Knights of Columbus’ genocide advertisement
A report by a renowned journalist
states that Christians are
to be excluded from an impending official United States government
declaration of ISIS genocide. If true, it would reflect
a familiar pattern within the administration of a politically correct bias that
views Christians — even non-Western congregations such as those in Iraq and
Syria — never as victims but always as Inquisition-style oppressors. (That a
State Department genocide designation for ISIS may be
imminent was acknowledged last week in congressional testimony, by Ambassador
Anne Patterson, the assistant secretary of the State Department’s Near East
Bureau.)
Yazidis, according to the story by
investigative reporter Michael Isikoff, are going to be officially recognized
as genocide victims, and rightly so. Yet Christians, who are also among the most
vulnerable religious minority groups that have been deliberately and
mercilessly targeted for eradication by ISIS, are not.
This is not an academic matter. A genocide designation would have significant
policy implications for American efforts to restore property and lands taken
from the minority groups and for offers of aid, asylum, and other protections to such victims. Worse, it
would mean that, under the Genocide Convention, the United States and other
governments would not be bound to act to suppress or even prevent the genocide
of these Christians.
An unnamed State Department official
was quoted by Isikoff as saying that only the attacks on Yazidis have made “the
high bar” of the genocide standard and as pointing to the mass killing of 1,000
Yazidi men and the enslavement of thousands of Yazidi women and girls. To
propose that Christians have been simply driven off their land but not suffered
similar fates is deeply misinformed. In fact, the last Christians to pray in
the language spoken by Jesus are also being deliberately targeted for
extinction through equally brutal measures.
Christians have been executed by the
thousands. Christian women and girls are vulnerable to sexual enslavement. Many
of their clergy have been assassinated and their churches and ancient
monasteries demolished or desecrated. They have been systematically stripped of
all their wealth, and those too elderly or sick to flee ISIS-controlled
territory have been forcibly converted to Islam or killed, such as an
80-year-old woman who was burned to death for refusing to abide by ISIS religious rules. Pope Francis pronounced their suffering
“genocide” in July. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and a broad array
of other churches have done so as well. Analysis from an office of the
Holocaust Museum apparently relied on by the State Department asserts that ISIS protects Christians in exchange for jizya, an
Islamic tax for “People of the Book,” but the assertion is simply not grounded
in fact.
ISIS atrocities against Christians became public in June 2014 when the
jihadists stamped Christian homes in Mosul with the red letter N for
“Nazarene” and began enforcing its “convert or die” policy. The atrocities
continue. Recently the Melkite Catholic bishop of Aleppo reported that 1,000
Christians, including two Orthodox bishops, have been kidnapped and murdered in
his city alone. In September, ISIS executed, on
videotape, three Assyrian Christian men and threatened to do the same to 200
more being held captive by the terrorist group. Recent reports by an American
Christian aid group state that several Christians who refused to renounce their
faith were raped, beheaded, or crucified a few months ago.
Christian women and girls are also enslaved and sexually abused. Three
Christian females sold in ISIS slave markets were
profiled in a New York Times Magazine report last summer. ISIS rules allow Christian sabaya, that is, their
sexual enslavement. Its magazine Dabiq explicitly approved the
enslavement of Christian girls in Nigeria, and the jihadist group posted prices
for Christian, as well as Yazidi, female slaves in Raqqa.
In recent weeks, the stalwart
Knights of Columbus have been placing emotionally searing ads in Politico
and elsewhere advocating the passage of House Resolution 75.
This bipartisan bill was initiated
by Representative Jeff Fortenberry (R., Neb.) and Representative Anna Eshoo
(D., Calif.) to declare that genocide is being faced by Christians, Yazidis,
and other vulnerable groups. The ads — depicting a mother and child, who appear
as the very personifications of grief, against a landscape of ISIS
destruction — might strike a nerve within the Obama administration. But as of
now, the administration looks poised to preempt the bill and render a grave
injustice to the suffering Christians of Iraq and Syria.
About the author:*Nina Shea, Director, Center for
Religious Freedom
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