The West has been apathetic in its response to the persecution of Christians by Islamic extremists. But such apathy can have disastrous consequences – Northern Ireland born columnist, Jenny McCartney, writes in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph.
The Islamist explosion that killed 85 Christians attending Sunday worship in a church in Peshawar last week took a split-second, but the emotional impact of the blast was strangely delayed in the West. The rival Islamist horrors unfurling in a Nairobi mall took some days to complete, and the media appeared to deem the Kenyan atrocity more compelling for an international audience.
Then, as the Nairobi carnage became nauseatingly clear, many people turned back to look once again at Peshawar, where enraged local Christians were protesting at their lack of state protection. It isn’t just happening in Pakistan: in Syria, the ancient, dwindling Christian community lives in fear of increasingly powerful Islamist factions among the rebels; around 60 per cent of Syrian Christians have already fled.
In Egypt, terror and intimidation have driven many Coptic Christians from their homes or into exile. Last week, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, spoke out against such attacks and referred to the Christian “martyrs” who died expressing their faith. He advised us to pray for them, and for their persecutors. With respect to the Archbishop, I’m not sure prayer on its own will be enough.
In the West, there has been a slow progression from apathy to outrage on this matter. The apathy, I think, came in part because – outside actively Christian circles – there was a latent embarrassment here about apparently identifying with foreign victims on the basis of their religion. Why become more impassioned about a murdered Pakistani Christian than a murdered Pakistani Muslim, for example? Islamist extremists have given us plenty of the latter, too.
Certainly the family’s desolation is the same, and the lost lives are of equal importance.
But there is another question, concerning heightened responsibility: the minority Christians are attacked by Islamists, in large part, because of their perceived link to the West and western values. Such Christians might very well see themselves as Pakistani, Syrian or Egyptian first and Christian second (just as many Jews in Nazi Germany originally saw themselves primarily as German). That is not how their local persecutors see them, or desire to have them seen. And when your local persecutor has a loaded gun, or even a suicide vest, it is how they see you that can determine your fate.
What to do, beyond outrage and prayer? History comes back to haunt us, although not always in precisely the same form. I have been reading the memoirs of the late German historian Joachim Fest, raised in Nazi Germany within a Catholic family staunchly opposed to Hitler. He describes intimately how fascism took root: beginning as a minor threat, absorbing ridicule, inching towards power, isolating minorities, silencing critics, passing repressive laws, and moving forward with sudden, shocking bursts of terror. The historical progress of fascism looks very similar in style to the current march of Islamist extremism, except that the latter is on a global scale.
Two moral and strategic failings emerge from that period in history. The first was the unwillingness of Britain and America to respond seriously to the persecution of German Jews until it was well under way: in 1938, three years after passing the Nuremberg laws, Hitler was Time magazine’s Man of the Year. The second is the British government’s early reluctance to support high-ranking German officers in a coup against Hitler.
We often hear today that “Muslims” are not publicly condemning extremism with sufficient force. Well, it depends where you’re looking. I remember Salman Taseer, the brave Muslim minister who opposed Pakistan’s repressive blasphemy law and was therefore murdered by one of his bodyguards; or Abdul Haji, the Muslim civilian who last week entered the Nairobi mall to take on al-Shabaab gunmen and rescue countless people. The Christians in Peshawar made a distinction between the cruelty of the bombers and the kindness of many Muslim neighbours.
The current strategy of the West with regard to Islamist extremism seems utterly chaotic. The UK does the largest proportion of its arms trade with Saudi Arabia, the single country whose donors have done most to finance the spread of the country’s toxic Wahhabist ideology and the terrorist groups that endorse it.
Until recently, the US was apparently serious about arming Syrian rebels, many of whom are now Islamist militants. It uses unmanned drones to drop bombs in northern Pakistan – endangering civilians and further inflaming Islamists against the trapped Christian minority – yet maintains cordial relations with Saudi Arabia, which Hillary Clinton admitted in a leaked 2009 memo is a “critical financial support base” for Sunni terrorism worldwide. If you want to choke off extremism, first follow the money.
Militant Islamism is holding Christians hostage in Pakistan, Syria and Egypt: the minorities there are gesturing to us helplessly with a gun pointed at them. The West needs actively to support Muslims who oppose extremism, and impose the maximum political and economic pressure to cut off the cash flow for Islamist terrorism and its supporting ideology. Hand-wringing is not enough. It’s really time we used our heads