PERSECUTION: The “Religion of Peace” and Lambs to the Slaughter

Word association time.  If I say “Persecution” what is your reaction?  (I mean it in the Christian sense.)

Do you think of Nero, Diocletian and other Roman Emperors hostile to Christian faith?  Do you think it is something that happened long ago when people were less civilized?  If you think of it in a modern context at all, do you think of it as something that Christians (or people at least claiming to be Christians) have brought upon themselves for how they have interacted with other cultures?

What if I were to tell you about Raymond Ibrahim’s “Crucified Again” where he outlines what he builds an extremely detailed case to say that Christians in particular are Persecuted more now today than at any point in history.

Here are a few excerpts of the article speaking about his work.

“Estimates of the numbers of Christians under assault range from 100-200 million. According to one estimate, a Christian is martyred every five minutes. And most of this persecution is taking place at the hands of Muslims. Of the top fifty countries persecuting Christians, forty-two have either a Muslim majority or have sizable Muslim populations.”
…

“In Crucified Again, Ibrahim performs two invaluable functions for educating people about the new “Great Persecution,” to use the label of the Roman war against Christians. First, he documents hundreds of specific examples from across the Muslim world. By doing so, he shows the extent of the persecution, and forestalls any claims that it is a marginal problem. Additionally, Ibrahim commemorates the forgotten victims, refusing to allow their suffering to be lost because of the indifference or inattention of the media and government officials.

“Second, he provides a cogent explanation for why these attacks are concentrated in Muslim nations. In doing so, he corrects the delusional wishful thinking and apologetic spin that mars much of the current discussion of Islamic-inspired violence.”  — The article goes into a list of nations some of them allegedly friendly to the West that have aggressively persecuted Christianity.  Including some of the places we have allegedly introduced greater freedoms not so very long ago.

Ibrahim even challenges the idea that racism motivates this sort of criticism of Islam:

“The same exact patterns of persecution are evident from one end of the Islamic world to the other––in lands that do not share the same language, race, or culture––that share only Islam.” But received wisdom in the West today denies this obvious truth. The reasons for this attitude of denial would fill another book. As Ibrahim points out, the corruption of history in the academy and in elementary school textbooks have replaced historical truth with various melodramas in which Western colonialists and imperialists have oppressed Muslims.

It is a lengthy piece, but well worth reading and sharing: hoover.org