The Global War on Christians in the Muslim World is the cover story in the current edition of Newsweek magazine both in the U.S. and internationally. It reads, “From one end of the Muslim world to the other, Christians are being murdered for their faith.”
The author details the situation as,
…an unrecognized battle costing thousands of lives. Christians are being killed in the Islamic world because of their religion. It is a rising genocide that ought to provoke global alarm.
The woman who wrote the story has a remarkable personal history. Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia. She escaped an arranged marriage by immigrating to the Netherlands in 1992. There she served as a member of the Dutch parliament from 2003 to 2006. Currently she is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Her 2007 autobiography, Infidel, was a New York Times bestseller. Her conclusion is,
anti-Christian violence is a major and underreported problem.
Awareness is one important tool to combat persecution. GlobalChurch.com previously posted about Christians being murdered in Nigeria. In that article we told how a relatively new terrorist group, Boko Haram, proudly boasted that its aim is to kill all Christians in the country.
ABC news carried an extensive story two years ago about severe Christian oppression. The text of that coverage remains available online.
Last month, the World Evangelical Alliance told the United Nations that Christians are
the largest single group in the world which is being denied human rights on the basis of their faith.
It’s a mistake to think that dying for faith in Christ is a tragedy confined to history books. In fact, some say that the number of martyrs today is higher than ever.
Last year, an international interfaith conference estimated that 105,000 Christians a year worldwide die for their beliefs. That was the published finding of the International Conference on Inter-religious dialogue between Christians, Jews and Muslims.
This crisis extends well beyond the Islamic world to other places of oppression like North Korea. David C Cook is active in most of these hotspots. We are neither Christian militants nor political activists. Our role is to support the besieged Church, providing resources it cannot get any other way.
The values of freedom of religion, freedom of conscience and tolerance do not exist in many nations. In those places Cook works tirelessly and creatively to supply both established and underground churches with Bible study, counseling and other materials they request.
We are currently helping Arabic- and Farsi-speaking believers with a wide range and large quantities of these resources. We have supported persecuted Christians this way for years and are increasing our efforts, urging all Christians to stand with fellow believers. Revenge is not the answer nor is thinking that these atrocities will simply go away. There are practical tactics to help those who are isolated and abused for following Christ. Perhaps the best way is to raise public awareness by calling attention to this crisis. You can forward this article to friends and public officials. In addition, you can support efforts like ours to provide materials to the persecuted Church, materials that ought to be freely and readily available but are not.
The top photo is from the Newsweek article with a caption that reads, “At least 13 people were killed and 140 injured on March 8, 2011, when participants in a large Christian demonstration in a Cairo slum were attacked by residents of a surrounding neighborhood.” Photo credited to Mohamed Omar / EPA-Landov.
