Post 124--Christian Genocide b y ISIS

It is generally recognized in the media that Christians are having a hard time of it in pretty well all Muslim-dominated countries, whether in Asia, Africa or Europe. I have drawn attention to this in several posts, the latest being number 122. I have also written about that more voluminously in another blog I operate under the name “ChristianMuslimWorld.”  

Now that claim may smell like Islamophobia to some, but that derisive term is over-used to cover almost anything that is less than laudatory with respect to Islam.  It means “fear of Islam,” which is a far cry from disagreement with Islam. I have high respect for orthodox Islam and for its adherents, but I disagree with them. If you want to know what exactly that translates into, I refer you to my series Studies in Christian-Muslim Relations on my website  < www.SocialTheology.com/Islamica >. Even Muslims have praised me for the spirit pervading that series. Disagreement? Yes.  Phobia? No, not one bit. So, let’s not have that misnomer stand in the way of the rest of this post. 

Today I discuss not mere Muslim persecution of Christians, but genocide. According to one edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, it means “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political or cultural group,” with the last one, I take it, including religious groups.  It is much more specific than the more general term “persecution.” While the latter is common place throughout the Muslim world, genocide is more local and currently widely applied especially to ISIS, who are widely recognized to consciously and officially be practicing Christian genocide.

You need details of this recognition?  Carl Anderson, the CEO of the Knights of Columbus and a New York Times bestselling author, together with  Archbishop Bashar Warda, a Chaldean Catholic Archbishop in Iraq (A&W), wrote an article, “ISIS perpetrates genocide against Christians” (Vancouver Sun, Aug. 5, 2016, p. A11) that is fully worth a serious read. They write:

Based on overwhelming evidence, Christians have been included in genocide designations by the European Parliament, the US State Department, the US Congress, parliaments and officials of a number of European governments, as well as the Iraqi cabinet and the Kurdish Regional Government.    

In addition, according to Barnabas Aid, certain members of the British House of Lords urged their Prime Minister some months ago that, “jihadist attacks on  Christians and other religions in the Middle East should be classified as genocide.”  In other words, the UK Government hesitated to join the authorities in the paragraph above. And they are not the only ones. The same Barnabas report states that “The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has said that she ‘stands ready’ to begin a genocide enquiry but needs an order from the UN Security Council.”  So, the UN also hesitates. Given its membership, that should be no surprise to anyone.

But coming closer to home, our own Canadian Government also has rejected the call to declare a genocide on the part of ISIS. On June 14, 2016, the House of Commons defeated a motion (166 vs 139) to declare that present-day atrocities by ISIS against religious minorities in Syria and Iraq constitute genocide.

 A&W advocate that Canada should take leadership on the question of genocide by ISIS, but it is following the lead of the UN. Their argument against the genocide issue turns on a definition of a tax Islam calls “jizya”, a tax Christians and others have historically paid to Muslim rulers for protection instead of the traditional “convert or die” ultimatum. However, according to A&W, ISIS has widened the definition of this protection so that it includes even “kidnapping, rape and confiscation,” all actions from which that tax is supposed to protect them. In fact, a former ISIS leader “publicly revoked any special treatment of Christians years ago.”  Its official magazine, Dabiq, has threatened to “conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women.” 

The result of all this violence? A&W tell us that the number of Christians in Iraq “has plummeted by nearly 90 percent, Syria’s by almost 70 per cent. “In the land where it first took root, Christianity could be stamped out entirely—within our lifetime.”  Such threats and actions hardly represent the preferential treatment Jizya is supposed to offer, as A&W put it.

And so I strongly support the call of A&W and the campaign being waged by Barnabas Aid for both Canada and the UN to become realistic. A&W urge, “It is time for both Canada and the UN to join the international consensus, supported by a majority of the Canadian people at a rate of two to one in our recent K of C-Leger poll.” As a Canadian I will be extremely embarrassed if our Government were to renege on this life-and-death issue for thousands of people. If there is no change at this front, I will definitely campaign against the Federal Government on basis of this offensive indifference during any future election. I will help arouse the Christian community against them in my writings. It is one more spike in the coffin of death with which the politicians of almost all parties are saddling our country, the others being easy abortion and easy assisted suicide along with the more general ones of poverty and injustice.

Though I am always wary of one-issue politics, the matter of life and death trumps all other issues in importance along with poverty and injustice.  Come to think of it, when you lump these “few” issues together, you’re really talking a pretty wide umbrella of issues that can hardly be considered “single-issue” stuff. I am aware this could leave me a political orphan without a party to vote for. I may be left to vote for the least of all evils, a position that an increasing number of Canadian Christians find themselves in.

Though I drift in this post from the specific issue of genocide of Christians to more general politics, what I want you to take away from it is first of all the genocide issue. That’s my issue for today.  It is more than an “issue” for thousands of Christians in the Middle East; for them it is indeed literally an issue of life and death that goes far beyond mere politics. We need to press the Government of Canada to recognize and declare ISIS genocide of Middle Eastern Christians and others of various persuasions. Does the pretty face of our current PM mask an attitude of political indifference to the lot of the most vulnerable and, thus, of an underlying cruelty? I leave the answer to you.                  

Post 77-- Canadian Muslims and Refugees

These days we all talk about refugees, all of us, no matter our status, profession or religion.  The media are full of it, not the least the Vancouver Sun (VS). So are churches, including the two with which I associate, the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) and First Baptist Church (FBC), both of Vancouver. The former happens to be located right next to the world’s first refugee welcoming centre of its kind on Victoria Drive and is planning to be deeply involved in the centre’s programme, including prodding its fellow CRC congregations to sponsor refugees. FBC is in the early stage of sponsoring, not the first time for her.

But Christians are not the only ones participating in this crisis.  Muslims are as well, Canadian Muslims, that is. More specifically for our purpose here,  BC Muslims.  Douglas Todd of the VS covered the subject nicely in his “BC Muslims fear ‘backlash’” (Nov. 23, 2015, p. A3). According to his article, David Ali, spokesman for the BC Muslim Association, emphasizes the importance of the safety and security of Canadians as a prior concern, of all Canadians, not just Muslims. “It’s our No. 1 priority,” says Ali.  “If Canadian officials feel any possible refugee is suspect … they must do due diligence.”  In France, two suspects involved in the recent Paris bombing arrived in the guise of refugees. Any such happening in Canada would create a backlash for all Muslims. Ali says his people don’t want such people to cause problems for Canadian Muslims.  Apart from entertaining such fears, more positively, the 74,000 Muslims in Metro are collecting funds to sponsor refugees.

Those fears are not merely alarmist and Ali being Muslim, they can hardly be dubbed Islamophobic!  Many Canadians express them. Barry Cartwright, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University, thinks Ali’s concern is “well placed, since… it’s impossible to properly screen 25,000 refugees…in a couple of months.”  There’s no way, Cartwright argues, to “do criminal and police checks in a region where there are basically no recognized police departments.”  Where the do exist, they will be so corrupt that any "report" from them is at best suspect. The Federal Government seems to have acknowledged that difficulty by having extended the deadline to an indefinite one well into 2016.

So, Canada’s Muslims appear as concerned about the security issues involved in the refugee movement as are the rest of us, especially as it was first presented as a hasty procedure in which few people had any confidence. After all, militants have killed more Muslims all told than Christians, simply because there are more Muslims where militants operate, whether in the Middle East or in Nigeria’s far north. They have an equal stake in it with the rest of us. It can be even argued that they have more of a stake in it, for if things go wrong and militants pop out of the refugee woodworks, surely there will be a backlash against Canadian Muslims. Of course, they will have no stomach for that. 

But there is another stake they have in all of this: the missionary one.  Various Muslim world leaders have threatened the West that they will overcome the West through higher birthrate and the movement of Muslim peoples into the West. Various estimates have already forecast that Western Europe will in the foreseeable future be overrun by Muslims, not by the sword but by birth and immigration. It is not politically correct to agree with such predictions, but it is obvious, especially in view of the low birthrates among European Caucasians. And though the average Muslim may not be that concerned with these issues, there are leaders in the background who are consciously pushing the Muslim community towards that goal. Anyone who shrugs her shoulders at such suggestions is not doing herself or her compatriots a favour. 

Being a Christian missionary myself, I understand that “instinct.” There is nothing sinister about it and I do not deny them that missionary right. From their point of view, it is the best that can happen to the West.  Muslims are just more serious about their mission than Westerners are and will use all the powers at their disposal to advance it, including political and economic. And don’t kid yourself into thinking Canadian Muslims do not share that instinct.  Every Muslim allowed into Canada represents one tiny step towards that missionary goal. Every time the Federal Government accepts a Muslim refugee, it blindly contributes towards the achievement of that Muslim goal.  It is in plain denial. 

The above paragraph is not an argument for rejecting Muslim refugees, but it is an argument for extra carefulness. It is not an argument against compassion for Muslim refugees. Those that arrive should be embraced with compassion. But it is an argument for Canadian Christians to wake up and fight the ongoing legal and cultural struggles that are taking place against Christians by the secular powers in our own society, often behind the scenes in the courts, including fake “human rights” tribunals, where most people don’t notice. It is organizations like the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC) and the Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA) who stand in the breach on our behalf. Follow them on the internet and support them.  And, I strongly  plead for Christian Canadians to sponsor fellow Christians, the ones who have suffered much more than their Muslim compatriots at the hands of these same Muslims throughout much of the Middle East for decades before anyone  even heard of refugees.  If this is interpreted as Islamophobia, so be it; Islamophobia at its best and most constructive for the future.