Islam's War On Christians

From Lee Habeeb, at National Review:

Im waiting. I am a Lebanese Christian, and I am waiting. Waiting for CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, or Time magazine to really tell the story. To finally run this headline: “War on Christians Being Waged by Islamists.” 

I’m waiting for someone in the mainstream media to admit the facts. Matt Lauer and NBC News made headlines when they declared there was a civil war in Iraq in 2006, putting them at odds with the narrative coming from the Bush White House. Islamists are persecuting and murdering Christians all over the world. 

Where in the world are Matt Lauer and NBC News? Do they not want to be at odds with the narrative coming from the current occupants of the White House, which downplays the atrocities being perpetrated by Muslims against Christians? Or to be at odds with Muslim groups like CAIR, which might accuse NBC of some kind of bias? 

It is not an accident, the persecution and mass murder of Christians by Muslims. It is not episodic. It is by design. It is part of a master plan to destroy any competing narrative about God. To bully, threaten, and intimidate Christians into submission, or mass evacuation. 

And it is not an accident that the media aren’t covering this very real war. 

If this were Christians murdering Muslims, blowing up mosques, and driving Muslims by the millions from their homes, we’d never stop hearing about that war. 

My goodness, the media didn’t mind covering the fake war on women that Democrats accused Republicans of waging, while the very real war on women being waged in Islamic countries marched on unreported. 

The media haven’t ignored the stories of Muslim violence against Christians altogether, to be fair. But they do treat the incidents as tragic isolated events perpetrated by a few nuts. They refuse to frame the mass murder and mass persecution as what they are: a war. 

Don’t ask me if I’m exaggerating the claim. Ask the victims. Ask the Christians living in places that are predominantly Muslim. Ask the Christians living in refugee camps, the Christians running for their lives in too many parts of the world. And ask the millions of American Christians who wonder why this story isn’t being framed as a war. 

But just because the media aren’t covering the war, that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. It’s actually spreading to more countries and continents as Islamists become more emboldened. Islamists are persecuting and murdering Christians not just in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and the rest of the Middle East, but also in Pakistan and Kenya and too many other countries. And for doing nothing more than having different beliefs about God. 

They are persecuting Christians to let them know that they had better keep their most deeply held beliefs to themselves. Or move. Or else. 

Here are some dispatches from the Middle East and beyond just in this past month. This one is from Reuters this past weekend: 

“Suicide bombers kill 78 Christians outside Pakistani church.” Nearly 600 people had gone to one of Pakistan’s most historic churches Sunday to do what they’ve been doing there for 130 years: worship their God. A plaque on the wall had this inscription: “This church is erected to the Glory of God and dedicated to the memory of All Saints in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ 1883.” 

Words that don’t warm the heart of your average Islamist. The attack occurred as worshipers left the service to receive free food being distributed on a lawn outside the church. That’s when the two explosions ripped through the crowd. That was no accident. It was a deliberate choice meant to desecrate a holy place and a beautiful ritual. And to let Christians know there’s no place they’re safe. Not even a house of worship. 

This isn’t the first time something like that has happened in Pakistan. Back in March, the New York Times reported that a Muslim mob swarmed through a Christian neighborhood, burning two churches and more than 100 houses. The story noted that Christians in the area were also increasingly the victims of Pakistan’s strict blasphemy laws. 

Here’s another September headline, this one from the London Telegraph: 

“Christians flee Syria village that speaks the language of Jesus.” 

Islamist rebels, the Telegraph reported, had taken control of Maaloula, one of the oldest Christian towns in the world and one of the few remaining places where the language of Christ and his disciples is still spoken — Western Aramaic. The Christians started fleeing after regime forces failed to win Maaloula back from the Islamists. 

“They shot and killed people,” one Christian man who has fled that small town told reporters. “I heard gunshots and then I saw three bodies lying in the middle of a street in the old quarters of the village. . . . 

Where is President Obama to see what has befallen us?” Another Christian resident told this story: “I saw the militants grabbing five villagers and threatening them and saying, ‘Either you convert to Islam, or you will be beheaded.’”