Christians -- Increasingly Endangered

"I call it a 'drip drip genocide'. It's a wiping out of religious communities. It doesn't happen in one day. It doesn't happen over a few months."
"Little by little by little, laws and institutions and bureaucracies and penal codes, textbooks that malign other communities, until you come to the point of having this sort of jihadi culture that is running rampant."
Farahnaz Ispahani, Pakistani writer

"There are many places on Earth where being a Christian is the most dangerous thing you can be."
"Those who think of Christianity as a religion of the powerful need to see that in many places it's a religion of the powerless."
Robert Nicholson, Philos Project

"This is one of those issues that really are about life and death."
"It is time we took a stand and said that we will not allow this to happen anymore."
"[Our research reveals] the worst levels of [Christian] persecution in modern times."
David Curry, president, Open Doors

"In Mosul, Iraq and nearby towns, 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,."
"It has forcibly displaced hundreds of thousands of people, conducted mass executions, and kidnapped, sold, enslaved, raped and/or forcibly converted thousands of women and children—all on the grounds that these people stand in opposition to ISIL’s religious dogma."
U.S. State Department released its annual International Religious Liberty report, October 2015

Men in orange jumpsuits purported to be Egyptian Christians held captive by the Islamic State kneel in front of armed men along a beach said to be near Tripoli, and beheaded -- February 2015.  Still from ISIL video

Christianity worldwide appears to be undergoing a massive attack on its reputation and its ability to withstand the violence increasingly directed toward it by forces committed to its destruction. And while it is certainly true that Christianity and those who represent the faithful in Christianity are under siege in many parts of the world, while elsewhere anti-Christian propaganda and persecution of Christians of a less violent nature is taking place, dire prognoses of the future of Christianity are somewhat overblown.

What is not over-emphasized, is the plight of Christians wherever they are slighted, diminished and exposed to violence. This is not a minority religion, after all. Christianity still represents the world's dominant monotheistic religion. Lest warning of its future demise be taken seriously, those who fear that outcome might take some solace in the fact that it is Christianity's predecessor monotheistic religion, Judaism, that has suffered extreme prejudice and vicious predation beyond endurance.

Jews have been hounded and despised, attacked and slaughtered for much of the history of the past four thousand years; almost from its beginnings. Unending violence has been directed against Jews and a general refusal to accept them as equals almost everywhere in the world has characterized the Jewish condition through its thousands of years of diaspora existence. And nor has that hounding and the threats diminished, post-Holocaust and with the comfort of the re-established State of Israel.

Perhaps the difference is that throughout its history of continuous persecution and violence directed against Jews, other Jews in less tenuous situations have attempted to give aid and support to the threatened communities. In the instance of increased and mounting persecution of Christians worldwide, there is hand-wringing, but little cohesion in supporting the endangered populations of Christians by other, organized Christians.

The growing tide of Islamist jihad targeting minority religions, Jews, infidels and the 'crusader' Christians comes at a time when Islam, the second most followed religion in the world, is growing even while a hard core of its fundamentalist faithful is roiling the world community with its barbaric violence directed to kill in the name of Allah, for to exist without embracing Islam, is to insult Islam, the penalty for which is death.

The cult of Islamic death-delivery is a reflection of the most basic tenet of faith in Islam, the compulsion that the faithful take upon themselves through their covenant with Islam, to martyr themselves through proselytism. Which is to convince non-Muslims to submit to Islam and by any means possible. So when Coptic Christians in Egypt, "infidels who are empowering the West against Muslim nations" are given the choice of conversion because "God gave orders to kill every infidel", and they refuse, they sign their death warrants.

When confronted by Islamic jihadists these "worshippers of the cross" are given the option of repeating the Shahada: "There is no God but Allah and Mohammad is his Messenger"; that statement which represents conversion. Yet the Christians refuse to recite the phrase that will allow them to live. According to a report from the Center for Studies on New Religions, 90,000 Christians died last year because their faith is considered abhorrent to non-Christians.

Intimidation, forced conversion, bodily harm and death has kept  up to 600 million Christians worldwide from freely worshipping their faith. David Curry of Open Doors says there has been increased persecution of Christians throughout Asia where nationalist religious movements -- Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist -- have threatened Christians in India, Myanmar and Pakistan where Christianity is seen as a foreign belief meant to usher into their countries Western beliefs.

From the Middle East to North Africa, Europe to North America and Asia, Christians are denigrated, mocked, threatened, for their religious devotion. Yet the countries where Christianity represents the majority religion reflecting heritage and culture, restrain themselves from reacting. Instead, the authorities and their populations practise the Christian virtues of patience and forgiveness, and continue to address the growing incidence of violence impacting their communities with forbearance and understanding.

The graves on Lesbos of a Syrian Christian Orthodox family who drowned attempting to cross the Aegean. Christians are being ‘driven out of ancient biblical heartland’, says report. Photograph: Dimitris Michalakis/Reuters

"Reports by groups that track such incidents corroborate the plethora of online documentation. The May 2011 report by the Congressional Commission on International Religious Freedom describes in detail many of the gruesome anti-Christian crimes that can be seen on Internet videos, and then puts them into political and cultural context. The Christian organization Open Doors, which issues an annual listing of the worst-offender countries when it comes to the deprivation of religious freedom, puts North Korea as number one. Closely following are Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, the Maldives, Yemen, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Laos, and Pakistan. Also in the top 50 are Muslim-majority lands such as Libya, Syria, Oman, Egypt, Kuwait, and the Palestinian Authority and the dwindling handful of Communist states such as Vietnam, Cuba, and of course China."
Commentary, David Aikman