Persecution

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Seeing patterns here? ISIS keeps smashing some priceless artifacts and selling others

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The tragic bottom line these days is that it is rarely news when the Islamic State blows stuff up -- including priceless antiquities that predate the rise of Islam.

This fact of life has become business as usual, to the point that many mainstream journalists no longer feel the need to include material in their reports noting why this is taking place. This is tragic and, frankly, an affront to the vast majority of the world's Muslims. This is yet another classic case of journalists needing to cover the doctrinal details of what ISIS believes -- it's take on Islamic doctrine and history -- in order to let readers understand that this is not the only or even the mainstream Islamic point of view.

Once this hard work is done, journalists can move on to another topic looming in the background: Why do Islamic State radicals destroy some parts of the region's past, while allowing others to be sold off to collectors? In other words, does ISIS hate all parts of the ancient past equally?

The latest news is that this battle as moved to Egypt, with some militants there pledging allegiance to the ISIS caliphate. Does this have anything to do with Islam? The Washington Post simply does not want to go there:

CAIRO -- Militants with explosives battled Egyptian security forces outside the famed ancient Karnak temple in Luxor on Wednesday, injuring at least four people in an attempt to strike another blow on Egypt’s fragile tourism industry.


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Crux profiles martyrs who don't fit the typical categories

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Many times this blog has mourned the lack of decent coverage on the persecution religious minorities, which should be the No. 1 religion story in the world every year. The numbers of people dying for their faith -- or for stands mandated by their faith (and there is a difference) -- is at ever increasing levels according to the latest Pew research.

Which is why it was nice to see Crux’s package this past Sunday on Christianity’s new martyrs in Colombia. Assembled by veteran reporter John L. Allen (who was down that way for beatification ceremonies in El Salvador for Archbishop Oscar Romero), it concentrated on a part of the world that has gotten less attention than, say, the Middle East in terms of human suffering. Allen, of course, is the author of the book "The Global War on Christians: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Anti-Christian Persecution."

Allen begins with:

BOGOTÁ, Colombia -- Anti-Christian persecution is unquestionably a premier human rights challenge in the early 21st century. It’s happening not just in the Middle East but around the world, including nations where Christians are a strong majority.
Compassionate concern over that stark reality should not short-circuit legitimate debate over the positions some Christians take on social and political issues. And there is no suggestion here that Christians have a monopoly on pain, because plenty of other groups are suffering, too.
Yet the numbers nevertheless are eye-popping. Estimates vary, but even the low-end guess for the number of Christians killed each year for motives related to the faith works out to one every day.
Given the scale of this global horror, it’s sometimes easy to forget that behind the statistics are flesh-and-blood people whose experience is no less intensely personal for being part of a broader pattern.
Two encounters in Colombia last week — where a civil war has dragged on for a half-century and left 220,000 people dead, including scores of new Christian martyrs — drive that point home.

Allen said the carnage is so bad in Colombia, it's become a "factory" for martyrs.


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Christ and Russia: Newsweek offers only a partial picture of a religious trend

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"Russian Communists are turning to Christ," Newsweek trumpets, as if the magazine has discovered the wheel. It's almost old enough to deserve one of our "Got News?" logos.

Almost. The article does have a few things going for it -- starting with the first three strong paragraphs:

What do Vladimir Lenin, founder of the officially atheist Soviet Union, and Jesus Christ have in common? Not much, one would think. Yet according to Gennady Zyuganov, the veteran leader of Russia's modern-day Communist Party, both men sought to "save humanity" with a message of "love, friendship, and brotherhood".
Speaking in Moscow in front of a crowd of red-flag-waving supporters on the 145th anniversary of Lenin's birth late last month, Zyuganov also declared that the Soviet Union was an attempt to establish "God's Kingdom on Earth".
Had he heard that speech, Lenin would likely have turned over in the Red Square mausoleum, where his embalmed corpse has been on public display for the past 91 years. After all, some 200,000 members of the clergy were murdered during the first two decades of the Soviet era, according to a 1995 Kremlin committee report, while millions of other Christians were persecuted for their faith.

The story then traces reactions to Zyuganov's recent speech in Red Square. Some critics "pointed out the apparent contradictions inherent in his mingling of communist and Christian beliefs." Other critics regard Zyuganov's  talk a "cynical ploy" to gain support from party members and Eastern Orthodox Christians alike. And Newsweek itself says he is a "former Soviet 'agitation and propaganda' official."

Newsweek then reports some intriguing cross-fertilization between church and state. It says Russian President Vladimir Putin tries to portray himself as a defender of "Orthodox Christian values." It notes that a priest singing a "popular Soviet-era song" went viral. And it says church motifs have often served the state, such as religious icons of Josef Stalin -- and the decision to embalm Lenin's body for a mausoleum in Red Square.

