Persecution is here and it is no longer theoretical, or something 'coming'. Sure, we have grown accustomed to seeing persecution around the world, particularly in areas dominated by any form of radical Islam such as northern Africa and the Middle East - yet somehow we mostly turn our heads and occasionally consider the prophetic implications, but this issue doesn't receive nearly enough attention.
But now, we are beginning to see persecution become part of government policy, albeit somewhat covert for now. But as more and more data come in, as pertaining to this immigration situation, the persecution is becoming not only more overt, but systematic.
Consider that.
At this point it is unclear exactly how this is being done logistically, but it is very clear that not allowing Christians into the country - from those areas where persecution is the most extreme - has become the norm and it is certainly not an accident. It is planned and systematic. And it is here now.
Meanwhile, we will collectively turn our heads at this and hope it doesn't get worse. Or we will hope that the next wave of persecution won't affect us directly. But the fact remains - it is here and it is here now and it is becoming very hard to ignore any longer.
This is just the beginning.
Christians continue to be the most persecuted religious people in the world this Christmas, but they don’t figure to get much help from Western governments in Washington, London or Brussels.
Despite President Obama’s recent comment that it would be un-American to apply a “religious test” for refugees seeking a safe haven in the United States, it appears his administration has already applied such a test, at least for Syrian refugees.
Christians make up 10 percent of the Syrian population, and about 350,000 of them have been run out of their homes. Their property has been stolen by Muslims affiliated with ISIS, al-Nusra Front and other Islamic factions. Their men have been beheaded or summarily shot, their women raped and forced into submission.
The dismal numbers
Yet, during all of 2015, the U.S. has managed to take in a paltry 31 Christians, or 1.4 percent of the total Syrian contingent that has been resettled by Obama’s State Department.
This is even more concerning when considering the fact that the U.S. government pays nine private agencies to do its resettlement work – and six of the nine are affiliated with Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopal, evangelical and Jewish organizations. These groups are paid hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to resettle Muslims into 180 U.S. cities and towns.
The U.S. has resettled 2,192 Syrian refugees in 2015, according to the federal database for refugee resettlement.
Here is the breakdown of Syrian refugees by religion:
- 2,149 Muslims (98 percent) – including 2,089 Sunni, eight Shiite
- 31 Christians (1.4 percent)
- Two atheists
- Six Zoroastrians
- Two Bahai
- One “other”
- One listed no religious affiliation
The same anti-Christian bias has taken shape in the United Kingdom. The Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, told the BBC Christians were the most persecuted people in Syria, but few of them would receive sanctuary in his country.
The government of Prime Minister David Cameron has said it will bring 20,000 Syrian refugees to Britain directly from United Nations refugee camps around Syria.
Nichols spelled out why so few Christians get resettled in America, Canada, the U.K. or the rest of Europe.
It’s largely because these countries all resettle refugees on terms set by the United Nations.
And very few Christians are willing to venture into U.N. refugee camps where they become targets for Muslim violence, including assault, rape and even murder.
This same concern has been echoed by Lord George Carey, former archbishop of Canterbury, as WND reported, and by Aid to the Church in Need, a Catholic aid group.
Anti-Shariah activist and author Pamela Geller said the same is happening in the United States.
“The perpetrators of the worst genocide in the 21st century are being welcomed into the West, while the victims (Christians and non-believers) are left to perish under unspeakable conditions of brutality and torture,” Geller, who is Jewish, wrote in a Christmas Eve blog post.
“President Obama insists that there will be no religious test for refugees, when in fact, he already apples one. Muslim refugees are given special accommodation,” she continued. “Of the recent wave of “Syrian” refugees brought into the U.S., none were Christians.”
Brutal crackdown worldwide largely ignored
And Christians are not just being murdered in Syria.
They are being wiped out in Iraq, brutalized in Pakistan and Sudan, and attacked in Kenya, Egypt, Lebanon, Indonesia and the Philippines.
A group of Muslims raided a Christian village in the Philippines on Christmas Eve, killing at least seven Christian farmers, according to a report by Agency France-Presse.
About 150 fighters of the BIFF (Muslim guerrillas) launched assaults in different, mainly Christian, towns before dawn, local military commander Col. Ricky Bunayog told AFP.
“They abducted farmers and then killed them. When we attempted to recover their bodies, they fired on us,” he said in the southern town of Tukuran, one of the group’s targets.
The International Christian Concern has documented the ongoing violence against Christians in Pakistan. In a recent posting on its website, ICC estimated 30,000 Pakistani Christians have been forced to flee their homeland due to persecution from the Muslim majority in Pakistan. They are living in crude conditions in Thailand, Sri Lanka and Malaysia with little help from the United Nations or various international aid agencies.
ICC cited a Pakistani Christian leader who was “begging” the West to open its doors to persecuted Pakistani believers in Jesus Christ.
Christians in Pakistan are often jailed for their beliefs, prosecuted for violating Muslim “blasphemy” laws, while their churches are bombed and their pastors killed.
The president of Pakistan Christian Congress has urged the European Union, the United States, Australia, Canada and other countries to open doors to the persecuted Pakistani Christians.
Nazir Bhatti, who launched the Pakistan Christian Congress in 1985 and was forced to flee Pakistan in 1998 after he challenged the nation’s Islamic blasphemy laws, has written leaders of the E.U., U.K., U.S. and other European countries asking that they receive Pakistani Christian asylum seekers, reported the website Christians in Pakistan.
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