Christian Persecution and Western Inaction

Burying Christian blood in Egypt 

Dear Father "Joe,"

Hi, thanks for writing back, and for writing back so quickly.

Here's my question. I hope you can help me here.

Just a few days ago, May 26, 2017, a caravan of women and children pilgrims and workmen headed into the Egyptian desert. They were traveling to the Monastery of St Samuel the Confessor. St Samuel was an Egyptian, born 597 AD. The monastery is very old.

The bus was set upon by 8-10 Muslims in masks and military clothing, who arrived in four vehicles. The Muslims demanded the Christian's phones, money and jewelry. They told the Christians that they could avoid death if they spoke the shahada: "There is no god but allah and mohammed is his prophet." In other words, the Christians were told they could live if they converted to Islam. The Christians refused, and the Muslims murdered thirty of them.

Events like this happen regularly. The Islamic State identified Christians as their "favorite prey." The attackers cite canonical texts and traditions to support their thieving and murder. Egypt was a Christian country in the seventh century. Through centuries of persecution, the population of Christians has shrunken to ten or perhaps five percent.

In church, I've never heard a priest breathe so much as a mention of the persecution of our brothers and sisters in Christ living in majority-Muslim countries.

I'm not alone. I know many Christians who are outraged and want some help for our persecuted brothers and sisters.

Why don't Christian leaders in the West care about this enough to talk to their congregations about it? Why don't Western churches take high-profile action?

Robert Spencer is himself a devout Catholic. Catholic churches and schools have caved in to protests and canceled his speaking engagements. Why?

Dear Father Joe,

Thank you for writing back.

I cannot help but note that after I sent you an email expressing my concern about the murders in Egypt you sent me an email whose first three paragraphs are devoted to a laundry list of America's crimes: the KKK, slavery, oppression of women, mistreatment of Jews and the LGBTQ community. You say that America has expressed feverish anti-Muslim sentiment.

Certainly, I agree that white supremacy, misogyny, and homophobia should be defeated. Certainly, I acknowledge that America is not perfect.

At this exact moment, though, I am focused on this: thirty Egyptian Christians were just murdered. Their murders are part of centuries of oppression that drove Egypt from a Christian country when the Muslim Conquest first began to a country with only a ten percent Christian population today. That Christian population in Egypt, reasonable observers predict, will disappear within this century, as the Jewish population disappeared before it.

You say you don't know who Robert Spencer. Spencer is America's leading counter-jihadi. The government has employed him to train law enforcement. He has written bestselling books. He is the author of the Ascension Press book, Inside Islam a Guide for Catholics.

You say you don't know why Catholic institutions cancel his events. Here's one incident. https://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/01/catholic-diocese-capitulates-to-islamic-supremacists-and-leftist-media-cancels-robert-spencer-confer

I assure you that Robert Spencer is not a "loudmouth" a "blunderbuss" or an "Al Sharpton" as you imagine he might be.

You ask, " So, what kind of "high profile action" would you propose we take?"

Father, so much could be done.

First, we need to *speak the truth.* Once people are armed with the facts, they can act in an effective way.  

When Catholics in Poland erected a convent near Auschwitz, American Jews, who are a tiny percentage of the US population, managed to make that convent an international issue, and they got the convent moved.

One thing we could do is bring attention to the suffering of our Christian brothers and sisters. People in pain want to know that the outside world is aware of, and cares about their pain. They probably know that we can't rescue them all immediately. They do want to know that we know what they are going through and that we care.

Amnesty International organized letter-writing campaigns for prisoners of conscience. Catholics could be writing letters to the survivors of the Minya massacre. We could distribute fliers with photos of the murdered children with captions saying, "Missing. Have you seen this child? Last seen in a pilgrimage to the Monastery of St Samuel the Confessor. Please Google this information and see if you can find out what happened to this child." That would educate the public about an event that is gaining precious little attention.

We could be picketing outside the Egyptian embassy.

Again, when the convent was at Auschwitz, Jewish leaders voiced a call for funds to be withheld from Poland. Egypt is our second largest aid recipient. Egypt relies on the west for tourists.

Believe me, if Muslim leaders thought that American Christians were finally waking from their stupor and their shameful disregard of their responsibilities to their persecuted brethren, something would change.

Finally, Father, a few times in your email you imply that telling the truth about Islam is a racist, bigoted, rude, hateful enterprise. That's incorrect. In fact, it is the very opposite of accurate.

I've been publishing about jihad and gender apartheid for 16 years. I have never written a single condemnation of all Muslims. In fact I've gone out of my way to publish several articles arguing *against* any hatred for all Muslims.

I've repeatedly organized and taken part in demonstrations against US military intervention in Muslim regions. Counter-jihadis, by and large, resist military intervention because we are aware of the larger patterns at work and we know that military intervention will likely make things worse – as it predictably did in Iraq.

Rather, it is the pressure to suppress free speech about jihad and gender apartheid that inevitably leads to hate. It is the categorization of counter-jihadis as "bigots" or haters that is making things worse. I am aghast that Donald Trump rode to the presidency on a backlash against Politically Correct suppression of speech about Islam. Americans were tired of leaders who don't allow us to speak and share the truth, and they elected a man who exploited the San Bernardino shootings.

Free speech is a pressure release valve. People who read my work and the work of Nonie Darwish, Nabeel Qureshi, David Wood and others know that Muslims themselves are the first and largest group of jihad's victims.

We Christians constitute the Body of Christ. We can't sit by passively and do nothing. Please give what I've written here some consideration.

Thank you.