Adds the article:


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New persecution in Sudan: Religion News Service report leads mainstream media

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"Courage is contagious," Billy Graham has said. "When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened."

Whether from courage or just old-school nose for news, the Religion News Service deserves thanks and applause for its Wednesday story on a new round of persecution in Sudan.

Remember Meriam Yayha Ibrahim, the Sudanese woman who was jailed and threatened with death last year? Well, something like that is happening again: The government there has jailed two pastors, charging them with spying and, according to RNS, with "assault on religious belief."

In a way, it's even worse this time around. Ibrahim was accused of "apostasy," deserting the Islamic faith. Her counter-argument was that her mother raised her as a Christian and she never converted to the faith of her father. She won her case and was released in a month, then emigrated to the United States.

In the current case, neither the Rev. Michael Yat nor the Rev. Peter Yein Reith is accused of leaving Islam. At bottom, their arrests stem from the creation of South Sudan in 2011 after a long, brutal civil war. Both ministers are members of the South Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church.

As RNS tells it:

Yat was arrested last year after visiting the Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church’s Bahri congregation in Khartoum, according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a charity that works on behalf of persecuted Christians.
The congregation had resisted the takeover of the church by a Muslim businessman, who had demolished part of the worship center.
In December, police beat and arrested 38 Christians for worshipping in the church.
With Yat’s arrest, South Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church sent Reith with a letter to the authorities to demand his release. He was arrested on Jan. 11.

RNS adds that since the creation of South Sudan, the northern nation "has forced out all foreign missionaries, raided churches and arrested and interrogated Christians on grounds that they belonged to South Sudan." So Yat's and Reith's case is an apparent blend of governmental paranoia and Sudan's militant form of Islam.


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Ex-Muslims: The Guardian produces long in-depth report, yet leaves much unsaid

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A furtive, fearful group -- Muslim unbelievers -- gets a massive, 3,200-word spotlight in The Guardian, with however mixed effectiveness. The indepth details the plight of people who are rejected by their families and communities, and sometimes threatened with death.

“If someone found out where I lived,” one Sulaiman Vali says, “they could burn my house down.” A woman, who gives only the pseudonym of Nasreen, adds that "it's almost normal now to get threats." And when a Kenya-born Muslim abandoned his faith, one of his brothers told him that "the penalty sharia law stipulates for apostasy is capital punishment," the Guardian says.

The process of radicalization has been studied extensively, the newspaper says, but it adds that those who leave Islam itself are hardly noticed:

Although it is fraught with human drama – existential crisis, philosophical doubt, family rupture, violent threats, communal expulsion, depression, and all manner of other problems – the apostate’s journey elicits remarkably little media interest or civic concern.
No one knows what numbers are involved, few understand the psychological difficulties individuals confront, or the social pressures they are compelled to resist. As with many other areas of communal discourse, insiders are reluctant to talk about it, and outsiders are either too incurious or sensitive to ask.

Actually, the Guardian does get a rough estimate of numbers with the Council of ex-Muslims of Britain, which says it advocates for some 350 people a year. The newspaper also interviews the leader of Faith to Faithless, a joint voice for former believers.

Although the Guardian doesn't try to say that every Muslim would kill someone who left the faith, it does bring up the hacking murder of a secular blogger in Bangladesh last week, the third in that nation thus far this year. "And in an era in which British Islamic extremists travel thousands of miles to kill those they deem unbelievers, an apostate’s concern for his or her security at home is perhaps understandable."

The the newspaper gives lots of room to the fears and accusations of its interviewees -- some of them fresh insights, some rather stale. Much of them -- a whopping 17 paragraphs! -- come from Nasreen, probably because she did an anthropological dissertation on "the ex-Muslim reality" for the University of London.


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Turkey and that 'genocide' -- Armenian anger, Erdogan's denial, Obama's silence

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Turkey and that 'genocide' -- Armenian anger, Erdogan's denial, Obama's silence

The British tabloids are not known for nuance and this Daily Mail piece on Turkey's continued denial that "genocide" accurately describes what happened to its Armenian population in the early 20th century -- an event officially commemorated this week -- is no exception.

"Genocide of the Christians: The blood-soaked depravity exceeded even today's atrocities by Islamic State -- now, 100 years on Turkey faces global disgust at its refusal to admit butchering over a MILLION Armenians," screamed the Mail's wordy online headline.

No beating around the bush here, is there? American-style journalistic even-handedness? Forget about it. Hyperbole? For sure.

