Ayaan Hirsi Ali: The Global War on Christians in the Muslim World
THE DAILY BEAST: From one end of the muslim world to the other, Christians are being murdered for their faith.

We hear so often about Muslims as victims of abuse in the West and combatants in the Arab Spring’s fight against tyranny. But, in fact, a wholly different kind of war is underway—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 portrayal of Muslims as victims or heroes is at best partially accurate. In recent years the violent oppression of Christian minorities has become the norm in Muslim-majority nations stretching from West Africa and the Middle East to South Asia and Oceania. In some countries it is governments and their agents that have burned churches and imprisoned parishioners. In others, rebel groups and vigilantes have taken matters into their own hands, murdering Christians and driving them from regions where their roots go back centuries.

The media’s reticence on the subject no doubt has several sources. One may be fear of provoking additional violence. Another is most likely the influence of lobbying groups such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation—a kind of United Nations of Islam centered in Saudi Arabia—and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Over the past decade, these and similar groups have been remarkably successful in persuading leading public figures and journalists in the West to think of each and every example of perceived anti-Muslim discrimination as an expression of a systematic and sinister derangement called “Islamophobia”—a term that is meant to elicit the same moral disapproval as xenophobia or homophobia.

But a fair-minded assessment of recent events and trends leads to the conclusion that the scale and severity of Islamophobia pales in comparison with the bloody Christophobia currently coursing through Muslim-majority nations from one end of the globe to the other. The conspiracy of silence surrounding this violent expression of religious intolerance has to stop. Nothing less than the fate of Christianity—and ultimately of all religious minorities—in the Islamic world is at stake.

From blasphemy laws to brutal murders to bombings to mutilations and the burning of holy sites, Christians in so many nations live in fear. In Nigeria many have suffered all of these forms of persecution. The nation has the largest Christian minority (40 percent) in proportion to its population (160 million) of any majority-Muslim country. For years, Muslims and Christians in Nigeria have lived on the edge of civil war. Islamist radicals provoke much if not most of the tension. The newest such organization is an outfit that calls itself Boko Haram, which means “Western education is sacrilege.” Its aim is to establish Sharia in Nigeria. To this end it has stated that it will kill all Christians in the country. » | Ayaan Hirsi Ali | Monday, February 06, 2012

Manifestation contre la christianophobie
LE FIGARO: Plus d'un millier de fondamentalistes chrétiens ont manifesté ce samedi à Paris contre la "christianophobie" incarnée selon eux par la pièce de théâtre italienne jouée dans la capitale "Sur le concept du visage du fils de Dieu" qu'ils jugent blasphématoire.

"Nous sommes là pour dénoncer la christianophobie au sens large et nous allons mettre un accent particulier sur le spectacle blasphématoire qui se joue en ce moment", a dit Alain Escada, secrétaire général de l'institut Civitas, proche du mouvement de la Fraternité Saint-Pie X fondée par l'intégriste Mgr Lefebvre.

Derrière une banderole proclamant "La France est chrétienne et doit le rester", le cortège de plus d'un millier de personnes - 5.000 selon Civitas - a défilé dans le centre de la capitale aux cris de "christianophobie, ça suffit!". Parmi les manifestants, des prêtres en soutane et des croyants de tous âges exhibant crucifix et drapeaux du Sacré coeur, chantant et priant. » | AFP | samedi 29 octobre 2011

Inside Story - The Plight of 'Persecuted' Christians
Is the Pope's Christmas address a religious message of support or a political stand?

Without Christianity, Our Society Is Doomed
THE TELEGRAPH: Canon Michael Ainsworth, a priest and colleague of mine just a couple of miles from my rectory in the City of London, was recently attacked in his churchyard by three youths. Michael suffered two black eyes, cuts and bruises. He was taken into hospital and his wife Janina, also a priest, said: "It's obvious that the attack on Michael does contain a religious element." It certainly is obvious: his attackers shouted, "You f------ priest!" as they beat him up.

This is the second time that Michael's church has been attacked. After the Good Friday service last year, louts threw bricks through the windows. A parishioner, Susan Crocker, said: "It's not out of the blue - it's a recurrent problem."

Well, it's clear that the yobs who attacked Michael were Muslims. To their credit, the local Muslim leaders have tacitly admitted this by publicly deploring the crime. So why were the police, and much of the media, so vague as to call these thugs "Asians"? If I smashed the windows of a Brick Lane curry house and gave the manager two black eyes, you can be sure the police and the papers wouldn't describe me as a "European".

Of course the authorities excuse their evasiveness by saying it's to preserve good racial and community relationships, forgetting that it was Michael's attackers who first damaged these relationships and that appeasement always encourages worse violence in the long run.

This attack was one small example of the persecution being endured by the Church worldwide. On four continents Islamic militants are attacking and sometimes murdering Christians and burning down churches. Why do the archbishops and bishops not lead mass Christian demonstrations against these atrocities? Instead, we have to observe the filigree intelligence of the Archbishop of Canterbury as it operates on the precise relation between English law and some "unavoidable" accommodation with sharia. He, with his whole hierarchy, strains at gnats and swallows camels.

Meanwhile, a Nigerian archbishop said that Dr Williams's words hardly made things better for Christians persecuted under sharia in his country. "Their lives," he said, "are at the very least unbearable." If Dr Williams is so intelligent, shouldn't he have known beforehand that his remarks would only give encouragement to the fanatics? If I tried to walk down the main street in Riyadh wearing my clerical collar, the religious police would throw me into jail. In Britain we allow Muslims to build huge mosques in prominent places such as Regent's Park. What does this say about the relationship between Christianity and Islam worldwide? Without Christianity, our society is doomed >>> By Peter Mullen | 21/03/2008

THE TELEGRAPH:
Christianophobia comes to the East End By Damian Thompson

Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)

’Christophobia’ / ‘Christianophobia’
I should like to draw my visitors’ attention to the fact that this concept of ‘Christianophobia’ was first raised, I believe, in my book, ‘The Dawning of a New Dark Age’ as ‘Christophobia’. The book was published in 2003. Not as stated here, in 2004. The word is slightly different, but the concept is the same. I am proud to be able to state that I believe I used it first. You will find the word on page 145 of my book. Needless to say, I have contacted 'europe4christ' to draw this to their attention in the hope of getting this error corrected.

THE TELEGRAPH: British Christian traditions are being threatened by "Christianophobia" created by a "politically correct brigade", a Tory MP has warned.

Mark Pritchard, MP, who is leading a parliamentary debate on the issue today, said that he feared that Christianity could be hijacked by extremists if mainstream political parties fail to support this country's Christian tradition. How should we tackle 'Christianophobia'? >>>

Mark Alexander (Hardback)
Mark Alexander (Paperback)