Investigative Project on Terrorism
October 26, 2012 Friday 8:23 PM EST
Guest Column: Humanitarian Hypocrisy
by Raymond Ibrahim, Special to IPT News
Muslim Turks care about American Indians, and U.S. Protestants care
about Muslim Palestinians but no one cares about persecuted Christians
The world’s double standards concerning which peoples qualify as
oppressed and deserving of help are staggering. Two recent stories
illustrate this point:
First, a report exposed, in the words of the Turkish Coalition of
America, “Turkey’s continued interest in expanding business and
cultural ties with the American Indian community” and “Turkey’s
interest in building bridges to Native American communities across the
U.S.” Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., even introduced a bill that would give
Turks special rights and privileges in Native American tribal areas,
arguing that “[t]his bill is about helping American Indians,” and
about “helping the original inhabitants of the new world, which is
exactly what this legislation would do.”
The very idea that Turkey’s Islamist government is interested in
“helping American Indians” is preposterous, both from a historical and
contemporary point of view. In the 15th century, when Christian
Europeans were discovering the Americas, Muslim Turks were conquering
and killing Christians in Europe (which, of course, is why Europeans
starting sailing west in the first place). If early European settlers
fought and killed natives, only recently, Turkey committed a mass
genocide against Armenian Christians. And while the U.S. has made many
reparations to its indigenous natives, Turkey not only denies the
Armenian holocaust, but still abuses and persecutes its indigenous
Christians.
In short, if Turkey is looking to help the marginalized and oppressed,
it should start at home.
But of course, Turkey is only looking to help itself; the American
Indians are mere tools of infiltration. One need not elaborate on the
dangers involved in thousands of Muslim Turks settling in
semi-autonomous areas in America and working closely with a minority
group that holds a grudge against the United States.
Yet if one can understand Turkey’s machinations, what does one make of
another recent report? Fifteen leaders from U.S. Christian
denominations mostly Protestant, including the Lutheran, Methodist,
and UCC Churches are asking Congress to reevaluate U.S. military aid
to Israel, since “military aid will only serve to sustain the status
quo and Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian territories.”
These are the same church leaders who utter nary a word concerning the
rampant persecution of millions of Christians from one end of the
Muslim world to the other a persecution that makes the Palestinians’
situation insignificant in comparison.
If Muslims are subjugated on Israeli land, at least one can argue
that, historically, the Jews were there first millennia before Muslims
conquered Jerusalem in the 7th century. On the other hand, millions of
Christians at least 10 million in Egypt alone, the indigenous Copts
have been suffering in their own homelands for 14 centuries, since
Islam burst in with the sword.
Nor is this limited to history: from Nigeria in the west, to Pakistan
in the east, Christians at this very moment are being imprisoned for
apostasy and blasphemy; their churches are being bombed and burned
down; their women and children are being kidnapped, enslaved, and
raped. For an idea, see my monthly Muslim Persecution of Christians
series, where I collate dozens of anecdotes of persecution every month
any of which, if Palestinians experienced, would make headlines around
the world; but as it is only “unfashionable” Christians who are
experiencing these atrocities, they are regularly overlooked.
Nor are Palestinian Christians immune from this phenomenon: a pastor
recently noted that “animosity towards the Christian minority in areas
controlled by the PA continues to get increasingly worse. People are
always telling [Christians], Convert to Islam. Convert to Islam.”
Indeed, the American Jewish Committee, which was “outraged by the
Christian leaders’ call,” got it right by saying: “When religious
liberty and safety of Christians across the Middle East are threatened
by the repercussions of the Arab Spring, these Christian leaders have
chosen to initiate a polemic against Israel, a country that protects
religious freedom and expression for Christians, Muslims and others.”
By any objective measure, the atrocities currently being committed
against Christians around the Muslim world are far more outrageous and
deserving of attention and remedy than the so-called “Palestinian
Question.” Incidentally, Israeli treatment of the Palestinians some of
whom, like Hamas, openly declare their intent to eradicate the Jewish
state is largely predicated on the aforementioned: Israel knows
Islam’s innate animus for non-Muslims and does not wish to be on its
receiving end, hence the measures it takes to exist.
There is a final important point of irony concerning the differences
between Turkey’s Muslims and America’s liberal Christians: the former
engage in hypocrisy to empower Islam; the latter engage in hypocrisy
to disempower Christianity, even if unwittingly. Just like
secular/liberal Americans who strive to disassociate themselves from
their European heritage seeing it as the root of all evil and
championing the rights of non-whites like American Indians liberal
American Christians strive to disassociate themselves from their
Christian heritage and champion the rights of non-Christians, hence
their keen interest for Muslim Palestinians.
And all the while, the one religious group truly persecuted from one
end of the Islamic world to the other Christians are devoutly ignored
by the humanitarian hypocrites.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom
Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum
http://www.investigativeproject.org/3783/humanitarian-hypocrisy