Raymond Ibrahim
Special to IPT News
http://www.investigativeproject.org/3783/humanitarian-hypocrisy
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
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