By JOHN J. METZLER
UNITED NATIONS — The spate of brutal and systematic attacks on Christian communities in Syria, Iraq, and Egypt by the Islamic State has surged. Yet despite this targeted violence, there’s a climate of international indifference by many governments and even some Christian communities in the West toward this modern-day religious persecution.
Look at the recent roster of IS terror: In Libya, jihadi militants capture and then behead 21 Coptic Christians from Egypt. This barbaric attack prompted the UN Security Council to issue a statement condemning the “heinous and cowardly” murders. The UN council added, “ISIL must be defeated and the intolerance, violence, and hatred it espouses must be stamped out.”
The UN’s Human Rights Chief Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein called the executions a “vile crime targeting people on basis of their religion.”
This action, carried out in the increasing lawlessness of Libya, was not the first time Coptic Christians or their churches have been attacked.
Speaking from Rome, Pope Francis stated, “It makes no difference whether they be Catholics, Orthodox, Copts, or Protestants…the martyrs belong to all Christians.”
A week later in Syria’s remote Hassakeh Province, IS terrorists seized hundreds of Assyrian Christian women and children for a yet undetermined fate while 33 Christian villages were attacked.
In Iraq, ISIL’s lightning military advances into the northern cities such as Mosul have targeted minority groups such as Christians, Yazidis, and Kurds. A recent UN Report on Iraq conceded, “The safety and security of members of Iraq’s diverse ethnic and religious communities in areas controlled by ISIL remain of grave concern, particularly the thousands of women and children who remain in captivity.”
After ISIL seized Mosul, Christians were targeted for conversion to Islam or death. Christian houses were marked by the sign of “N” for Nazarene.
Middle-Eastern Christians form an ancient quilt of Assyrian, Coptic, Chaldean Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Maronite Catholic communities from Egypt through Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. Christians have formed a unique fabric in these overwhelmingly Muslim societies and have traditionally excelled in business, education, and the arts. These are Arab Christians, whose roots in the region stretch back two thousand years, predating Islam.
During Syria’s secular regime before the civil war, Christians made up about ten percent of the population of 22 million people. In neighboring Lebanon, Christians comprised over a third of this once prosperous and secular land. Conflict and diaspora have diminished their numbers.
The vengeful intolerance and white-heat hatred that ISIL and its affiliates have for Mideast Christians seem matched only by an equally hateful mass killing of fellow Muslims. Though the tiny Christian communities pose no real political threat to the IS rise, the very same communities can be held hostage for propaganda and intimidation value.
Vulnerable Mideast Christians have long been targeted by Al-Qaeda and Al-Nusra terrorists. Just a year ago IS was proclaimed by President Obama to be no more that a “junior varsity” terrorist organization. Six months later its warriors had seized large parts of northern Iraq and were at the gates of Baghdad. American air strikes on IS started only in August, and while partly effective, have failed to stem the IS surge.
The rise of ISIL has initially been helped by the initial American underestimation of the threat and embarrassing indecision over policy. The wider reason rests with a regional power vacuum created in part by the Obama administration’s indifference to the fate of Iraq’s fragile stability in the wake of the American troop pullout and a dithering disconnect on defense issues.
But does ISIL wish to use Christian persecution as a trap to lure Western (and, let’s admit, post-Christian countries) back into the Middle East cauldron? Possibly.
Significantly, despite the use of American and allied airpower against IS targets, changing the regional chessboard will require boots on the ground to counter, confront, and defeat this scourge. But the troops should be Arab, not American, so as not to fall into the trap of “the Christian West” fighting Islam.
IS strives to forcibly create a Sunni Muslim Theocratic State. We are not talking about a reasonably pluralistic state nor a typical Arab autocracy, but a medieval Islamic caliphate, where there’s no room for any religious or social dissent. It is doubtful whether most Sunni Muslims favor this path, but it is equally certain that IS intimidation and terror are quite convincing, given no serious counterforce.
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