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Where Are Christians Persecuted in the Middle East?

(Spectator-UK) Jake Wallis Simons - On Dec. 19, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Hosam Naoum, Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem, penned an article in the Sunday Times entitled: "Let us pray for the Christians being driven from the Holy Land." About half way down, the clergymen did briefly say that "in Israel, the overall number of Christians has risen" and acknowledged that "Christians in Israel enjoy democratic and religious freedoms that are a beacon in the region." Marie van der Zyl, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, responded: "If the overall Palestinian population has greatly increased, but the Palestinian Christian population has significantly declined, then clearly there are more complex reasons than those raised in the article." Overall, Christians in Israel are flourishing. In Israel, Christian schools operate freely and with the full support of the state. More Christian Arabs leave school with grades that will get them into university than any other group in the country (71.2%). More Christian women attend higher education than from any other background, excelling particularly in medicine, engineering, architecture and law. Compare this to the routine anti-Christian carnage across the region, which the Foreign Office has described as "coming close to genocide." In Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Egypt, anti-Christian oppression is carried out by Islamist terrorists; in Iran, Algeria and Qatar, it is the state that carries out systematic persecution. Surely such persecution deserves at least a mention by the Archbishops. Yet this Christmas, the Archbishop of Canterbury is ignoring all this to draw our attention to the Jewish state alone. The writer is editor of the Jewish Chronicle (UK).
2021-12-23 00:00:00
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