Over 200 million
Christians suffer
under persecution
all around the
world. It is one of
the worst human rights violations
of our time, yet the mainstream
media seems oblivious to it. The
few high-profile cases that are
reported, such as the murder of the
Catholic Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s
minorities minister who was killed
by Islamic extremists for opposing
the country’s anti-blasphemy laws,
aren’t even the tip of the iceberg.
For decades the persecution of
Christians has been largely ignored by
the British media that still suffers from
‘white man’s guilt’ and sees Christians
outside Europe and America as a relic
from colonial times. And the general
public seems to think that the last
time Christians were persecuted was
when they were thrown to the lions
during the Roman rule.
Christianophobia: A Faith Under Attack
looks at the persecution of Christians
today in Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria,
Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia, India,
Burma, China, Vietnam, North
Korea, Israel and Palestine, and also
at Christians in Cuba, Venezuela,
Belarus, Sri Lanka, Laos and Sudan.
And the truth seems incontestable –
Christians are being persecuted by
atheist, Buddhist, Muslim and Hindu
governments and by extremists
all around the world – more than
followers of any other religion.
Rising awareness after 9/11
Before 9/11 most Europeans saw
religion as a spent force. Now many
are in danger of seeing only its
negative potency, and the world
as a struggle between Islam, other
‘irrational’ religious forces and the
‘rational’ West.
Shortt’s account of the persecution
of Coptic Christians highlights what
is really taking place in Egypt. The
nation isn’t being liberated but
Islamists are winning the battle for
power, and the Copts are paying for
the consequences. But the persecution
of Copts didn’t begin yesterday,
and Shortt traces the persecution of
Copts back to the 1970s when Egypt
began to be influenced by the Salafist
Wahhabi ideology from Saudi Arabia.
The perpetrators of 7/7 were allowed
to practice their religion openly in
Britain but there is scarcely a single
country in the Muslim world from
Morocco to Pakistan where Christians
are fully free to worship without
harassment. And, over half of the
Christians have now left the Middle
East. These are some of the oldest
Christian communities in the world,
yet their attackers reject their right to
live there.
But Shortt reminds that it is
oversimplifying the reality to see this
as a battle between Islamic extremists
and the West.
‘It’s not part of the story’
Shortt sees the Enlightenment
narrative that introduced the idea that
religion is the main cause for conflicts,
framing all religions as irrational
sources of violent behaviour, as one
of the reasons why the persecution
of Christians goes unreported. When
a particular body of believers is
targeted, sympathy is withheld on the
basis that the victims would inflict
comparable aggression against others,
were they able to do so.
In the case of Christians, this is
compounded by the association over
the past two centuries of Christianity
with Western imperialism and ‘divide
and rule’ policies. That’s why even
the mass killings of Christians are
often reported as ‘sectarian violence’
or ‘ethnic clashes’, expressions which
conceal the religious element and
suppress the victimhood of Christians.
Another version of the Enlightenment
narrative can explain the early
reporting on the Arab Spring.
Initially, it was reported as the
unstoppable rise of freedom and
democracy. The power of this
narrative was so strong that the
details that didn’t fit into the story –
such as the power-grabbing by the
Islamic extremists and the violence
against Copts in Egypt – were simply
ignored. And in Syria the uprising
was seen as an inevitable fall of a
tyranny, rather than grasping the
complexity of the conflict.
It is easy to see how the current
position of news production in the
media ecosystem contributes to
the problem. News competes with
entertainment, and even the best
news programmes could be classified
as ‘entertainment for intellectuals’.
Whatever doesn’t fit neatly within
the constraints of 60-second updates,
lacks dramatic visuals, or can’t be
shortened into a 144-letter tweet
headline is fighting a losing battle.
In the news, there is often space for
only one, dominant, and universally
oversimplified storyline.
In Britain, the Olympic Games
preparations were ‘catastrophic’ until
the actual Games took place after
which they were the ‘best games in
history’.
Rarely does the persecution of
Christians fit into the dominant
narrative. How could the people
fighting for freedom in the Middle
East also oppress and kill Christians?
In Britain, the church is often
described as an intolerant dinosaur
that oppresses sexual minorities and
women. How can church be a victim?
Simply, that’s not part of the story.
There are other factors at play. At
least in the political level, there has
been a reluctance to criticise countries
such as Saudi Arabia and China for
human rights violations, as they play
a vital part in the global economy.
Islam vs. Christianity?
There are Muslim countries such as
Senegal that has Muslim majority
and factual freedom of religion,
but it seems clear that all across the
globe, Islamic extremists are trying
to generate conflicts between Muslim
majorities and other religious groups.
This tactic is clearly visible in in
Nigeria and Indonesia where Islamic
extremists have targeted Christian
civilians. One particularly gruesome
attack was the beheading of three
Christian schoolgirls in Indonesia.
Shortt picks Islam as the religion that
persecutes Christians the most, but he
isn’t totally pessimistic about Islam’s
capacity to reform itself.
As a framework for explaining
and predicting the course of global
politics, secularism is increasingly
unsound. Religion has simply
refused to go away. Three quarters of
humanity professes a religious faith
and the figure is in fact projected to
rise to 80% by 2050.
The persecution of Christians
should be a major policy issue for
many governments, but instead it’s
completely missing from the agenda,
Shortt says.
Christianophobia: A Faith Under
Attack is an important wakeup call
to the secular media and politicians.
Such because they don’t believe in
God, it doesn’t mean that God and
religion have disappeared from global
politics. It argues convincingly that
recognising and dealing with the
persecution of Christians is one of
the main human rights issues we face
today.
Rupert Shortt is Religion Editor of The
Times Literary Supplement, contributes
to the Guardian and The Times, and is
a Visiting Fellow of Blackfriars Hall,
University of Oxford. He has written
the biographies of Archbishop Rowan
Williams and Pope Benedict XVI.
Christianophobia: A Faith Under Attack
was released by Rider, an imprint of
Random House on 1st November 2012.
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