Persecution...While The West Sleeps

Christians Beheaded for Christmas, The West Goes Back to Sleep

by Giulio Meotti

• How much bigger and more extended must this war on Christians become before the West considers it a "genocide" and acts to prevent it?
  
  
• The day after Christians were beheaded in Nigeria, Pope Francis admonished Western society. About beheaded Christians? No. "Put down your phones, talk during meals", the Pope said. He did not speak a single word about the horrific execution of his Christian brothers and sisters. A few days before that, Pope Francis hung a cross encircled by a life jacket in memory of migrants who lost their lives in the Mediterranean Sea. He did not commemorate the lives of Christians killed by Islamic extremists with even a mention.
  
  
• German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that her priority will be fighting climate change. She did not mention persecuted Christians. Meanwhile The Economist wrote that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a passionate defender of persecuted Christians, politically "exploits" the issue.
  
  
• "The United Nations has held inquiries and focuses its anger on Israel for defending itself against that same terrorist organization [Hamas]. But the barbarous slaughter of thousands upon thousands of Christians is met with relative indifference". — Ambassador Ronald S. Lauder, President of the World Jewish Congress, The New York Times,August 19, 2014.
  
  
  
  
  Martha Bulus, a Nigerian Catholic woman, was going to her bridal party when she was abducted by Islamic extremists of Boko Haram. Martha and her companions were beheaded and their execution filmed. The video of the brutal murders of these 11 Christians was released on December 26 to coincide with Christmas celebrations. It is reminiscent of the images of other Christiansdressed in orange jumpsuits bent on their knees on a beach, each being held by a masked, black-clad jihadist holding a knife at their throats. Their bodies were discovered in a mass grave in Libya.
  
  
  
  
  On the scale of Nigeria's anti-Christian persecution, Martha was less fortunate than another abducted girl, Leah Sharibu, who has now been in captivity nearly two years and just spent her second Christmas in the hands of Boko Haram. The reason? Leah refused to convert to Islam and deny her Christianity. Nigerian Christian leaders are also protesting the "continuous abduction of under-aged Christian girls by Muslim youths...". These girls "are forcefully converted to Islam and taken in for marriage without the consent of their parents".
  
  
  Nigeria is experiencing an Islamist war of the extermination of Christians. So far, 900 churches in northern Nigeria have been destroyed by Boko Haram. U.S. President Donald J. Trump was informed that at least 16,000 Christians have been killed there since 2015. In one single Nigerian Catholic diocese, Maiduguri, 5,000 Christians were murdered. How much bigger and more extended must this war on Christians become before the West considers it a "genocide" and acts to prevent it?
  
  
  The day after Christians were beheaded in Nigeria, Pope Francis admonishedWestern society. About beheaded Christians? No. "Put down your phones, talk during meals", the Pope said. He did not speak a single word about the horrific execution of his Christian brothers and sisters. A few days before that, Pope Francis hung a cross encircled by a life jacket in memory of migrants who lost their lives in the Mediterranean Sea. Last September, the Pope unveiled a monument to migrants in St. Peter's Square, but he did not commemorate the lives of Christians killed by Islamic extremists with even a mention.
  
  
  It is not only the Vatican that is silent. Not a single Western government found time to express horror and indignation at the beheading of Christians. "Where is the moral revulsion at this tragedy?", asked Nigerian Bishop Matthew Kukah after the Christmas massacre. "This is part of a much wider drama we are living with on a daily basis".
  
  
  
  
  
  
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