by Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n With the recent decision to arm the opposition fighting Syrian President Assad, the United States has effectively declared a proxy war on Syria\u2019s indigenous Christians\u2014a proxy war that was earlier waged on Christians in other Mideast nations, resulting in the abuse, death, and\/or\u00a0mass exodus of Christians<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ironically (if not absurdly) this proxy war on Christians is being presented to the American people as a war to safeguard the \u201chuman rights\u201d and \u201cfreedoms\u201d of the Syrian people.\u00a0 Left unsaid by the Obama administration is the egregiously\u00a0inhuman<\/em>\u00a0behavior these jihadis visit upon moderate Syrians in general Christians in particular, from bombed churches to kidnapped (and often beheaded) Christians.\u00a0 Days ago they\u00a0massacred an entire Christian village<\/a>.<\/p>\n Nor can one argue that the Obama administration is unaware that Christian persecution is an ironclad aspect of empowering jihadis. \u00a0Both past precedents and current events repeatedly demonstrate this.<\/p>\n In Libya, the administration armed\/supported the \u201cfreedom fighters\u201d fighting Gaddafi, even though it was common knowledge that many of them were connected to al-Qaeda.\u00a0 Again, the rationale was \u201cour responsibilities to our fellow human beings,\u201d as Obama\u00a0declared in April 2011<\/a>, and how not assisting them \u201cwould have been a betrayal of who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n Soon after their empowerment, some of our U.S.-supported \u201cfellow human beings\u201d decided to rub America\u2019s face in it by attacking the U.S. consulate\u2014on the anniversary of September 11, no less\u2014resulting in the\u00a0murders and possible rape<\/a>\u00a0of American diplomats, even as Obama tried to attribute the attack to American freedom of speech (a la a YouTube flick).<\/p>\n Lesser known, however, is that\u00a0Libya\u2019s small Christian minority is also being targeted<\/a>.\u00a0 Among other things, the very few churches there are\u00a0under attack and bombed<\/a>; nuns that have been serving the sick and needy since 1921 have been harassed and forced to flee; foreign Christians possessing Bibles have been\u00a0arrested and tortured<\/a>\u00a0(one recently died from his torture).<\/p>\n In Egypt, Obama and Hillary joined the bandwagon to eject Hosni Mubarak, America\u2019s most stable and secular ally for thirty years. Then the administration cozied up to the Muslim Brotherhood\u2014an Islamist organization that until recently was banned in Egypt and which no U.S. president would have been involved with.\u00a0\u00a0 Among other \u201cachievements,\u201d the Brotherhood produced Sayyid Qutb, who is idolized by al-Qaeda as the chief theoretician of modern jihad and issued a1980 fatwa<\/a>\u00a0calling on the destruction of Coptic churches in Egypt.<\/p>\n As expected, since the Brotherhood came to power, the persecution of Copts has practically been legalized,\u00a0as unprecedented numbers of\u00a0Christians\u2014men, women, and children\u2014have been arrested, often receiving more than double the maximum prison sentence, under the accusation that they\u00a0\u201cblasphemed\u201d Islam and\/or its prophet<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0It was also under\u00a0Brotherhood rule that another unprecedented scandal occurred: the St. Mark Cathedral\u2014holiest site of Coptic Christianity and home of the pope\u00a0himself\u2014was\u00a0besieged in broad daylight<\/a>\u00a0by Islamic rioters.\u00a0\u00a0When security came, they too joined in the attack on the cathedral.\u00a0\u00a0And the\u00a0targeting of Christian children<\/a>\u2014for abduction, ransom, rape, and\/or forced conversion\u2014has also reached unprecedented levels under\u00a0Morsi.<\/p>\n And now as millions of Egyptians prepare to protest Muslim Brotherhood rule on June 30, U.S. ambassador Anne Patterson has asked the Coptic Pope to\u00a0dissuade the Copts from joining in the protests<\/a>\u2014proving yet again that administration is more concerned about the wellbeing of the Brotherhood than the \u201chuman rights\u201d of those they most abuse, Christian minorities.<\/p>\n Outside the Mideast, where Muslims are often not majorities, the administration wages its proxy war on Christians in other ways.\u00a0 For example, in Nigeria, where more Christians have been slaughtered and churches bombed by Boko Haram jihadis\u00a0than all throughout the world combined<\/a>, after the Nigerian government went on a serious offensive to neutralize Boko Haram, John Kerry warned it\u00a0not to violate the \u201chuman rights\u201d of the jihadis<\/a>\u2014the same jihadis daily abusing the human rights of Christians, often in most\u00a0inhuman<\/em>\u00a0ways.<\/p>\n The meaning of Boko Haram\u2019s name\u2014\u201cWestern education is a sin\u201d\u2014is also a reminder that those Muslims who attack Christians naturally also hate the West, seeing the two as one and the same, all infidels.\u00a0 In other words, wherever the U.S. has empowered anti-Christian Islamists, it has also empowered anti-American forces.\u00a0 Put differently, Muslim persecution of Christians is the litmus test of how \u201cradical\u201d an Islamic society has become.\u00a0 Thus, in all those Mideast nations that the Obama administration has interfered\u2014Egypt, Libya, and now Syria\u2014the increase of Christian persecution in those countries is a reflection of the empowerment of forces hostile to the U.S. and Western civilization.<\/p>\n At this point, some may well raise that old question: is Obama a secret Muslim doing all he can to empower Islam?\u00a0 In fact, this is an irrelevant question.\u00a0 For even if he was, what more could he possibly do than he is doing right now\u2014under the gaze of a\u00a0somnambulant America?