This week as, Christians in this country celebrated the birth of Christ; Christians in Iraq, Syrian, Egypt, and across North Africa were being kidnapped, beaten and killed by their Muslim neighbors. Since 2003, Christians in Iraq have been afraid to put up Christmas trees or other decorations, because Muslims in Iraq and across the Middle-East desire religious cleansing and are increasing the number of attacks on Christians.
During the last decade more than 1,000 Christians have been killed in Iraq and sixty-two of their churches destroyed. Prior to 1987 there were some 1.2 million Christians living in Iraq, but today only an estimated 340,000 remain.
Christian leaders in the Middle-East are calling on the West to help stop the mortal exodus of Christians from this region, because what had been happening in Iraq for the past ten years suddenly started to happen in Egypt and Syria during the Arab Spring, some eighteen months ago. Coptic Catholics in Egypt have lost over one-hundred churches during the past eighteen months and 45,000 Christians have fled the area.
Muslims across the Middle-East are becoming very aggressive and violence across the area has increased. Islamist extremist are taking advantage of the anarchy that’s occurring in Egypt, Syria and Iraq in an effort to exterminate the Christian population in the Middle-East.
It is important to note that Christians were present in the Arab world some 600 years before there were any Muslims. Arabs were the first non-Hebrew Christians in the world and became Christians during and immediately after Jesus Christ’s own lifetime. Christianity was literally born in the Middle-East. This connection is rapidly disappearing and today only four percent of the population in North Africa and the Middle-East is Christian.
World Watch List is a list of the worst fifty nations that persecute Christians. These countries are ranked by order of persecution with extreme being the highest ranking. The number one extreme nation is North Korea, followed in order by Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia.
The flamboyant Dennis Rodman, former NBA star returned from North Korea on December 22nd, after visiting the country for the third time this year. Apparently Rodman doesn’t care how North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un treats his own people. When asked about North Korea’s human rights record, he told the Associated Press he goes to Korea “just to do a basketball game, and have some fun.”
Rodman also informed the world that Kim Jong Un was a “very good guy.” His third visit to that country came less than a week after Kim had executed his uncle Jang Song Taek. One would think Rodman would care just a little about Korea’s Human Rights Record, but perhaps he is a North Korean convert, or perhaps he just doesn’t care about anyone but himself.
Of course the United States Government isn’t much better than Rodman when it comes to dealing with human rights. It’s Rodman’s own government that walks hand-in-hand with Saudi Arabia, the second worst persecutor of Christians on the watch list.
Quote for the Week: “It’s a bad hen that eats at your house, and lays at another’s.”
