The Spectator, UK
March 26 2005
Cover Story
Church of martyrs
by Anthony Browne
For most citizens of Iraq, the invasion meant the end of tyranny. For
one group, however, it meant a new start: the country’s historic
Christian community. When the war stopped, persecution by Islamists,
held in check by Saddam, started.
At a church in Basra I visited a month after the war ended, the women
complained of attacks against them for not wearing the Islamic veil.
I saw many Christian-owned shops that had been firebombed, with many
of the owners killed for exercising their legal right to sell
alcohol. Two years and many church attacks later, Iraq may still be
occupied by Christian foreign powers, but the Islamist plan to
ethnically cleanse Iraq of its nearly 2,000-year-old Assyrian and
Armenian Christian communities is reaching fruition.
There is nothing unusual about the persecution of Iraqi Christians,
or the unwillingness of other Christians to help them. Rising
nationalism and fundamentalism around the world have meant that
Christianity is going back to its roots as the religion of the
persecuted. There are now more than 300 million Christians who are
either threatened with violence or legally discriminated against
simply because of their faith – more than any other religion.
Christians are no longer, as far as I am aware, thrown to the lions.
But from China, North Korea and Malaysia, through India, Pakistan and
Sri Lanka to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, they are subjected to
legalised discrimination, violence, imprisonment, relocation and
forced conversion. Even in supposedly Christian Europe, Christianity
has become the most mocked religion, its followers treated with
public suspicion and derision and sometimes – such as the would-be EU
commissioner Rocco Buttiglione – hounded out of political office.
I am no Christian, but rather a godless atheist whose soul doesn’t
want to be saved, thank you. I may not believe in the man with the
white beard, but I do believe that all persecution is wrong. The
trouble is that the trendies who normally champion human rights seem
to think persecution is fine, so long as it’s only against
Christians. While Muslims openly help other Muslims, Christians
helping Christians has become as taboo as jingoistic nationalism.
On the face of it, the idea of Christians facing serious persecution
seems as far-fetched as a carpenter saving humanity. Christianity is
the world’s most followed religion, with two billion believers, and
by far its most powerful. It is the most popular faith in six of the
seven continents, and in both of the world’s two biggest economies,
the US and Europe. Seven of the G8 richest industrial nations are
majority Christian, as are four out of five permanent members of the
UN Security Council. The cheek-turners control the vast majority of
the world’s weapons of mass destruction.
When I bumped into George Bush in the breakfast room of the US
embassy in Brussels last month, standing right behind me were two men
in uniform carrying the little black ‘nuclear football’, containing
the codes to enable the world’s most powerful Christian to unleash
the world’s most powerful nuclear arsenal. Christians claiming
persecution seem as credible as Bill Gates pleading poverty. But just
as Christian-majority armies control Iraq as it ethnically cleanses
itself of its Christian community, so the power of Christian
countries is of little help to the Christian persecuted where most
Christians now live: the Third World.
Across the Islamic world, Christians are systematically discriminated
against and persecuted. Saudi Arabia – the global fountain of
religious bigotry – bans churches, public Christian worship, the
Bible and the sale of Christmas cards, and stops non-Muslims from
entering Mecca. Christians are regularly imprisoned and tortured on
trumped-up charges of drinking, blaspheming or Bible-bashing, as some
British citizens have found. Just last month, furthermore, Saudi
Arabia announced that only Muslims can become citizens.
The Copts of Egypt make up half the Christians in the Middle East,
the cradle of Christianity. They inhabited the land before the
Islamic conquest, and still make up a fifth of the population. By law
they are banned from being president of the Islamic Republic of Egypt
or attending Al Azhar University, and severely restricted from
joining the police and army. By practice they are banned from holding
any high political or commercial position. Under the 19th-century
Hamayouni decrees, Copts must get permission from the president to
build or repair churches – but he usually refuses. Mosques face no
such controls.
Government-controlled TV broadcasts anti-Copt propaganda, while
giving no airtime to Copts. It is illegal for Muslims to convert to
Christianity, but legal for Christians to convert to Islam. Christian
girls – and even the wives of Christian priests – are abducted and
forcibly converted to Islam, recently prompting mass demonstrations.
A report by Freedom House in Washington concludes: ‘The cumulative
effect of these threats creates an atmosphere of persecution and
raises fears that during the 21st century the Copts may have a vastly
diminished presence in their homelands.’
Fr Drew Christiansen, an adviser to the US Conference of Bishops,
recently conducted a study which stated that ‘all over the Middle
East, Christians are under pressure. “The cradle of Christianity” is
under enormous pressure from demographic decline, the growth of
Islamic militancy, official and unofficial discrimination, the Iraq
war, the Palestinian Intifada, failed peace policies and political
manipulation.’
