The Western Betrayal of Middle Eastern Christians

Michael L.

In a recent piece entitled, Why the Media Doesn’t Cover Jihadist Attacks on Middle East Christians, American Christian of Coptic descent, Raymond Ibrahim, writes the following:

Reliable estimates indicate that anywhere from 100-200 million Christians are persecuted every year; one Christian is martyred every five minutes. Approximately 85% of this persecution occurs in Muslim majority nations. In 1900, 20% of the Middle East was Christian. Today, less than 2% is.

In one week in Egypt alone, where my Christian family emigrated, the Muslim Brotherhood launched a kristallnacht—attacking, destroying, and/or torching some 82 Christian churches (some of which were built in the 5th century, when Egypt was still a Christian-majority nation before the Islamic conquests). Al-Qaeda’s black flag has been raised atop churches. Christians—including priests, women and children—have been attacked, beheaded, and killed.

Nor is such persecution of Christians limited to Egypt. From Morocco in the west to Indonesia in the east and from Central Asia to the north to sub-Saharan Africa to the south; across thousands of miles of lands inhabited by peoples who do not share the same races, languages, cultures, and/or socio-economic conditions, millions of Christians are being persecuted and in the same exact patterns.

Muslim converts to Christianity and Christian evangelists are attacked, imprisoned, and sometimes beheaded; countless churches across the Islamic world are being banned or bombed; Christian women and children are being abducted, enslaved, raped, and/or forced to renounce their faith.

One of the great puzzles for those of us concerned about the rise of political Islam and the persecution of non-Muslims throughout the Middle East, is just why it is that western Christian institutions and individuals largely ignore that persecution?

I do not know the answer to that question, but I have always assumed that it has something to do with prevailing white liberal guilt.  What Ibrahim argues is that the western media is obligated to ignore Muslim persecution of Christians in order to maintain the Muslim-As-Victim narrative.  He writes:

Consider it this way: because the Jewish state is stronger than its Muslim neighbors, the media can easily portray Islamic terrorists as frustrated “underdogs” doing whatever they can to achieve “justice.” No matter how many rockets are shot into Tel Aviv by Hamas and Hezbollah, and no matter how anti-Israeli bloodlust is articulated in radical Islamic terms, the media will present such hostility as ironclad proof that Palestinians under Israel are so oppressed that they have no choice but to resort to terrorism.

However, if radical Muslims get a free pass when their violence is directed against those stronger than them, how does one rationalize away their violence when it is directed against those weaker than them—in this case, millions of indigenous Christians?

The media simply cannot portray radical Muslim persecution of Christians—which in essence and form amount to unprovoked pogroms—as a “land dispute” or a product of “grievance” (if anything, it is the ostracized and persecuted Christian minorities who should have grievances). And because the media cannot articulate radical Islamic attacks on Christians through the “grievance” paradigm that works so well in explaining the Arab-Israeli conflict, their main recourse is not to report on them at all.

Diaspora Jews are constantly told by our friends on the Left that the reason that Palestinian-Arabs seek to murder Jews is because the State of Israel is a violent regime that penalizes and oppresses the "indigenous Palestinian population."

If that is the case, how is it that the larger Arab-Muslim world gets to oppress the small Christian minority with absolute impunity?

If the western media were to honestly cover Muslim oppression of Christians in the Middle East it would blow the Muslim-As-Victim paradigm that the media is entrenched within and enamored of.

Whatever the reason for the western betrayal of Middle Eastern Christians, it is a clear betrayal and one that must be noted.