Christianity, Islam, and Asia Bibi

One of my daily activities is to search for information regarding Asia Bibi, the Pakistani woman sentenced to death under Pakistan's blasphemy laws. Recently I came across three articles that dealt with the growing persecution of Christians at the hands of Muslims.

The first article came from CNN. It was written by Akbar Ahmed and John Bryson Chane. The authors express their concern about the growing persecution of Christians in Islamic countries.

I have mixed feelings about the article. On the one hand, it is gratifying to see two members of the self-styled intellectual community - Akbar Ahmed is a professor at American University, and Chane is a bishop of the Episcopal Church - having the courage to bring up this persecution. Much of the secular media is deeply vested in the notion of rampant "Islamophobia", and it takes courage to contradict that narrative.

But on the other hand, the authors have made several statements that indicate an alarming degree of isolation from the real world. Here is the first one:

Extremist Muslims feel that Islam is under siege by the West and seek to lash out at Christians, seeing an attack on Christians in their countries effectively as an attack on Israelis, U.S. troops in Iraq or the intelligence agencies behind U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan.

To quote George Orwell: only an intellectual could believe that. Such a view ignores hundreds of years of history in order to fit recent events into modern political correctness.

Almost from the beginning Islam has had its share of leaders that sought to defend/expand Islam's influence militarily. The Prophet himself led a force of 300 Muslims in the Battle of Bedr in March 624 AD against an army from Mecca, which was seeking to stop raids on caravans by Muslims. After defeating the army from Mecca, Mohammad went on to begin expelling Jews from Medina. A year later, after his Muslim army lost to another force from Mecca and he was forced to flee, Mohammed's views against Jews hardened (he blamed them for his defeat).

Umar (Omar) the 2nd Caliphate sent Muslim armies against Syria and Palestine, and in 637 AD the armies of Byzantium lost control of Jerusalem to Islam. Afterwards, the armies of Islam moved into Europe. Scarcely 100 years after the death of Mohammad the armies of Islam reached the French city of Tours. During the Battle of Tours Charles Martel defeated the Muslim armies, who were eventually driven out of Europe. There are other examples of Muslim armies conquering cities that refused to submit to Islam. The notion that Muslims are being goaded into action by recent military moves of the US and Israel has no basis in history.

Another quote from the article is even more disturbing:

Muslims will say that they cannot be a good Muslim without first being a good Jew and a good Christian.

This is wishful thinking at its worst. In all of my time in Tanzania and America, not once did I ever encounter a Muslim that believed that a good Muslim must first be "a good Jew and a good Christian". Muslims were reserved about Jesus (although none of them believed that He worked miracles, despite the authors' claims to the contrary). They did ascribe all sorts of evils to Christianity, including slavery, pornography, and imperialism. Jews were universally despised: not once did any Muslim express anything except contempt and hatred for Jews.

In fact, the authors seem mainly worried about the effect that Muslim persecution of Christians will have on the dialogue between Islam and Christianity. Having seen some of these dialogues (which are in reality boring monologues about "tolerance" and other politically correct topics), it is not something I will mourn.

The second article was written by Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University and a Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent for the New York Times. In his article he points out that Christians are suffering persecution in Communist countries as well as Islamic ones. In a refreshingly crisp and clear style he lists some of the dangerous places in the world for Christians.

Brinkley's article is not without flaws. He suggests that one reason Christians might be suffering persecution because they "aggressively proselytize". How Christians can aggressively proselytize while hiding for their lives is a mystery. But overall, Brinkley's article is far better than the CNN one.

But the best article may have been from Stan Guthrie. In it he notes the unblinkered hatred driving Osama bin Laden and other Islamic extremists. This hatred is usually ignored or glossed over by the secular media (it is rare to find an article in the secular media that does not rail against the Iraq War or the state of Israel or "Islamophobia" when talking about Islamic extremism). It is a curious omission: it would be like historians writing about the Holocaust or the Ku Klux Klan, yet avoiding any mention of antisemitism or racism. Yet this hatred is key to understanding why Islamic extremism is growing. Fretting about "interfaith dialogue" or "aggressive proselytizing" is a poor substitute for facing facts.

I am thankful for independent media, and for groups like The Voice of the Martyrs. Because of their work, persecuted Christians are held up in prayer by Christians worldwide. It also forces the secular media to deal with stories they would rather not cover in the first place. My opinion is that the secular media views Islam as a rival to Christianity and Judaism (which they hate), and is willing to overlook Islamic extremism if it means striking a blow against Christians and Jews. In the Information Age they cannot always get away with that.