Christian Persecution Jul/Aug 2022
UN Foists ‘Combat Islamophobia’ Day on World
by Raymond Ibrahim
It’s official: The United Nations (UN) has formally accepted the concept of “Islamophobia,” a move that will undoubtedly further paralyze any measures against Islamic aggression.
On March 15, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution to mark March 15 as “the International Day to Combat Islamophobia.” The resolution was introduced by Pakistan and supported by 55 Muslim-majority countries of the Riyadh-based Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which is also trying to get the UN to accept “blasphemy” laws.
Two points worth considering are (1) what this bill will do and (2) the hypocrisy of all who support it.
For starters, the resolution will further freeze all frank discussion on Islam because criticism will fall into the category of “Islamophobia”—and that, of course, is the whole point: to place Islam on a pedestal and shield it from criticism.
The actual reason many feel Islam should be granted special protection is that, unlike Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc., many of its teachings are problematic—killing apostates and “blasphemers,” treating women like property, and legalizing sexual slavery, to name a few—and, therefore, not suited for the modern world. Hence the real need to silence all criticism in the guise of “protecting Muslims.”
Meanwhile, those who truly need protecting from Muslims—for instance, religious minorities—get zero recognition by the UN. The Muslim persecution of Christians, for example, is a real phenomenon: It’s unwavering, constant, systematic, and systemic; and it conforms to Sharia-approved patterns—meaning its root source is Islam.
Since July 2011, I’ve been compiling a monthly series, “Muslim Persecution of Christians” (published by the Gatestone Institute), collating and summarizing the one or two dozen accounts of persecution that surface every month. The accounts documented in every one of these now 125 reports typically fit under the same themes—including the bombing, burning, or banning of churches; the rape and forced conversion of Christian women; murderous attacks on and long prison sentences for apostates, blasphemers, and evangelists; overall discrimination and exploitation; and, increasingly, the outright slaughter of Christians.
Similarly, a study published in January 2022 found that, in 2021, “over 360 million Christians suffer[ed] high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith.” On average, 16 Christians were killed for their faith every single day. During that same period, more than 5,000 churches were attacked and/or destroyed.
And the overwhelming majority of this persecution took place at the hands of Muslims. Worse, the Muslim nations that are especially brutal and notorious in their persecution of Christians—including Afghanistan and Somalia, respectively considered the worst and third worst persecutors and murderers of Christians in the entire world—are members of the OIC, the same organization that sponsored the “Islamophobia” resolution the UN just adopted.
And Pakistan—where not one week seems to go by without an underaged Christian girl being kidnapped, raped, and forced to convert and marry her abductor while the police and courts side with the rapists—is the nation that submitted the UN resolution.
Apparently not all religions matter to the UN. Only one religion matters; and that religion has just been granted a privileged position.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute. To read this article in its entirety, along with others by Raymond Ibrahim, log on to his website, raymondibrahim.com.
Used by permission.
