US Archbishop Candid About Islamic Persecution of Christians

[WanderAimlessly]

Some blunt words from Archbishop Charles Chaput

US Archbishop Candid About Islamic Persecution of Christians
By Gudrun Schultz

WASHINGTON, DC, United States, December 16, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - ,Archbishop Charles Chaput, of the diocese of Denver, broke free from politically correct restrictions to speak openly about growing Moslem persecution of Christians, in an address to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, of which he is a member.

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[Matt25]

The Archbishop was speaking on a panel in Washington reported in washingtontimes.com/culture/20051214-114423-9869r.htm other points made by the panel-

Notwithstanding the photos about the room of the second Bush inauguration, the Bush administration came in for criticism by Lawrence Uzzell, president of the International Religious Freedom Watch “We’ve known for the last decade that most of the State Department bureaucracy needs constant pressure to give these issues the attention they deserve,” he said. “We now know that the White House also needs pressure, no matter which party is in power, sometimes especially with an administration that’s tempted to think that it can take its religious supporters for granted.” Mr. Uzzell’s chief complaint was with Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, describing both as “remote desert dictatorships” that are “the most vicious persecutors of religious faith” among the former Soviet republics.

Muslims of all stripes get the brunt of bad treatment in Uzbekistan, he said, and the country’s reputation as “among the leading torturers of all Eurasia” is a result of its horrendous treatment of even the most moderate Muslim.
“The fact that Washington has not named Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan as ‘countries of particular concern’ under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act ought to be a major scandal,” he said.

Uzbekistan is “one of the places where renditions are said to happen,” he said, referring to the U.S. practice of sending foreign captives to Third World countries for imprisonment and torture. “Some of our leaders have now become so obsessed with the war on terrorism … that they are willing to overlook the most horrible violations of freedom and of basic morality by dictators who claim to be our allies in that war,” he said