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Raymond Ibrahim PJ Media With the recent decision to arm the opposition fighting Syrian President Assad, the United States has effectively declared a proxy war on Syria\u2019s indigenous Christians\u2014a proxy war that was earlier waged on Christians in other Mideast nations, resulting in the abuse, death, and\/or\u00a0mass exodus of Christians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[225,227],"tags":[366,12,192,1016,478],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1Bu","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6541,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/russian-patriarch-to-obama-syrias-christians-nearing-extermination\/","url_meta":{"origin":6168,"position":0},"title":"Russian Patriarch to Obama: Syria’s Christians Nearing ‘Extermination’","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 23, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The leader of Russia's 150 million Orthodox Christians begs the president not to give aid to Syrian jihadis. by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0PJ Media\u00a0 While many were fixated on Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s recent letter to the American people, another letter from another Russian leader\u2014this one directly addressed to the U.S.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Russia"","block_context":{"text":"Russia","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/russia\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6393,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-crosses-red-line-by-supporting-jihadi-terrorism\/","url_meta":{"origin":6168,"position":1},"title":"Obama Crosses Red Line by Supporting Jihadi Terrorism","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 28, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0Jihad Watch By now it should be obvious that whenever the U.S. interferes in another nation\u2019s politics in the name of \u201chuman rights,\u201d that that is only a pretext. So it is in Syria, as Obama prepares to plunge America in a war with that nation, and,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egypt"","block_context":{"text":"Egypt","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/egypt\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":902,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/christians-jihadists-and-the-fate-of-syria\/","url_meta":{"origin":6168,"position":2},"title":"Christians, Jihadists, and the Fate of Syria","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 16, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Stonegate Institute What is the alternative to Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria? A simple if indirect way to find out is to consider which groups in Syria are especially for or against Assad \u2014 and why. Christian minorities, who, at 10% of the Syrian population, have the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1309,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/iraqs-christians-near-extinction\/","url_meta":{"origin":6168,"position":3},"title":"Iraq’s Christians Near Extinction","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 23, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim FrontPage Magazine A\u00a0recent\u00a0Fox News report\u00a0tells of how \"a rash of attacks on Christian-owned businesses in\u00a0northern Iraq\u00a0has raised troubling questions about the future safety of the country's shrinking Christian community, particularly as US forces withdraw completely from the nation they've refereed since 2003.\" In fact, \"questions about the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Iraq"","block_context":{"text":"Iraq","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iraq\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6716,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/exploiting-christian-persecution-to-demonize-israel\/","url_meta":{"origin":6168,"position":4},"title":"Exploiting Christian Persecution to Demonize Israel","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 6, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0RaymondIbrahim.com\u00a0 What\u2019s worse than the silence of Western Christians concerning the Muslim persecution of their coreligionists in the Islamic world?\u00a0 Answer: Cynically exploiting that persecution for a political agenda\u2014in the case of a recent\u00a0Daily Beast\u00a0article, to excoriate the state of Israel and its supporters. Titled \u201cWhy Won\u2019t\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Israel"","block_context":{"text":"Israel","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/israel\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6454,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/brotherhood-imposes-jizya-tribute-on-egypts-christians\/","url_meta":{"origin":6168,"position":5},"title":"Brotherhood Imposes Jizya Tribute on Egypt’s Christians","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 12, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim \/\/\u00a0RaymondIbrahim.com\u00a0 Now that the attacks on Egypt\u2019s Christian churches have subsided, stage two of the jihad \u2014 profiting from the fear and terror caused by stage one \u2014 is setting in:reports\u00a0are arriving that the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters are forcing the roughly 15,000 Christian Copts of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Egypt"","block_context":{"text":"Egypt","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/egypt\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6168"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6168"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6170,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6168\/revisions\/6170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}