Dennis Prager who happens to be Jewish made an observation that I have made myself. Why is there no Christian unity over the persecution of our brothers and sisters in Islamic nations? When 2 Million Christians were killed in the Sudan during the 90’s, no one said anything. When in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion Chaldean and Assyrian Christians were being killed, only the Kurds stepped up and helped them. In the Ivory Coast, France has enabled an Islamic takeover where Catholic priests were killed. Now Christians are being slaughtered in Egypt and no one is speaking. The only one saying anything is Pope Benedict and he’s being ignored.
In 1969, at the age of 21, I was sent to the Soviet Union. I was a young American Jew who spoke Hebrew and Russian and who practiced Judaism. My task was to bring Jewish religious items into the Soviet Union, and the names of Jews who wished to leave the Soviet Union out of that country. Upon returning to the United States, I became the national spokesman for the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, one of the most effective organizations for Soviet Jews in the world.
As such, I spoke before synagogues of every denomination, Hadassah groups, Jewish federations, Jewish groups on college campuses. If there was a Jewish organization, it cared about the plight of Soviet Jews. For decades, virtually every synagogue in America had a “Save Soviet Jewry” sign in front of it.
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n the Muslim world, Christians are being murdered, churches are being torched, entire ancient Christian communities — the Iraqi and Palestinian, for example — are disappearing. And, again, 2 billion Christians react with silence. There are some Christian groups active on behalf of persecuted Christians around the world. They do important work, and are often the primary source of information on persecuted Christians. But they would be the first to acknowledge that the Christian world is overwhelmingly silent when it comes to the persecution of Christians in the Muslim world.
This is true despite the fact that the most powerful Christian in the world, Pope Benedict XVI, has not been silent. For example, on January 10, in his annual address to the Vatican diplomatic corps, he spoke of “the Christian communities in [the Middle East] which suffer greatly because of their fidelity to Christ and the Church . . . the attacks which brought death, grief and dismay among the Christians of Iraq .”
He appealed directly to the Muslim world: “To the Muslim religious leaders I renew my heartfelt appeal that their Christian fellow-citizens be able to live in security.”
I salute Dennis Prager in bringing this issue to the forefront and parsing Pope Benedict’s efforts. This is an issue being ignored by too many Christians worldwide.
