Liberals Ignore Persecuted Middle East Christians, Worry Instead about Thriving American Muslims

Originally published under the title, “Democratic Dementia: Americans ‘Mistreat’ Muslims More than Muslims Mistreat Christians?” This piece has been edited from the original with the author’s permission.

Islamism is responsible for the extreme persecution of Christians.

A February Rasmussen report sheds light on just how divorced from reality are millions of American liberal voters. After pointing out that “Democrats are more likely to think Muslims are mistreated in America than to think Christians are persecuted in the Islamic world,” the report elaborates: To put these statistics in perspective, consider some facts. Open Doors, an international human rights organization that publishes annual reports concerning the global persecution of Christians, noted in its most recent report: “215 million Christians experience high levels of persecution.” During 2017, a reported 3,066 Christians were killed, 1,252 abducted, and 1,020 raped or sexually harassed on account of their faith. And 793 churches were attacked or destroyed.

The overwhelming majority of this slaughter and destruction occurred in 50 nations — 38 of which are Muslim-majority.

The liberal media is dedicated to maintaining liberal narratives at all costs: in this case, that Christians are always the aggressors, while Muslims always the misunderstood victims.

“Islamic oppression” is further responsible for the “extreme persecution” of Christians — meaning the abuse, rape, imprisonment, or slaughter of Christians— in eight of the ten worst nations to be a Christian. “Every day,” the organization adds, “six women are raped, sexually harassed or are forced into marriage to a Muslim under threat of death due to their Christian faith.”

The above statistics are actually conservative. Based on the findings of the Italian-based Center for Studies on New Religions, “90,000 Christians died for their faith in 2016” alone, a great many under Islam.

It’s worth noting that the overwhelming majority of Muslims persecuting Christians are not “terrorists” (at least not formally), but rather come from all rungs of Muslim society.

Take Egypt, for example (the 17th worst nation where Christians experience “very high persecution”). According to the report, along with “violent religious groups,” two other segments of society are “very strong[ly]” responsible for the persecution: (1) “non-Christian religious leaders” — meaning Muslim clerics, sheikhs, imams, and the rest — “at any level from local to national"; and (2) “normal citizens (people from the general public), including mobs.”

Similarly, “officials at any level from local to national” are “strongly responsible” for the “oppression” of Egypt’s Christians, particularly “through their failure to vindicate the rights of Christians and also through their discriminatory acts which violate the fundamental rights of Christians.”...

Now, compare all this to the supposedly worse — in liberal minds — “mistreatment” Muslims suffer in America.

According to a November 2017 Pew report: “In 2016, there were 127 reported [Muslim] victims of aggravated or simple assault.” In the preceding decades, assaults on Muslims averaged around 50 a year.

Even if this number were accurate, it pales in comparison to what millions of Christians — not 127 — are experiencing under Islam. But the fact is many of these anti-Muslim hate crimes are later found to have been fabricated or grossly exaggerated. Note, for instance, how the Pew report conflates “assaults” with “simple assaults” — even though the latter “does not involve physical contact with the victim.”

Moreover, Muslims in America do not experience institutionalized persecution — that is, persecution at the hands of governments, authorities, and police — as Christians under Islam do...Nonetheless, ... all these actual facts have little to do with what a significantly large segment of the American voting population — mostly liberals and Democrats... believe.

Why they are so misinformed becomes apparent when one understands that the liberal media is dedicated to maintaining liberal narratives at all costs: in this case, that Christians are always the aggressors, while Muslims always the misunderstood victims.

Thus, when journalist Shannon Bream recently announced a forthcoming segment on the growth of Christian persecution around the world, ABC’s Matthew Dowd tweeted: “Maybe you can talk about the bigger problem which is persecution of Muslims in America and around the globe. Bigger issue.”

The truly “bigger issue” is that tens of millions of Americans are so deluded as to believe — and inevitably base their votes on — the inverse of reality.