Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 10, 1995 TAG: 9507100023
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL HOROWITZ
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Saving special treatment for the church's minister, the authorities permitted him to live as an ironically visible symbol - but only after torturing him and plucking out his eyes.
For Ethiopia's Christian population, a vibrant presence since the fourth century, the massacre came as a shock but not a surprise. In the Oromo region, as in a growing number of other countries, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism has effectively criminalized the practice of Christianity. But while Christians in Islamic countries are increasingly imperiled for their beliefs, the U.S. government has deliberately ignored their plight.
Current U.S. immigration policies are designed to make it difficult for besieged Christians to take advantage of our laws granting asylum to religious minorities fleeing persecution. In clear violation of these laws, the Immigration and Naturalization Service frequently returns or causes the return of Christian minorities to Islamic regimes where they face jail, torture and even murder.
While, historically, Islamic nations have been relatively tolerant of religious minorities, the recent rise of Islamic fundamentalism has caused such tolerance to evaporate. Algeria's Armed Islamic Group recently called for the ``annihilation and physical liquidation of Christian crusaders.'' Iran's chief religious leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, recently attacked the West's use of the ``pretext of Christianity'' as a means of committing ``all sorts of injustice'' against the Islamic world.
Such views have become central tenets of the rapidly growing Islamist movement. Under apostasy doctrines, Muslim converts to Christianity may be punished by death. Until recently, such doctrines were routinely ignored by Islamic governments, or interpreted liberally. But particularly in the case of Christian converts and evangelical Protestants, this is no longer true:
In Pakistan, the Islamization of its legal system includes a sweeping blasphemy law that prohibits speaking or acting against the prophet Mohammed; the country's highest religious court recently made violations punishable solely by death. Christians are permitted to vote only for token representatives to the National Assembly, and are effectively excluded from the country's political system.
In Egypt, where the government has felt obliged to appease militant fundamentalists, Christian converts and evangelicals have been imprisoned and tortured. The Culture Ministry recently granted censorship authority to Muslim scholars, who produce and distribute hundreds of thousands of scurrilously anti-Christian tapes. Religious segregation unofficially exists in schools, and beatings of Christian students as ``devils'' now regularly occurs. Burnings of churches and lootings of Christian-owned businesses are on the rise.
In Sudan, conversion to Christianity is a criminal act punishable by flogging, and the government denies food to famine-area Christians. As documented by the Puebla Institute, thousands of Christian children have been forcibly taken from their families, and many as young as 6 have been sold as slaves - slaves - to buyers in Sudan, Libya and other Islamic countries.
In Iran, three of the most prominent evangelical leaders were abducted and assassinated last year. Christian converts are effectively barred from attending services of any kind, and large numbers of converts and evangelizers have been arrested, imprisoned, tortured and forced to recant their faith. Others more fortunate have merely lost homes, jobs and businesses.
The evidence of growing and large-scale persecution of evangelicals and Christian converts is overwhelming. Yet the State Department and the INS have largely reached the opposite conclusion, and many American officials fail to seriously consider the asylum applications of victims of anti-Christian terror. In Turkey, to name but one example, the American Embassy requires Christians fleeing Iran to pass through a gantlet of Turkish security police who are in open sympathy with Iran's blasphemy laws. Many never do. Similarly tragic scenarios abound at INS field offices.
Steps must be taken to change American policy, beginning with clear State Department signals of implacable hostility to anti-Christian terror. Next, Attorney General Janet Reno, to whom the INS reports, should call for regularly updated reports of anti-Christian persecution and should make clear to INS officials that such claims should be treated seriously. Reno should also require the INS to establish refugee-processing posts in countries bordering those where persecutions occur.
This issue tests us all. For American Jews who owe our very lives to the open door of ``the blessed land,'' silence should not be an option in the face of persecutions eerily parallel to those committed by Adolf Hitler.
America's Christian community is most directly challenged. Its moral authority will be gravely tarnished if its fails to exercise its growing political influence on behalf of people now risking everything to engage in the ``simple'' act of Christian worship and witness. From thousands of pulpits, the community must take on administration policies that cause the return of Christians to countries where they have been systematically persecuted.
Michael Horowitz is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
- Dow Jones
by CNB