OPINION: Religious persecution in Middle East

The genocide occurring in the Middle East has been garnering far less attention than it deserves. It was described in an article by the American Center for Law and Justice as, “mind-boggling, heart-rending and alarming.” It has been too little too late for Congress, the president and Secretary John Kerry to only now recognize its existence.

The last time something so egregious happened was with the attempted extermination of the Jews by the Nazis during the Second World War. Make no mistake about it: ISIS’ goal is no less than that of Hitler’s. It’s just that the demographics and perpetrators have changed.

Remember the horrible images of the Jordanian pilot being burned alive while contained in a steel cage with spectators watching? The barbarism continues with equally horrible occurrences when it comes to the ethnic cleansing of Christians in the Middle East. ISIS’ goal as described by Cardinal Theodore McCormick is to “purify the Mideast so Islam can reign supreme.” According to Genocide Watch, “Some of these Christian communities of Iraq and Syria are ancient ones with ties to the earliest Church. Some still pray in Aramaic, the language of Jesus of Nazareth...” These grave human rights crimes against the Christians have been accompanied by the systematic destruction of the oldest Christian monastery in Iraq.

In 2003 the number of Christians in Iraq was about 1.5 million. Today that number stands at about 250,000. Most of those remaining have found refuge in the Kurdistan region of Northern Iraq. The Syrian Christians, in 2011, numbered about 2 million. About two-thirds are displaced, and those still surviving can be mostly found in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.

One extreme example of this barbarousness was expressed on the floor of the Senate when Tom Cotton from Arkansas explained what had occurred with a Syrian father and his son. He said, “This boy was a Christian and standing above him were Islamic State terrorists holding knives. In the crowd was the boy’s father, a Christian minister. Methodically, the terrorists began cutting off the young boy’s fingers. Amidst his screams, they turned to the minister, his father, and said if he renounced his faith and in their terms returned to Islam, the boy’s suffering would stop. The incident ended when the Islamic State murdered both father and son. They did so by crucifixion.” Cotton told the Senate, “Today, Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world.”

There are other reports of more carnage being conducted by ISIS that is equally as shocking. The American Center for Law and Justice reports, “ISIS boils people to death in vats of tar.” Crucifixions and beheadings are all too commonplace.

Let’s also not forget that it isn’t only Christians being targeted. Videos have surfaced showing gays being hurled off rooftops several stories high. Business Insider reported on another of these atrocities thusly, “Islamic State militants drove 600 Shia, Christian, and Yazidi male prisoners into the middle of the desert, lined them up along the edge of a ravine, and executed them at point blank range.” The horrific descriptions of some survivors are unbelievable.

Will we find a way for Christians facing genocide to escape and find refuge in our land? Up to now the record has not been very good in this regard. For example, of the 1,037 Syrian refugees admitted in May there were 1,035 Muslims and only two Christians. How can Congress, the president and the secretary of state stand by and not take some sort of action to strike more of a balance?

We again turn to Sen. Cotton for a possible solution. He introduced his Religious Persecution Relief Act to Protect Syrian Religious Minorities. According to Home/News Press, this bill would accomplish two things. First, it would provide priority status to “religious minorities fleeing persecution at the hands of ISIS in Syria.” They would be able to apply directly to the U.S. Resettlement Program. Second, it would provide 10,000 Syrian Christian resettlement slots annually for five years.

Sen. Cotton’s bill would help bring the number of Syrian Christians permitted to enter the refugee program more in line with the total number of Christians in Syria. For example, the record shows that for 2015 the percentage of Syrian refugees settled in the United States was represented by only 2.3 percent Christians. Less than 1 percent have found refuge so far in 2016. These percentages are far less than the 13 percent representing the total Christian population during pre-war Syria.

As it turns out, there are a couple of unintended consequences responsible for the low Syrian Christian refugee count. Without something like Sen. Cotton’s bill, Syrian refugees are required to register with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The UN office in turn refers them on to the U.S. for possible resettlement status. The Christian refugees have been reluctant to register with the United Nations High Commissioner because they fear persecution in the UN camps by Sunni refugees. The Christians also fear that if they are not selected and Bashar al-Assad remains in power, they would be unable to return to Syria because Assad would consider them disloyal.

If something like Cotton’s Refugee Persecution Relief Act passed, it would permit Syrian Christians to bypass the UN camps and register directly with the U.S., thus allaying the fears they have expressed with former processing procedures. My question is what is holding up Congress in passing such a bill?

The world was silent when Russian communists murdered about 20 million people, when communist China killed 70 million people, and when the radicals in Japan murdered 12 million Chinese civilians. How about the seemingly unlimited genocide in Africa — Rwanda being a perfect example? Now the radicals in the Middle East are attempting to exterminate the Christian population. Will the world remain silent this time too?

I remember, not long ago, attending a presentation by Gov. Mike Huckabee where he closed by relating a story about visiting the Holocaust Museum in Israel. As they were leaving and signing the register, his daughter asked, “Why didn’t anybody do anything about it?” Are my great-grandchildren going to be asking the same question about my generation 50 or 60 years from now? It just doesn’t seem like a priority. For the sake of all humanity, why? Is this a case of too little too late? I think so.

Lester Still is a resident of Kalispell.