Why is the Left Ignoring Church Burnings and 'Near Genocide' of Christians?

Many of you are familiar with Lisa Graas and her work, both from her comments here and from my blog roll. She is an amazing lady, and the story of how we met 13 years ago (my first internet "friend"!) is a story in itself. We have quite a history together, and now we both have blogs, ha ha ha. Lisa, a convert to Catholicism and a disabled single mother of four, also writes for David Horowitz's NewsRealBlog. As you know, I don't post on politics too often (although I am a political animal at heart), but I asked Lisa to write this guest post for me because she is practically alone out there writing on this topic. 

Please, please, if anyone on the left can explain why the Left's dislike of Christianity is so strong, and yet their defense of Islamists so vocal (despite Islam's violent hatred toward liberal moral values), I would be so grateful. I have some ideas of why leftists cast their lots with Islam over Christianity, but I would love to hear it from someone here.

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From Lisa Graas....

On the Left, the end justifies the means. Abortion, which many acknowledge is not a good thing, is 'necessary' in order to protect the 'greater good' of 'choice'. Rationing of healthcare, which they also acknowledge is not a good thing, is set forth as a 'solution' to serve the 'greater good' of 'universal coverage'. Even our Catholic compatriots on the Left have become caught up in this erroneous thinking that 'the end justifies the means', having adopted the confused thinking that the 'greater good' is equivalent to the 'common good'. So it is that the vulnerable are trampled underfoot, even with assistance from within the Catholic community.

One of the most powerful leftists in history, Josef Stalin, killed millions to serve the 'good' of the state.*

Millions died as a result of Stalin's famine and purges which came about due to the leftist ethos that 'the end' (in this case, the goal of 'equality') always 'justifies the means'. What Stalin might have believed was the 'common good', in reality was a reflection of 'the greater good' being sought, no matter the means.

Is it this belief -- 'the end justifies the means' -- that accounts for the silence of leftists in America today as the Islamic Egyptian army attacked Christian monasteries? After all, this news would have spoiled their good feelings as they cheered the 'revolution' in Cairo's Tahrir Square.

Is it this belief that 'the end justifies the means' that urges the Left to press continually for America to make a hasty withdrawal from Iraq even as the Christian community there faces 'near genocide'? (Have they even heard of Adam of Baghdad?)

I think it is...and the silence continues even now as the Left continues to be actively engaged in defending the 'good name' of Islam while refusing to raise so little as a whimper about the burning of 69 churches in Ethiopia with 10,000 Christians being now displaced as they flee Muslim wrath.

Obama's White House team and the mainstream media have turned a blind eye to the spilling of innocent Christian blood.

What 'crime' did these Christians commit to 'merit' the torching of 69 churches, a Bible school and an orphanage?

The violence erupted after a group of Muslims falsely accused Christians in the area of desecrating the Quran. 

Those on the far left would say, "These attacks were justified because a Christian probably really did desecrate the Qur'an."

Those who are just left of center will probably either look away or resign themselves to calling our mention of it "Islamophobic", which I have come to realize is the 21st century leftist version of 'Der ewige Jude'.

The wise understand that book burning leads to the burning of people, but truly....it takes a hardcore leftist to argue that in our quest to protect books from damage, we must sometimes burn Islamophobic churches and kill Islamophobic Christians.

Those on the Left, tell me where I'm wrong, because I desperately want to be wrong on this.






*To address the problems of hunger and poverty, in 1928 Stalin initiated the first of five "Five-Year Plans" that he would implement during his long reign as the leader of the USSR (the others would cover the periods 1933-37; 1938-42; 1946-50; and 1951-55).  This first Plan nationalized all aspects of Russian industry and commerce, with the goal of quickly industrializing the economy and collectivizing agriculture. Collectivization meant the confiscation of all private land and the organization of agricultural production by state-run "collective farms." The idea that drove this program was Marx's fantasy of social equality and social justice. In practice it meant that 25 million peasant farmers would not be paid any wages for their labor, but would instead produce their agricultural output entirely for the state, which would in turn allow them to keep a modest share for their own survival needs. Stalin's vision entailed the systematic replacement of small, unmechanized farms with large, mechanized alternatives that would theoretically produce food much more efficiently. In practice this meant that a nation which had once been Europe's breadbasket would experience famine and chronic agricultural scarcity for the next sixty years, until the system collapsed.

I am a Christian Arab. My fellow Christian Arabs are suffering.

My father is an Arab immigrant and a naturalized American citizen. Our family's Christian roots run deep, stretching back many centuries to an area on the Tigris that was once ancient Ninevah. At least four of my Arab ancestors were Catholic bishops.

My father was born and raised in the Holy Land and was taught by the Christian Brothers. In 1948, Palestine became Israel amidst much political and civil unrest. It was on his tenth birthday that my father fled to Egypt with his mother and four siblings. His father (my grandfather) stayed back to work, but eventually made his way to Egypt as well. After six months in a refugee camp, my grandfather was finally reunited with his wife and children.

From the age of ten to twenty-two, my dad lived in Egypt, attending Christian schools and then medical school. My father was the first in his family to leave the Middle East and come to America -- a place he'd only dreamed about. He is one of the most patriotic Americans you will ever meet, and a proud Vietnam veteran. While in medical school at Georgetown, he met my mother, a nursing student from a small Ohio town. They married and had two daughters (I'm the baby).

My parents have vacationed in Egypt many times over the past 46 years, and they were on vacation there just a few weeks ago when the Egyptian revolution began. We had some tense days trying to get them out of the country. They took a long car ride to Cairo, then spent countless hours in the mobbed Cairo airport, hoping to catch any plane out. They finally got two seats, and we all breathed a sigh of relief when we heard that their plane had touched down in Paris.

I bring up my connection to the Middle East because I love that land, and I love its people. I think that most Westerners (and most in the U.S.) don't realize how many of our fellow Christians are Arab. Arab Christianity is ancient and beautiful, but its presence in the Middle East is dwindling -- not due to a lack of faith, but due to persecution. I touched upon that sad truth once before on this blog, when memorializing little Adam of Baghdad, but I usually find it too difficult to think about. It's never been easy for Christian Arabs to live as a minority in Islamic nations, but lately the violence against them has escalated. Recent tragedies in Egypt include monks being shot and ancient monasteries destroyed and a mob of four thousand Muslims attacking Coptic Christians and torching their church, with fears of a massacre unfolding even as I type this.

In my horror and sorrow, I feel helpless to aid my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Through our baptism, we are the Body of Christ ... one Body. Many members of that Body are suffering as Christ on the Cross.

I guess I am asking that everyone reading these words will pray for the Christians in the Middle East, the birthplace of our great Faith, as well as for Christians everywhere who are being persecuted, terrorized and murdered every day. It is Sunday, so perhaps you could even offer your mass for them: for the consolation and strength needed to persevere in their Faith, for supernatural comfort as they grieve their loved ones and their churches, and, if necessary, for the grace to endure the martyrdom that may befall them at any time, even this very day.

Ultimately, we know and they know that our hope lies in Jesus Christ our Savior.

He makes all things new.