Now, we have one and, unfortunately, it is not an Israeli leader:-
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday that Christian minorities in the Middle East are victims of "religious cleansing", following deadly attacks on churches in the region.
"We cannot accept and thereby facilitate what looks more and more like a particularly wicked programme of cleansing in the Middle East, religious cleansing," he said in an annual New Year's address to religious leaders.
There's this by Fiamma Nirenstein:-
How can we stop the slaughter of Christians in the Islamic world, how can we prevent the next massacre in Iraq, Turkey, the Philippines, Nigeria, wherever Islamic groups may be? First of all, we should start calling things by their real name: this is not ideological «religious intolerance» and the perpetrators are not random «fundamentalist groups» or «some terrorist». If we look at the map, we can find examples in many countries: massacres, expulsions, kidnapping of women, acts of vandalism on churches... It is the entire Islamist world that is battering Christians with the terrible inexorability of its hatred, but all those who – opportunistically or for fear of reprisals against Christians – have kept silent, in hopes of appeasing the aggressors, share in the responsibility. The fact that as soon as the Pope protested, calling a spade a "spade", namely calling Islam "Islam", the Mufti of Al Azhar blasted him for «interference», says a lot about the paradoxical attitude of institutional Islam: what do a few murders matter? The perpetual Roman enemy has no right to speak out.
If we ask the theologian and professor Father Peter Madros, now in the Patriarcate of Jerusalem, formerly director for many years of the Frères College in Bethlehem, where he fought the decimation of Christians without making discounts to the Israelis either, he can clearly indicate the explanation in the text of the Quran: «After pages where the text explains that harmony must reign within the People of the Book, though with the subjection of Christians and Jews who (verse 9/29) must in any case pay Jizya (the tax for non-Muslims, ed.note) unless they convert to Islam, there is another revealing verse (5/51): do not allow either Jews or Christians to rule over you».
The heart of the problem is right here: the Islamist world is determined to build a world in which the other two main faiths are held in a state of cultural, religious and political subjection. And instead, in the last seven centuries the western world has been dominanting and, in the bigoted interpretation of vast organizations and even entire countries like Iran, this amounts to a declaration of war. This is the war that Islamism now wants to win. Not everyone in that world feels that way, but bombs make a lot of noise, while good will remains silent...
Despite the general trend of Christians leaving the Middle East, in Israel, the situation is different as noted five years ago:
"In Israel they [the Christians] have a small percentage of increase, that is 1.4 pecent of increase per year, which is about the same as that of the Jews in Israel," says Daphne Tsimhoni, a professor of modern Middle East History at Technion, Israel's Institute of Technology.
Background and this background.
Who will save the Christians?
P.S. But Christians like this, if gui;lty, are not appreciated:
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A state hearing officer is recommending that an Ohio school board fire a science teacher accused of burning the image of a cross on students' arms.
John Freshwater has been suspended from a Mount Vernon school without pay.
The school board voted to fire him in 2008, citing an internal investigation that found he had preached his Christian beliefs in class. He also was accused of using a scientific device to mark several students' arms with a cross and keeping a Bible on his desk.
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