"Global disgust" is a bit much when the criticism appears limited to Western sources. Worse than the Islamic State? Pardon me if I decline to compare an historical atrocity with an ongoing one. (Though I will say that the Daily Mail piece fails to note that while Armenians are of course Christians, they're generally Orthodox Christians. That detail hints at historical context you can't expect all readers to know.)

You could argue that citing a story's sensationalist tabloid treatment is manipulative. I'll cede that. But then there's Pope Francis and the European Union. Both also found it necessary in recent days to speak out on what they unequivocally view to be a clear case of genocide -- the 1915 massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks, the precursors to today's Turkish republic. Germany, home to a Turkish immigrant population estimated at more than 3 million, has signaled it, too -- in addition to its stand within the EU -- will begin to apply the term "genocide" to this historical tragedy.

Unsurprisingly, the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has reacted strongly to all this.


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Concerning other little-known religious 'genocides' on the edges of the news

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Concerning other little-known religious 'genocides' on the edges of the news

Pope Francis infuriated the government of Turkey by using the word “genocide” leading up to April 24, the 100th anniversary of the start of the mass murder of as many as 1.5 million Armenians in what was then the Ottoman Empire. That atrocity, amid the chaos and rivalries of World War One, is often regarded as the forerunner and inspiration for Nazi efforts to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

In the April 15 issue of The Christian Century, Baylor University historian Philip Jenkins reports on another 2015 centennial that major media have ignored -- the “Sayfo” (“sword” year) memorialized by Christian Assyrians. Among other events, historians will examine this at the Free University of Berlin June 24-28. During that dying era of the empire with its historic Muslim Caliphate, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Greeks were also killed during the “Pontic” ethnic cleansing.

The hatred toward all three Christian groups a century ago finds unnerving echoes in current attacks by Muslim fanatics in the Mideast and Africa, most recently the video beheadings of Ethiopian Christians in Libya. Assyrians are also  victimized once again, now by ISIS under its purported restoration of the Caliphate in Syria and Iraq. The Assyrians’ story is part of the over-all emptying out of Christianity across the Mideast.


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AP covers basics on ISIS killing Ethiopian Christians -- but that Baltimore Sun headline?

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When major international stories break -- such as the 29-minute video claiming to show the Islamic State executions of Ethiopian Christian laborers -- it's normal for elite organizations to be able to respond relatively quickly with quality work. That is, if the editors have the desire to do so.

Journalists deserve praise when they get the job done. That was the purpose of my quick post noting the early New York Times story by veteran David Kirkpatrick, in particular for his clear presentation of the ISIS language that made it impossible to duck the religious content of this latest blood-soaked media op.

In the end, that led me to a strong analysis quote from John L. Allen, Jr., of Crux about the "silver lining," if there is one, in the rise of ISIS. I repeat the key language here because I think it was brave of him to be blunt about the blind spot that has affected the actions of many American elites -- think journalists and diplomats, primarily -- when it comes to denying the importance of stories about the persecution of Christian minorities around the world.

The point is not that Christians deserve special privileges, or that they’re the only ones at risk. It’s rather that for a long time, the threats they face couldn’t penetrate Western consciousness, where the typical American or European is more accustomed to thinking of Christians as the authors of religious persecution rather than its victims.

Now, most Americans in ordinary zip codes read newspapers and websites that depend on wire-service copy for this kind of report, information that may run a news cycle or even two behind the top global newsrooms (or international papers, in general). Thus, it is crucial to take a look at what moves on the Associated Press.

In this case, AP got the job done. But wait to see the headline that The Baltimore Sun editors went with on a story well inside the newspaper.


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ISIS silver lining: Can our elites (journalists included) still deny persecution of Christians?

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If you follow issues of human rights and religious freedom abroad, you will surely recall the recent incident in which the Islamic State released that video showing the execution of 20 Egyptian Coptic believers and one Ghanian man whose identity is harder to pin down. All have been declared martyrs for the faith.

Readers may also recall that there was a bit of controversy when the public statement about this tragedy released by the White House, speaking for President Barack Obama, merely condemned the "despicable and cowardly murder of twenty-one Egyptian citizens in Libya by ISIL-affiliated terrorists. We offer our condolences to the families of the victims and our support to the Egyptian government and people as they grieve for their fellow citizens."

Citizens? The Islamic State executions had been very specific in saying that their victims were chosen because of their connection to "crusaders," the "hostile Egyptian church" and the "Nation of the Cross."

Citizens?

Now there is this new vision of martyrdom, as noted in quite a few mainstream reports today. This material comes from the veteran correspondent David Kirkpatrick of The New York Times foreign staff, who is known for "getting religion" in the world around him:

The Islamic State released a video on Sunday that appears to show fighters from affiliates in southern and eastern Libya executing dozens of Ethiopian Christians, some by beheading and others by shooting.


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