Is Obama Serious About Human Rights?
Tim Rutten, writing in the Los Angeles Times, has a critically important column on a much under-reported subject:
When America intervened to overthrow Saddam Hussein, Iraq's Christians -- mostly Chaldeans and Assyrians -- numbered about 1.4 million, or about 3% of the population. Over the last seven years, more than half have fled the country and, as the New York Times reported this week, a wave of targeted killings -- including the Oct. 31 slaying of 51 worshipers and two priests during Mass at one of Baghdad's largest churches -- has sent many more Christians fleeing. Despite Prime Minister Nouri Maliki promises to increase security, many believe the Christians are being targeted not only by Al Qaeda in Iraq, which has instructed its fighters "to kill Christians wherever they can reach them," but also by complicit elements within the government's security services. . . .
Putting aside America's particular culpability in Iraq, the West as a community of nations has long turned a blind eye to the intolerance of the Middle East's Muslim states -- an intolerance that has intensified with the spread of Salafism, Islam's brand of militant fundamentalism. Our ally Saudi Arabia is the great financial and ideological backer of this hatred. In fact, when it comes to religion, the kingdom and North Korea are the most criminally intolerant countries in the world.

In case you think Rutten is focusing on the exception rather than the rule, think again. I discussed the plight of Christians in Muslim countries with Lela Gilbert, an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute based in Jerusalem.
Is this part of a general trend? Yes, Christians in the Middle East are quietly leaving their ancient homelands in numbers that are impossible to determine. They leave in secret and often do not speak of their plight even after they've reached a safe haven for fear of putting their relatives, friends and believing communities at risk. They often leave with the shirts on their back, abandoning their property and livelihoods. As Tim Rutten correctly says (in his excellent L.A. Times report), this flight is all too similar to that of the nearly 900,000 Jews who were driven out of those same Muslim lands in the mid-20th century. And ironically, those Jewish refugees -- many of whom settled in Israel and are now labeled "Zionist occupiers" -- are blamed for the persecution of Christians in the Middle East rather than the real perpetrators -- radical Muslims.
Are we just talking about isolated pockets within the Middle East? Sadly, the Middle East isn't the only place where this is happening. The same pattern is repeating itself in Muslim-majority countries around the world. In 2010, Christians have been killed for their faith by Muslim terrorists in Nigeria, Pakistan, Kenya, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Somalia, Philippines and Bangladesh. The threats against Christians in these countries continue to multiply. Al-Shabab in Somalia, for example, has threatened to kill every Christian in the country. A recent Hamas video called for the killing of Jews and Christians, praying that Allah will "count them and kill them to the last one, and don't leave even one." A Catholic mother in Pakistan is facing a death sentence for allegedly blaspheming the Prophet Mohammad. Within the last two weeks, after an Egyptian Christian man was accused of dating a Muslim woman, more than twenty Christian houses were burned by rioters. In fact, Egypt's Coptic Christian community -- around 10 percent of the country's population -- is under ominously increasing pressure.
What is the West doing about this? Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh recently wrote, "The failure of the international community to pay enough attention to the dangers facing the Christians has encouraged radical Muslims and corrupt dictatorships to step up their assaults on Christian individuals and institutions." Meanwhile, The Obama administration -- in yet another demonstration of what has been aptly called "conceptual cowardice" -- refuses to identify the murderers by their proper name: Islamist terrorists.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration, which has recently assured us that human rights really is a priority, has been missing in action on the topic of religious freedom. It is a subject that has fallen by the wayside as other priorities -- engagement with the Iranian regime, engagement with Syria, engagement with China, and reset with Russia -- have taken center stage. And alas, when Obama ventured to Cairo early in his term, he declined to speak candidly to his Muslim audience. For Obama, Muslim outreach has too often amounted to telling Middle East despots what they want to hear. Since this has generally been a failure, perhaps it is time for something new -- a foreign policy that projects both American power and our values. But, I suppose, for an administration obsessed with being "not Bush," that's a tall order.