Oppressive Islam

In the first week of November Prince Charles, a man sometimes criticized for being too supportive and praising of Britain’s Muslim community, made a passionate speech calling for the Islamic world to stop persecuting its Christian minorities. The same day it was announced that a Christian couple had been beaten to death in Pakistan for allegedly defacing a copy of the Quran. Whether they did such a thing is doubtful but, anyway, irrelevant. Only barbaric regimes and barbaric religions believe in killing people for marking inanimate objects.

The lynching of the Pakistani Christians came as no surprise to those of us who monitor the situation, but the statement by the heir to the throne and the man who will, providing he becomes king, be known as Defender of the Faith, most certainly did. Unlike so many, too many Church leaders, he was sufficiently moved by what he has seen and read to speak truth to Islamist power. Mind you, the Archbishop of Canterbury has certainly spoken out too. Sadly, the Catholic Church has some catching up to do.

There were times when I was writing my new book, Hatred: Islam’s War on Christianity, when I felt like giving the whole enterprise up. It was a dark, depressing exercise but also a vital one and one I am proud to have achieved. The call of Christians persecuted in Islamic countries is, if you will, a silent scream — a roar of pain and suffering ignored as if noiseless by so many in mainstream media and the political and religious establishments of North America and Europe. I have even heard clergy dismiss this bloodbath as “overblown” or to argue that to expose it would be “damaging to ecumenism.” God forgive them.