(Wall Street Journal Europe) Editorial - In Egypt, seven Coptic Christians were murdered Wednesday by a Muslim gunman as they filed out of a midnight mass in Nag Hamadi. In Pakistan, more than 100 Christian homes were ransacked by a Muslim mob last July in Bahmaniwala. In Iraq that same month, seven Christian churches were bombed in Baghdad and Mosul in the space of three days. Such atrocities - and there are scores of other examples - are grim reminders that when it comes to persecution, few groups have suffered as grievously as Christians in Muslim lands. Little wonder, then, that once-thriving Christian communities in the Muslim world have now largely voted with their feet by fleeing to safer havens, often in Europe or the U.S. That's true even in Bethlehem where the Christian majority has largely fled since the arrival in the 1990s of Yasser Arafat's repressive government and the ascendancy of Islamist groups such as Hamas. By contrast, Christians practice their religion freely and openly in Israel, just a few miles distant. Attention seems endlessly focused on "Islamophobia," but the West's tolerance for its large Muslim populations stands in sharp contrast to the Muslim world's bigotry and persecution of its own religious minorities.
2010-01-08 08:40:02Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive