(Photo Credit: REUTERS)
The State Department just released its annual 2014 International Religious Freedom Report detailing global human rights atrocities and government oppression toward innocent people based on their faith. And you know that “peaceful religion” everyone keeps talking about? It’s featured front and center – but not for being very peaceful.
In its report, Obama’s State Department points out a whole slew of groups – primarily extreme Muslim ones – that are wreaking havoc and violence upon anyone who doesn’t practice their own insanely strict version of Islam. From the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, or what-have-you) in Iraq and Syria to Boko Haram in Nigeria, al-Nusra Front in Syria and the Taliban -- and something called Lashkar I Jhangvi -- in Pakistan, radical groups bent on dominating the world with strict Islamic law are enslaving and slaughtering countless Christians, non-conforming Muslims and pretty much anybody else they don’t like.
Here are some bits from the report itself:
...[ISIL] has forcibly displaced hundreds of thousands of people, conducted mass executions, and kidnapped, sold and enslaved raped and/or forcibly converted thousands of women and children – all on the grounds that these people stand in opposition to ISIL’s religious dogma.
...Civil society groups estimated that Boko Haram killed more people in 2014 than the previous five years of the conflict combined… The group deliberately targeted Christians, as well as Muslims who spoke out against or opposed their radical ideology. As West Africa’s most active terror group, Boko Haram claimed responsibility for scores of fatal attacks on churches and mosques, often killing worshipers during religious services or immediately afterward. One of many such incidents occurred on April 14, when Boko Haram kidnapped more than 200 mostly Christian girls from Chibok, Borno State, sold them into slavery, and forcibly converted them to Islam. Conflict in the northeast has displaced some 1.5 million Nigerians inside the country and forced some 200,000 refugees to flee to neighboring countries.
...Lashkar i Jhangvi claimed responsibility for a January 21 suicide bomber attack on a bus carrying Hazara Shia pilgrims in Balochistan’s Mastung District, killing 24 and injuring 40.
...Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) released a video on February 2 threatening two minority groups in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the Kalash and the Ismailis, with death if members refused to convert to the TTP’s interpretation of Islam. Additionally, sectarian, violent extremist, and terrorist groups attacked houses of worship, religious gatherings, and religious leaders, causing hundreds of deaths during the year. Police often failed to prevent such attacks and authorities failed to investigate, arrest, and prosecute those responsible for the religiously-motived attacks.
Interestingly enough, Secretary of State John Kerry never once referenced Islam by name in his remarks upon the report's release. He did mention the word "Muslim" once -- while pointing out that they have also been the victims of terrorist violence.
While they do make up the bulk of the State Department’s report summary, radical Muslims aren’t the only ones out there going after Christians:
- In the eastern Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk, Russian-backed separatists proclaimed the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics…have kidnapped, beaten, and threatened Protestants, Catholics, and members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, as well as participated in anti-Semitic acts.
There’s more, but you can read the report for yourself.
The State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report was originally intended to shine light on (and inform Congress of) hostile governments that oppress their citizens’ religious freedom. But in recent years, the report has shifted more toward terrorist groups bent on destroying any opposition to their own crazy religious tenants. So, how are the governments of these countries responding? From the report:
Governments stood by, either unwilling or unable to act in response to the resulting death, injuries and displacement.
But here in America, Christians are the big bad oppressors when they refuse to bake a cake for a gay wedding, or don’t want to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples or dare to pray before a football game.
Contrary to Kerry's total avoidance of the words "Islam" or "Muslim," the Obama administration clearly has no problem pointing out Christians by name. In a recent interview published in the Nov. 5 issue of The New York Review of Books, President Obama came down on Christians specifically, when he accused the most faithful of adopting an “us-versus-them” mentality. Last April, he described many Christians who didn't simply bow to secularist social pressure as being “less-than-loving."
Admittedly, not all Muslims are crazy terrorists, for which I and the world thank them. Neither are all Buddhists -- even though the State Department report details how extreme Buddhist mobs tore apart churches and killed a few Muslims in Sri Lanka last year.
But someone please remind me the last time any Christian in America, or anywhere else, crucified someone.
Until then, I’ll be over here trying to find “separation of Church and State” in the Constitution.