Indifference to the fate of Middle East Christians has Ancient Roots

[quiet52]

Indifference to the fate of Middle East Christians has Ancient Roots
by Lars Brownworth

In 2010 an al-Qaeda front group attacked one of Baghdad’s main cathedrals during Sunday mass. More than 50 people were slaughtered. The militants had a clear and simple explanation for this atrocity: “All Christian centres, organisations and institutions, leaders and followers, are legitimate targets for the muhajideen wherever they can reach them. We will open upon them the doors of destruction and rivers of blood.”

In this environment, it’s no wonder that Christianity is dying in the land of its birth.

What’s more puzzling is why the Western world couldn’t care less.

mercatornet.com/articles/view/indifference_to_the_fate_of_middle_east_christians_has_ancient_roots

last three paragraphs:

In June of 2012, Western-backed Syrian rebels fighting Assad’s government troops entered the city of Homs and desecrated its churches, some of which date back to the 6th century. Bibles were torn up for use as toilet paper, soldiers posed for pictures wearing looted priests robes, and the sacramental wine was used to celebrate. The story- unlike the Koran burning by a Floridian pastor that same year- didn’t produce even a ripple of journalistic interest.

Most Protestants or Catholics have never heard of a Chaldean or Melkite Christian, and there appears to be a certain intellectual laziness in the press which doesn’t seem able to process the idea of Christians as a persecuted minority. So for the most part they are simply ignored, and the eradication of 2,000 year-old Christian communities passes without comment in the information age.

“To be ignorant of our past,” Cicero warned, is to “forever remain a child”. This is an apt description of our continued silence in the face of the deteriorating situation of the minority populations of the Middle East.

Reading this makes me ache with sadness and with love for our persecuted and suffering brothers and sisters in Christ.

 

[mymamamary]

Indifference to the fate of Middle East Christians has Ancient Roots
by Lars Brownworth

In 2010 an al-Qaeda front group attacked one of Baghdad’s main cathedrals during Sunday mass. More than 50 people were slaughtered. The militants had a clear and simple explanation for this atrocity: “All Christian centres, organisations and institutions, leaders and followers, are legitimate targets for the muhajideen wherever they can reach them. We will open upon them the doors of destruction and rivers of blood.”

In this environment, it’s no wonder that Christianity is dying in the land of its birth.

What’s more puzzling is why the Western world couldn’t care less.

mercatornet.com/articles/view/indifference_to_the_fate_of_middle_east_christians_has_ancient_roots

last three paragraphs:

Reading this makes me ache with sadness and with love for our persecuted and suffering brothers and sisters in Christ.

**This makes me sad AND angry. Very angry. **

 

[all4mary]

Indifference to the fate of Middle East Christians has Ancient Roots
by Lars Brownworth

In 2010 an al-Qaeda front group attacked one of Baghdad’s main cathedrals during Sunday mass. More than 50 people were slaughtered. The militants had a clear and simple explanation for this atrocity: “All Christian centres, organisations and institutions, leaders and followers, are legitimate targets for the muhajideen wherever they can reach them. We will open upon them the doors of destruction and rivers of blood.”

In this environment, it’s no wonder that Christianity is dying in the land of its birth.

What’s more puzzling is why the Western world couldn’t care less.

mercatornet.com/articles/view/indifference_to_the_fate_of_middle_east_christians_has_ancient_roots

last three paragraphs:

Reading this makes me ache with sadness and with love for our persecuted and suffering brothers and sisters in Christ.

i know what you mean Lebanon was 80% christian in 1920 now it’s only about 40%. I pray people get converted back to there roots.

 

[InJesusItrust]

Those who own the media do not like Christianity. A media blackout essentially makes people disbelive that something happened, like a pro life rally or Bilderberg meetings.

 

[SuperLuigi]

Indifference to the fate of Middle East Christians has Ancient Roots
by Lars Brownworth

In 2010 an al-Qaeda front group attacked one of Baghdad’s main cathedrals during Sunday mass. More than 50 people were slaughtered. The militants had a clear and simple explanation for this atrocity: “All Christian centres, organisations and institutions, leaders and followers, are legitimate targets for the muhajideen wherever they can reach them. We will open upon them the doors of destruction and rivers of blood.”

In this environment, it’s no wonder that Christianity is dying in the land of its birth.

What’s more puzzling is why the Western world couldn’t care less.

mercatornet.com/articles/view/indifference_to_the_fate_of_middle_east_christians_has_ancient_roots

last three paragraphs:

Reading this makes me ache with sadness and with love for our persecuted and suffering brothers and sisters in Christ.

First of all, there is problem with your post. The article says the Western MEDIA doesn’t seem to care.

That shouldn’t surprise anyone on here.

Also, Christians around the globe outside of Africa and parts of Latin American and Asia haven’t helped themselves much by **not having children. **

The fact that Muslims do have more kids than most anyone else also plays a role.

Otherwise, I’m not quite sure what you are getting at. We’ve spent now over $1 trillion in the Middle East, and my sense is that the West isn’t as smart in Middle Eastern affairs as it likes to think—in fact many Westerners don’t even seem terribly anxious to learn Arabic, Farsi, Persian (or Russian or Chinese for that matter).

I could give a whole litany about how Western foreign affairs with aid money and benevolent military operations has done enormous damage in the Third world.

 

[Edmundus1581]

It’s the media’s fault again?

What about all those Western Christians who supported the invasion of Iraq despite the well known and grave danger to its Christians? I was on a Catholic site at the time and any mention of the plight of Iraq Christians (2003 - 2005) was vigorously denounced as “liberal” nay saying of the war.

If memory serves me right, the Catholic church both in Iraq and the Vatican anticipated the danger to Iraqi Christians and warned of it as the the war was being talked up in 2002 and early 2003.

The article looks back to medieval history, but only gives one mention to

Refugees of Iraq

Perhaps as many as half a million Iraqi Christians Assyrians are thought to have fled the sectarian fighting in Iraq, with Christians bearing the brunt of animosity toward a perceived “crusade” by the United States in Iraq. Most chose to go to Syria due to the cultural similarities between the two countries, **Syria’s open-door policy to Iraqis, **and the large population of Assyrians and other Christians in the country which perhaps totals as high as 2 million.

Fortunately for refugees, Syria is much more welcoming of them than the countries which actually caused the problem. I don’t know why Syria would be so generous, but my knowledge of Muslim and middle eastern culture suggests that it may be genuine care for strangers and the poor, which are deeply embedded values.

Perhaps the topic is more welcome now as with the fading of memories we can dissociate the problem (the persecution of Christians) from the cause (the war), and can blame terrorists, liberals and the media again.