Bill Donohue comments on two reports released this week that describe religious persecution around the world:
We know that people of every religion are being targeted for murder and plunder in many parts of the world, and that the Communist regimes in China and North Korea are hotbeds of Christian persecution. But nothing compares to what is happening in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Quite simply, we are witnessing the annihilation of the Christian people.
In the U.S. Department of State’s “International Religious Freedom Report for 2014,” there is a detailed account of the many ways in which Muslim-run nations are wiping out Christianity. In the report’s Executive Summary, Christians are mentioned 23 times in 6 pages, and they are always cited as victims, never perpetrators, of religious persecution.
“In Mosul, Iraq and nearby towns,” the report says, “shortly after the takeover of the area by militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Christians who had been given the choice to convert, pay a ruinous tax, or die, gathered their families and what few possessions they could carry, and sought all possible means to escape.”
The United Kingdom charity, Aid to the Church in Need, also released a report on this subject. The situation is so bad in Iraq that it concluded that Christianity may be extinct in five years. “There is not a single Christian family left in Mosul,” said an observer. “The last one was a disabled Christian woman. She stayed because she could not get out. They came to her and said you have to get out and if you don’t we will cut off your head with a sword. That was the last family.”
The annihilation of Christians is not confined to Iraq. A Syrian Catholic archbishop wrote that “My cathedral has been bombed six times and is now unusable. My home has also been hit more than 10 times. We are facing the rage of an extremist jihad: we may disappear soon.”
President Obama is in a position to lead an international effort to destroy radical Islamic terrorists. Yet he can’t even call them by name, never mind demonstrate leadership.
