Since his election in 1981, New Jersey Republican Rep. Chris Smith has defended Christians and religious liberty with tenacious passion. Now, more than three decades after assuming office, he’s still standing tall for the abused and forgotten.
This week, Smith, along with his Democratic cosponsor, California Rep. Anna Eshoo, reintroduced the Iraq and Syria Genocide Emergency Relief and Accountability Act, which is aimed at providing “emergency relief to victims of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Iraq and Syria.”
Smith, having years ago been moved by “Tortured for Christ,” a book by Voice of Martyrs founder Pastor Richard Wurmbrand, who spent 14 years in communist prisons, has been shaken by what Smith calls President Barack Obama’s “gross negligence” in addressing the needs of Christians persecuted by ISIS. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, of the 10,801 refugees accepted by the U.S. as of September, only 56 are Christians.
In an interview with TheBlaze, Smith lamented the situation of Christian leaders who are working without U.S. dollars, given USAID doesn’t benefit faith-based organizations, to help displaced minorities in the Middle East: “They’re getting no help from the United States government, and that is not just baffling — it is disturbing, disappointing and, frankly, outrageous.”
Should the bill move forward, something Smith is optimistic about under the new Congress and Trump White House, it would solve that problem, according to the sponsors.
Currently, a vast majority of refugees receiving protection are given such benefits by the United Nations and other non-governmental organizations that either ignore or don’t specifically target persecuted Christians. Smith’s bill simply calls for better stewardship of U.S. funds by pushing the federal government to appropriate money to groups that are steadfastly helping displaced and endangered Christians, the Middle East’s largest religious minority.
“Thank God for the church,” Smith said emphatically, praising the resilience of the Christians helping one another in the Middle East.
As winter sweeps over the land that has become a real-life hell for these displaced minorities, Smith said the U.S. has “failed” them.
“When I say ‘the U.S.,’ I mean the Obama administration,” the lawmaker clarified, going on to applaud the Christian organizations — such as the Knights of Columbus, native religious leaders and others — that have assisted their fellow believers with little U.S. humanitarian aid.
For Smith, this isn’t just a policy issue — it’s personal. In fact, over the Christmas holiday, he traveled to Erbil, Iraq, where, according to the lawmaker, some 70,000 Christians are finding refuge, and came away with an even stronger desire to see change for these hurting believers.
“The greatest positive takeaway [from the trip] was the incredible resilience of the people at every age category,” he said. “I saw no diminution of their faith in God and his love and mercy and grace.”
Smith went on to describe a Christmas gathering he attended where children sang “Happy Birthday” to Jesus and the people shared an unshakeable positivity in the face of such horror. “Nobody was saying, ‘Woe is me,’ or complaining or in any way lamenting other than they’re praying for a better day,” he said. “They love their families, they love their church, and above all, they love God.”
Despite being invited, no White House or consular representative accompanied Smith on his trip into the refugee camps in Erbil, citing safety threats — an “indifference” the Republican said was “most shocking.”
“Obama worries so much about his legacy, well, why don’t you care for those who are neediest, who are fleeing genocide?” Smith asked. “[I]t’s bewildering and profoundly disappointing.”
With just eight days before Obama exits the White House, Smith is still calling on the president to reverse course and take substantive action to quell the Christian genocide in the Middle East.
In addition to lead cosponsors Smith and Eshoo, the bill has 15 original cosponsors — 12 Republicans and three Democrats.
One-hundred percent of Christians in 21 countries around the world experience persecution for their faith in Christ as over 215 million Christians faced "high levels" of persecution in the last year, a leading human rights watchdog group reports.
Open Doors USA released on Wednesday morning its 2017 World Watch List, which is the 25th annual ranking of the top 50 countries where Christians face the most persecution.
"2016 was the worst year of persecution on record with a shocking 215 million Christians experiencing high levels of persecution for their faith," Open Doors USA CEO David Curry asserted during a press conference at the National Press Club.
"It is worth repeating that nearly one in every 12 Christians today lives in an area or culture in which Christianity is illegal, forbidden or punished. Yet, today the world is largely silent on the shocking wave of religious intolerance," he continued. "The 2017 World Watch List and the information it represents presents one of the most complex and pressing challenges to President-elect Donald Trump and his administration."
The top 21 countries on the list include in this order: North Korea, Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Eritrea, Libya, Nigeria, Maldives, Saudi Arabia, India, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Kenya, Turkmenistan, Qatar and Egypt.
In North Korea, Christians are prohibited from practicing their faith and can be killed or jailed for simply owning a Bible. As the Communist Kim regime forces citizens to accept the cultic belief that the Kim family is divine, thousands of Christians have been killed and entire families have been thrown into torturous labor "reeducation" camps for practicing their faith or trying to defect.
Although little is reported about the persecution in Somalia, Curry said that no organized church is allowed to be established in the country and every citizen of Somalia is registered as Muslim despite what they believe.
"Small groups of Christians remain even though nobody knows the secret of their faith," Curry explained. "If their faith is discovered it means instant death, executed without trial and often on rumor alone."
Pakistan ranked as the fourth worst country in the world for Christians, which is the highest the Muslim-majority country has ranked on the World Watch List.
Christians in Pakistan are subject the public ridicule and are often accused of the capital offense of blasphemy by Muslims looking to settle personal scores. Additionally, hundreds of Christian girls and women in Pakistan are kidnapped, raped and forced into Islamic marriage. Police protection of the Christian community is inadequate and Muslim persecutors are often granted a level of impunity.
The fact sheet states that "Pakistan had the most overall violence against Christians."
"Cities have been burned to the ground, people have been roasted alive, girls are increasingly being raped and forced into Islamic marriage in attempts by Muslims to gain a special place in Heaven through proselytizing in this manner," Wilson Chowdhry, chairman of the British Pakistani Christian Association, told CP on Wednesday. "Government and statutory authority inactivity have built a sense of impunity for crimes against Christians."
It's no secret that Christians have been direly persecuted in the Middle Eastern nations of Iraq and Syria, considering the rise of the Islamic State terrorist organization forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to flee their homes or risk being killed by the Islamic death cult.
Even lawmakers who fatuously praised Dar Al-Hijrah noted that “the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center is affiliated with the Muslim American Society.” The Muslim American Society is the chief arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S., according to Ikhwanweb, the Muslim Brotherhood’s English website. Shaker Elsayed, the mosque’s imam from 2005 to the present, was Secretary General of the Muslim American Society. According to a captured internal Brotherhood document, the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. is engaged in a “grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
There is more. The late jihad leader Anwar al-Awlaki was the imam at Dar al-Hijrah. He is said to have been a “spiritual adviser” to three of the hijackers who attacked America on September 11, 2001. Al-Awlaki was also in regular contact with Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, the Christmas underwear bomber who tried to blow up a passenger jet over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.
Former Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who murdered thirteen Americans in a jihad massacre at Fort Hood in Texas, worshiped at Dar al-Hijrah when he lived in the area and was in touch with al-Awlaki shortly before he carried out his attack.
“FBI Visits Virginia Mosque to Reassure Muslims of Their Safety,” by Julie Carey, NBC News, January 13, 2017 (thanks to Lookmann):
"FBI and other law enforcement officials spoke Friday at a mosque in Northern Virginia. Some attendees said many Muslims would not feel comfortable going to Donald Trump’s inauguration. Others said they wanted to go.
2 comments:
About that list of countries persecuting Christians; it is only right that America should be added.
It's been that way for many yrs.........
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