Christians in Muslim Lands. Blessed Are the Persecuted
“They are left alone and undefended like the Jews," charges an authoritative rabbi. Under the illusion that this will facilitate peace with the Muslims. A survey of the situation described by an Israeli Jesuit expert.
ROME, January 20, 2015 – The journey of Pope Francis to Asia has left behind his memorable words on the massacres in Paris, when he demonstrated that he understood the violent reaction of those who see their faith insulted and derided: “If a friend uses a curse word against my mama, he's going to get punched! It's normal! It's normal!”
These words of his echoed around the world and were music to the ears of much of the Muslim world, which sympathizes with the murder of the impious illustrators of “Charlie Hebdo.”
At the same press conference, however, Francis had something else to say: “Always, for me, the best way to respond is meekness. To be meek, humble like bread, without undertaking aggression.”
And these other words of his sounded like a commandment for Christians in Muslim lands: to turn the other cheek, even when the enemy not only offends and derides them, but kills them in the name of Allah.
In a vibrant commentary in “Corriere della Sera” of January 13, one of the most highly respected Italian rabbis, Giuseppe Laras, 79, a close friend of deceased cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, warned against the “disastrous strategy” of those who believe that they are “facilitating cultural and religious peace with political Islam” beginning with “leaving the Jews and the state of Israel alone” and continuing by leaving Christians undefended:
“It is a disastrous strategies that Arab Christians tried with pan-Arabism and anti-Zionism. The results are well known. After almost all the Islamic states rid themselves of their Jews, they focused with violence and massacres on the substantial Christian minorities. It is a story that repeats itself and that goes from the Armenian genocide (a century ago) to the Coptic Christians of Egypt, to the Ethiopian and Nigerian Christians, all the way to Mosul. And many European countries, an entire class of intellectuals and many Christians of the West have hands dripping with the blood of Christians of the East, since they are willing to sacrifice them on the altars of pacifism, of political opportunism, of a misunderstood concept of tolerance, of conformist culture and radical chic, of good conscience.”
At the root of this abdication Rabbi Laras sees the eclipse of Judeo-Christianity:
“The crisis that we are experiencing is not economic or demographic alone: it is a crisis of culture and values, connected to the crisis of Christianity and, in a certain sense, of the understanding of the Bible, the linchpin of our entire culture. Carlo Maria Martini was right when he said that the Bible is the book of the future of Europe and the West, but he was not listened to. Benedict XVI was right in his well-known conference in Regensburg, but he was the victim of media and cultural discredit. Bringing the Bible back as the foundation of culture and ethics is a religious effort that is possible, of extraordinary fecundity, able to be shared by Jews and Christians.”
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