Raymond Ibrahim’s fundamental new book Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, has been widely reported, covered and praised and does not require an introduction, but it prompts a reflection.
The problem of Christian discrimination and persecution by Muslims is in fact two problems. Like unpunished crimes’ victims who suffer twice, for the crime and for the injustice of the criminal’s going scot-free, while the atrocities committed against Christians are unbearable enough on their own, the total indifference of the rest of the world adds to the pain.
Floods, earthquakes, natural calamities and man-induced ones like the recent collapse of a factory in Bangladesh attract lots of media coverage and offers of foreign aid, but this does not happen with what Raymond Ibrahim has rightly called “arguably the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis” and Andrew McCarthy “the great unspoken civil rights issue.. [and] scandal of our day”.
How much Western governments care about the plight of the Christians living in Muslim-majority countries can be seen by how indifferent they were to the systematic discrimination of which Pakistani Christians, during that country’s 2010 devastating floods, were victims in the distribution of aid – essential to survival – ironically donated by those very same historically Christian Western countries.
The Vatican, to its credit, was one of the few to highlight that injustice. I have never heard of a Western government – or any other, for that matter – giving aid to Pakistan on that occasion only on condition that a fair and equal distribution was guaranteed.
In Islam “charity” has a different meaning from the Christian one, being a duty extended only to other Muslims. Continue reading
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Enza Ferreri is an Italian-born, London-based Philosophy graduate, author and journalist.