Our media and intelligentsia are always on alert to defend everything coming from Islam, from women's veils to the "right not to be offended" by cartoons. The same establishment, however, lies in a coma when it comes to Christian symbols under attack.
The West today keeps on hiding its deepest secret: that there is an Islamic war going on against our own Judeo-Christian civilization.
"They want Christianity eradicated, and they want to convert all Muslims to their crusade... They want it to be a holy war. And they want Christians gone. And I don't think that narrative is getting the attention it should get..." — Piers Morgan, Daily Mail.
There are pictures one cannot forget -- for instance, of Russian troops hoisting their flag over burning Berlin in 1945. It was the end of Nazism but the rise of Communism. Another photo is of U.S. Marines raising the American flag over the battle-scarred Japanese island of Iwo Jima.
Today the West faces another totalitarianism: radical Islam. One place that witnessed the new horror is Mount Sinjar in the Nineveh province of Iraq, once a home to religious minorities, especially Christians and Yazidis. Thousands of years of history changed when the jihadists of ISIS invaded Sinjar in August of 2014. They slaughtered men and enslaved girls and women. Christian churches were razed to the ground, and houses of worship, looted.
In 2016 alone, 90,000 Christians around the world were murdered for their faith, according to a report from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity. Between 2005 and 2015, 900,000 Christians were martyred. According to Open Doors, another Christian advocacy group, one out of every 12 Christians today experiences extreme persecution for their faith; the total comes to 215 million around the world.
"The persecution of Christians is real. It is global in scope, brutal in its nature, daily in its occurrence, and growing worse than ever", said University of Notre Dame Professor Dan Philpott. A recent report by the World Council of Churchesput the number of Christians left in Iraq at fewer than 250,000. "Christianity is finished", said Canon Andrew White, the great vicar of Baghdad.
Christians have also been fleeing Sinai: the Egyptian branch of ISIS has been slaughtering them in a campaign of "religious cleansing". ISIS released a video calling on its supporters to target Christians across Egypt, describing them as its "favourite prey". The Islamists then targeted two packed Egyptian churches, where they slaughtered 47 Christians. From Cairo to Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray in northern France, churches now appear Islamists' preferred targets.
There is, in all this bad news, a beam of hope; the valiant Kurdish Peshmerga fighters liberated Sinjar and rescued tens of thousands of Yazidis and Christians. On Easter Sunday, an unidentified soldier planted a cross on the soil where a Mount Sinjar church had once stood. It was a declaration of the resurrection of life after the onslaught of the Islamic State. This cross was like the flag raised in Iwo Jima.
Yet, no Western newspaper, which could help the public rally for their Christian brethren, published this extraordinary photograph. Why? Our general unwillingness to address any threat indicates a Western impotence in the face of barbarism. An editor at the Daily Mail, Piers Morgan, has commented that while terror attacks in the Western capitals all got "huge attention," the ones against Christians did not.
"They want Christianity eradicated, and they want to convert all Muslims to their crusade. They want it to be a holy war. And they want Christians gone. And I don't think that narrative is getting the attention it should get in the American media and, I have to say, in other media as well around the world".
"The Western world has long gotten used to the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, as if their bad lot is inevitable and simply has to be accepted," noted a Canadian philosopher, Mathieu Bock-Côté, in Le Figaro. "Christianity is destined to die or have no more than a residual existence in what used to be its cradle".
While natural disasters such as tsunamis or earthquakes spur solidarity throughout the West, the disappearance of entire Christian populations and their ancient civilizations never seems to disturb anyone. Perhaps it is a sign of denial by the West. Perhaps it is the result of rejecting Judeo-Christian history and humanistic values -- those that cause the demonization the foremost victim of jihad, Israel, instead of the jihadists trying to destroy it. In 2014, we saw tens of thousands of people marching in the streets of European capitals in favor of the Palestinians, even as they were carpeting Israel with missiles and shouting "death to Israel and the Jews". We have seen how unspeakable Christian agony in Islamic lands has led to only a few hundred people turning out on the streets of London and Paris.
Our media and intelligentsia are always on the alert to defend everything coming from Islam, whether women's veils or the "right not to be offended" by cartoons. The same establishment, however, lies in a coma when Christian symbols come under attack. Wilfred McClay, in an essay, "The Strange Persistence of Guilt", notes that while religion is in retreat in the West, guilt seems as powerfully present as ever, and a cult of being or protecting a victim proliferates. People rush to nurture the perfect victim: threadbare, with no identity, who has run away from "war". Christians under Islam are not part of that group. Muslims are.
The West today keeps on hiding its deepest secret: that there is an Islamic war going on against our own Judeo-Christian civilization. Few people in the West see in the media the houses of Christians in Mosul marked with an "N". The Islamic State painted it for "Nasrani" ("Nazarene") -- Arabic for "Christian". A genocide symbolized by one letter. But no one sees it or cares.
American television networks devoted six times more air-time to covering the death of a gorilla, Harambe, than they did to the Islamic State beheading 21 Coptic Christians on a beach in Libya, according to a study by the Media Research Center. How is it possible that the killing of a gorilla moves the Western public more than 19 Yazidi girls burned alive in a cage? Few people saw the photograph of Khaled al Asaad, the brave archaeologist who refused to lead ISIS to the antiquities of Palmyra. The henchmen of ISIS beheaded him and hung him upside down. We turned away in horror.
A famous 9/11 picture by Thomas Hoepker, taken at a restaurant in Brooklyn, shows a group of young New Yorkers sunbathing, relaxed and calm, observing the smoke rising from the Twin Towers on the other side of the East River. Since then, the only enemy we ever point to is us. We censor the existential threat Western civilization is facing -- whether on an Iraqi mountain or Paris's Champs-Élysées. If Eastern Christianity can be extinguished so easily, Western Europe will be next.
Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.
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9 Reader Comments Mark Anderson • Nov 19, 2017 at 11:57
An excellent article.
But is Piers Morgan actually saying the things you quoted him as saying? Piers Morgan supporting Christians and criticizing Islam??
He seems to have had a 180 degree change of perspective.
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Francis Meyrick • Nov 19, 2017 at 11:48
Is it indifference? I wonder. More to it. How about 'emotional laziness' and 'intellectual deficit'. The need to be publicly SEEN (and applauded) as virtuous/enlightened/informed, without doing the pesky, hard, soul searching, research work. Underneath it all, not being bothered to feel the pain of distant folk. Especially if feeling that pain, and admitting to it, might lead to the need for hard research work, and (God forbid), a policy/opinion standpoint that conflicted with the meekly grazing, voter-peer sheep. And the establishment accolades. Lightweight, Pretty Boy Trudeau comes to mind, but there a millions more, all jostling shamelessly for best position in the photo op. The road to hell... is paved with fine, tear jerking speeches. Sham tears. Real challenges.
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dkjack • Nov 19, 2017 at 11:20
The insights of Meotti's essay are affirmed by those of the great humanist scholar Kenneth Clark:
"And then exhaustion, the feeling of hopelessness which can overtake people even with a high degree of material prosperity....Of course, civilisation requires a modicum of material prosperity - enough to provide a little leisure. But, far more, it requires confidence - confidence in the society in which one lives, belief in its philosophy, belief in its laws, and confidence in one's own mental powers. The way in which the stones of the Pont du Card [the great Roman aqueduct in southern France still standing] are laid is not only a triumph of technical skill, but shows a vigorous belief in law and discipline. Vigour, energy, vitality: all the great civilisations - or civilising epochs - have had a weight of energy behind them. People sometimes think that civilisation consists in fine sensibilities and good conversation and all that. These can be among the agreeable results of civilisation, but they are not what make a civilisation, and a society can have these amenities and yet be dead and rigid.
"So if one asks why the civilisation of Greece and Rome collapsed, the real answer is that it was exhausted."
Clark was speaking at the end of the 1960s, when rebels of the left were shaking our confidence. They play the same game today, as we, like the Classical world, are faced with barbarian invasions. And the dysfunctions we suffer today are rooted in the same sickness: indifference and exhaustion. Only today, we call these vices virtues: tolerance, diversity. Yes, equal time for fascism, misogyny, ignorance, brutality and ugliness! And those who oppose this call are branded xenophobes, racists and bigots. No doubt that's what the effete Roman élites called those raising the alarm as their civilisation was overwhelmed by the barbarians.
They say those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I think the élites presiding over our own cultural demise are too stupid even to be aware of history. I think these supreme narcissists believe history began the day they were born.
Reply->wow ....talk be well said !!
Hanna • Nov 19, 2017 at 10:52
Europeans have only themselves to blame for the mess they are in. Who lets in millions of strangers into one's country. Get used to it — Europe is never going going to be the same anymore. That is all the world needed — one more barbaric country. GOD SAVE US ALL. Thank you Giulio Meotti and Gatestone. Great article.
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Heather • Nov 19, 2017 at 10:18
Thank you, Mr.Meotti, for your efforts to inform about the scourge of radical Islamists and their subsequent atrocities. I always read your columns and appreciate your honesty and courage. False righteousness on the part of news organizations combined with an apathetic uninformed public are contributing to the fall of civilized societies. People are in denial and rejecting all the warning signs.
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judith grayson • Nov 19, 2017 at 10:11
we have turned to stone. we do nothing to combat this evil that has insinuated itself into us changing us into lifeforms that are virtually unrecognizable. humorless, ignorant, unteachable, corrupt without shame or valor or honor. every shard of our destroyed lives lays around at our feet. it is the end of our story. the uniquely American story. the greatest democratic constitutional republic in the history of the world. we were cautioned to eternal vigilance. we didn't stay the watch. we are a Greek myth.
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Jeff Page • Nov 19, 2017 at 08:19
All we can expect from Western media is support for Muslims. They are all terrified of the threats and intimidation and are more than happy to concentrate there focus towards those who oppose Islam and its push towards the Islamification of Western countries in which their followers now live. The media are only too happy to help them achieve their goal of totalitarianism. The media ignore all and every atrocity carried out by Muslims and instead concentrate their treachery and direct their bias against the people who want none of this Islamification taking hold in their immediate areas or indeed their country! The media lie and hide all atrocities carried out in the name of Islam and at the drop of a hat turn their attention to attacking those that speak out against Islam and the general way that Muslims act. The Muslim belief system is entirely different to any other religion, it is totalitarian and will never change despite the hopes of Western politicians that Muslims will integrate. It will never happen in a million lifetimes and it's about the fools realised that they are flogging a dead horse!
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Eric Jan Kamp • Nov 19, 2017 at 05:48
The West is currently going through the times of its own decadence. Christianity has been replaced with multiculturalism, relativism and globalism, and the leaders of remnant churches are paying lip service to the anti-Christian Leftist agenda. Probably they are preparing and conducting their flock to the state of dhimmitude under coming sharia laws.
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William III • Nov 19, 2017 at 05:43
Western Civilization is the leading civilization on the planet, we build this world, we invent, produce, design, develop. No other culture has been doing that, " Tolerance and Apathy are the signs of a dying civilization " Aristoteles. Without the Western Civilization there is no future.
