raped, beaten, burnt alive in their homes and churches, killed in
bomb attacks, imprisoned and driven from their homes on a daily basis.
They are being subjected to the
greatest persecution in the history of their faith, but the world continues to
treat this epic attack on human rights as a story of small importance.
A booklet was sent to me the other
day by an organisation called Church in Chains. A map of the world in the
booklet shows that Christians are being persecuted, with varying degrees of
brutality, in roughly half of Africa
and most of Asia.
It is not just Christians who are
being persecuted, of course. So are other religious minorities. North Korea,
which is officially atheistic, will crack down on Buddhists and Christians with
equal ferocity.
However, it is generally accepted
that Christianity is now the most persecuted religion on the planet, but the
chronic under-reporting of what is happening means almost no one knows.
Christians in places such as Pakistan, northern Nigeria, Syria
and - of course - Iraq are twice over victims of being associated
with the West.
In those countries, they are seen as
agents of the West and therefore as deeply suspect. And we in the West also
associate them with Western Christianity, and therefore refuse to see them as
oppressed minorities because Christianity ruled the West for so long.
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