In the world’s most economically successful Muslim nation, Malaysia,
the world’s only deliberate affirmative action programme for a
majority population ensures that Muslims are given better access to
jobs, housing and education. In the world’s most populous Muslim
nation, Indonesia, some 10,000 Christians have been killed in the
last few years by Muslims trying to Islamify the Moluccas.
In the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, most of the five million
Christians live as an underclass, doing work such as toilet-cleaning.
Under the Hudood ordinances, a Muslim can testify against a
non-Muslim in court, but a non-Muslim cannot testify against a
Muslim. Blasphemy laws are abused to persecute Christians. In the
last few years, dozens of Christians have been killed in bomb and gun
attacks on churches and Christian schools.
In Nigeria, 12 states have introduced Sharia law, which affects
Christians as much as Muslims. Christian girls are forced to wear the
Islamic veil at school, and Christians are banned from drinking
alcohol. Thousands of Christians have been killed in the last few
years in the ensuing violence.
Although persecution of Christians is greatest in Muslim countries,
it happens in countries of all religions and none. In
Buddhist-majority Sri Lanka, religious tension led to 44 churches
being attacked in the first four months of 2004, with 140 churches
being forced to close because of intimidation. In India, the rise of
Hindu nationalism has lead to persecution not just of Muslims but of
Christians. There have been hundreds of attacks against the Christian
community, which has been in India since ad 100. The government’s
affirmative action programme for untouchables guarantees jobs and
loans for poor Hindus and Buddhists, but not for Christians.
Last year in China, which has about 70 million Christians, more than
100 ‘house churches’ were closed down, and dozens of priests
imprisoned. If you join the Communist party, you get special
privileges, but you can only join if you are atheist. In North Korea,
Christians are persecuted as anti-communist elements, and dissidents
claim they are not just imprisoned but used in chemical warfare
experiments.
Dr Patrick Sookhdeo, director of the Barnabas Trust, which helps
persecuted Christians, blames rising global religious tension. ‘More
and more Christians are seen as the odd ones out – they are seen as
transplants from the West, and not really trusted. It is getting very
much worse.’
Even in what was, before multiculturalism, known as Christendom,
Christians are persecuted. I have spoken to dozens of former Muslims
who have converted to Christianity in Britain, and who are shunned by
their community, subjected to mob violence, forced out of town,
threatened with death and even kidnapped. The Barnabas Trust knows of
3,000 such Christians facing persecution in this country, but the
police and government do nothing.
You get the gist. Dr Paul Marshall, senior fellow at the Centre for
Religious Freedom in Washington, estimates that there are 200 million
Christians who face violence because of their faith, and 350 million
who face legally sanctioned discrimination in terms of access to jobs
and housing. The World Evangelical Alliance wrote in a report to the
UN Human Rights Commission last year that Christians are ‘the largest
single group in the world which is being denied human rights on the
basis of their faith’.
Part of the problem is old-style racism against non-whites; part of
it is new-style guilt. If all this were happening to the world’s
Sikhs or Muslims simply because of their faith, you can be sure it
would lead the 10 O’Clock News and the front page of the Guardian on
a regular basis. But the BBC, despite being mainly funded by
Christians, is an organisation that promotes ridicule of the Bible,
while banning criticism of the Koran. Dr Marshall said: ‘Christians
are seen as Europeans and Americans, which means you get a lack of
sympathy which you would not get if they were Tibetan Buddhists.’
Christians themselves are partly to blame for all this. Some get a
masochistic kick out of being persecuted, believing it brings them
closer to Jesus, crucified for His beliefs. Christianity uniquely
defines itself by its persecution, and its forgiveness of its
persecutors: the Christian symbol is the method of execution of its
founder. Christianity was a persecuted religion for its first three
centuries, until Emperor Constantine decided that worshipping Jesus
was better for winning battles than worshipping the sun. In contrast,
Mohammed was a soldier and ruler who led his people into victorious
battle against their enemies. In the hundred years after the death of
Mohammed, Islam conquered and converted most of North Africa and the
Middle East in the most remarkable religious expansion in history.
To this day, while Muslims stick up for their co-religionists,
Christians – beyond a few charities – have given up such forms of
discrimination. Dr Sookhdeo said: ‘The Muslims have an Ummah [the
worldwide Muslim community] whereas Christians do not have
Christendom. There is no Christian country that says, “We are
Christian and we will help Christians.”‘
As a liberal democrat atheist, I believe all persecuted people should
be helped equally, irrespective of their religion. But the
guilt-ridden West is ignoring people because of their religion. If
non-Christians like me can sense the nonsense, how does it make
Christians feel? And how are they going to react? The Christophobes
worried about rising Christian fundamentalism in Britain should
understand that it is a reaction to our double standards. And as long
as our double standards exist, Christian fundamentalism will grow.
Anthony Browne is Europe correspondent of the Times.