Sunspots? Newsweek notices Muslim persecution of Christians

Newsweek, February 2012

Spencer pamphlet, April 2011

Bob Dylan: "Mavis, I've had the blues."
Mavis Staples: "Oh, Bobby, don't tell me you got the blues."
Bob Dylan: "Yeah, I've been up all night, laying in bed, having insomnia, reading Snoozeweek."
Mavis Staples: "Snoozeweek? That ain't gonna get rid of no blues. Let's do some singing. Sing about it, you know..." -- Bob Dylan and Mavis Staples,"Gonna Change My Way of Thinking," 2003

It is good to see Newsweek, which has been an energetically dhimmi publication, finally taking notice of the rampant worldwide Muslim persecution of Christians. It's also quite surprising, given that in the past, Newsweek has denied the existence of the stealth jihad; billowed fogs of deception about the pro-Sharia Ground Zero mosque imam Feisal Abdul Rauf as a "moderate"; dismissed concerns about the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a "conspiracy theory"; dismissed concerns about Eurabia, i.e., the Islamization of Europe, as "false fears"; and even called for a general surrender of the West to the global jihad.

So why is a thoroughly compromised publication like Newsweek suddenly noticing the worldwide jihad against Christians? Your guess is as good as mine, but in any case it is a welcome development to see the mainstream media finally waking up to this phenomenon, which we have been tracking here at Jihad Watch for years. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has written a fine piece for them. Because she is an ex-Muslim and an African woman, she is allowed to say things in Newsweek that Newsweek would charge me with "racism," "bigotry" and "Islamophobia" for saying.

For more in-depth coverage of this issue, see my April 2011 pamphlet, "Muslim Persecution of Christians." And as for Snoozeweek, in case you're not planning a trip to the dentist this week, here is an excerpt: "Ayaan Hirsi Ali: The Global War on Christians in the Muslim World," by Ayaan Hirsi Ali in Newsweek, February 6:

From one end of the muslim [sic] world to the other, Christians are being murdered for their faith.
We hear so often about Muslims as victims of abuse in the West and combatants in the Arab Spring’s fight against tyranny. But, in fact, a wholly different kind of war is underway—an unrecognized battle costing thousands of lives. Christians are being killed in the Islamic world because of their religion. It is a rising genocide that ought to provoke global alarm.
The portrayal of Muslims as victims or heroes is at best partially accurate. In recent years the violent oppression of Christian minorities has become the norm in Muslim-majority nations stretching from West Africa and the Middle East to South Asia and Oceania. In some countries it is governments and their agents that have burned churches and imprisoned parishioners. In others, rebel groups and vigilantes have taken matters into their own hands, murdering Christians and driving them from regions where their roots go back centuries.
The media’s reticence on the subject no doubt has several sources. One may be fear of provoking additional violence. Another is most likely the influence of lobbying groups such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation—a kind of United Nations of Islam centered in Saudi Arabia—and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Over the past decade, these and similar groups have been remarkably successful in persuading leading public figures and journalists in the West to think of each and every example of perceived anti-Muslim discrimination as an expression of a systematic and sinister derangement called “Islamophobia”—a term that is meant to elicit the same moral disapproval as xenophobia or homophobia.
But a fair-minded assessment of recent events and trends leads to the conclusion that the scale and severity of Islamophobia pales in comparison with the bloody Christophobia currently coursing through Muslim-majority nations from one end of the globe to the other. The conspiracy of silence surrounding this violent expression of religious intolerance has to stop. Nothing less than the fate of Christianity—and ultimately of all religious minorities—in the Islamic world is at stake.

More here.

Posted by Robert on February 8, 2012 7:54 AM