Islamic States Have Yet to Demonstrate Their Commitment to Religious Freedom.

The New Year began for Christians in the Middle East in the same manner as the last one had ended: twenty-one Egyptian Christians were murdered in a bomb attack in Alexandria, just weeks after more than fifty Iraqi Catholics had been slaughtered inside their church by Islamic terrorists. Perhaps all this is best described as the work of some crazed, gruesome optician, because while Christians in Islamic states have suffered for decades now much of the world, including and sometimes particularly the Christian world, seemed blind to what was going on. It has taken the horrors of Egypt and Iraq to clear the vision of at least some who prefer political myopia.

Let’s be clear why these innocent men, women and children were slain while at prayer in Egypt and in Iraq. Militant Muslims at best grudgingly tolerate Christianity and often see it as a foreign, western, heretical cancer that has to be removed from the body of Islam. There are eight million Christians in Egypt, in a country of 70 million Muslims. They face daily persecution, regular violence, and a frequent refusal by the police and state to provide basic protection. In Iraq there has also been a determined attempt to provoke Christians into joining the virtual civil war between Sunni, Shiite and the rest. So far and to their great credit Christians have not retaliated.

What they have done, and what Christians have done throughout the Middle East, is to leave, resulting in the evaporation of an historic community that pre-dates Islam and has worshiped as followers of Christ while those who knew Him personally were still alive. One of the horrible ironies of the Iraqi situation is that under Saddam Hussein Christians were not singled out for persecution and even enjoyed religious toleration in what was – contrary to what some would have believe – a secular state where religious fundamentalism was not only controlled but vehemently rejected.

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