Over the past several days, we have felt both sadness and horror over the news coming from New Zealand. The attack on the mosque and the killing of innocents is a terrible crime, and we join with everyone who has offered prayers, condolences, and sympathy for the victims. It should go without saying, but the freedom to practice your faith without fear of violence is a fundamental human right. Hateful acts like the mosque attack are anathema to all people of faith, no matter what creed they follow.
The New Zealand mosque attack has been well-covered in the mainstream media, but there was another hate-filled act of violence against people of faith – several in fact. And they’ve been going on for weeks, but haven’t received nearly as much attention.
I’m speaking here of the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria. In an excellent article on Breitbart, Dr. Thomas Williams talks about the double standard in play when it comes to the media narrative. In the past three weeks, Fulani jihadists have killed more than 120 Christians in Nigeria. They have used guns and machetes to massacre women and children. They have burned down people’s homes and destroyed their property.
And most of us have heard nothing about it.
Not only has the slaughter been ignored by nearly every major media outlet, the fact that Christians are regularly killed for their faith has gone unnoticed and unmentioned. While the New Zealand mosque attack prompted an outcry against anti-Muslim sentiment, no one seems to be aware that Christians are martyred more frequently than any other group. As Dr. Williams (who kindly quotes me in his article) wrote:
Christians are by far the most persecuted religious group in the world, but the mainstream media routinely ignore this fact as if it were unimportant or uninteresting. As a result, many people do not even realize how widespread the persecution is or that 75 percent of the victims of religious persecution around the world are Christians.
Of course, there’s no mystery about what’s going on.
The mainstream media has a political agenda, and the persecution of Christians plays no part in it. That’s why there’s a double standard when it comes to anti-Christian prejudice.
This is one of the reasons why CAAP launched a petition asking Amazon to apply the same standard to anti-Christian merchandise as they do for products deemed offensive to Islam. When John Zmirak highlighted our petition on Stream, he included a stunning example of this double standard at work. Amazon still lets you buy Mein Kampf. It lets you buy anti-Semitic works. It lets you buy products that mock and blaspheme Christianity. But you cannot buy a book that attempts to help non-Muslims understand the Koran.
We must stand up for our faith and put an end to the acceptance of anti-Christian sentiment. All we are asking is for our faith to be treated with the same respect that is granted to other faiths. Given that Christianity is the bedrock of our culture, government, and way of life, you’d think this wouldn’t be too much to ask.
If you haven’t already done so, be sure to sign on to our letter to Amazon and share it with your friends and family.
Will you help CAAP continue this campaign in defense of our faith? We need your support to continue our outreach and education efforts. Your donation of $50, $150 or $200 will help us in this fight for religious freedom.
As Christians, we are called to bear our suffering with patience and compassion. But we are not required to stand by in the face of prejudice and injustice. On the contrary. The anti-Christian sentiment that tolerates the Amazon double standard can also be used to justify not reporting on the martyrdom of Christians in Nigeria. We must expose this hypocrisy and put an end to it.
