Ayaan Hirsi Ali, writing for Newsweek, thinks that the intolerance exhibited in the Western world toward Muslims and their communities pales in comparison to the brutally violent abuse that Christians are often faced with in Muslim-majority countries, and requires a recasting of priorities:
“Yes, Western governments should protect Muslim minorities from intolerance. And of course we should ensure that they can worship, live, and work freely and without fear. It is the protection of the freedom of conscience and speech that distinguishes free societies from unfree ones. But we also need to keep perspective about the scale and severity of intolerance. Cartoons, films, and writings are one thing; knives, guns, and grenades are something else entirely.”
Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom acknowledged in an interview with Newsweek that Christian minorities in Muslim-majority countries have indeed “lost the protection of their societies.” The Christian Post reports that the number of violent incidents committed against religious minorities has increased from 198 to 276 (nearly 40 percent) between 2010 and 2011, and since Christianity is the largest minority, it’s safe to say that a good number of these were killed because of their faith in Christ.
It is true that so-called “Islamaphobia” persists (on both the left and the right), but a balanced assessment of real events, including the general silence of the media on these violent expressions of religious intolerance, makes one wonder why our concern over the atrocities committed in Africa and the Middle-East is usually rather mild. Christophobia?
February 7th, 2012 | 1:23 pm
“Cartoons, films, and writings are one thing; knives, guns, and grenades are something else entirely.”
It will be a good thing when our society starts developing the capacity to distinguish between levels of need (and between genuine needs vs. mere wants, or desires).
It has become disturbingly common to hear people speaking as if being targeted metaphorically is in no way different from being targeted literally. When prioritizing which rights are more or less important, too often people focus on the identities of the people making the claims, rather than the claims themselves. It thus becomes logical to view relatively trivial claims as urgent, while refusing to recognize far more serious claims.
We must recognize that some rights are both more urgent and more important than others – and, when rights are in conflict, we must prioritize the more fundamental right.
February 7th, 2012 | 4:54 pm
Atrocities, religiously motivated or otherwise, are common in the Middle East and Africa, but rare in the West. Things that are common are not considered quite as newsworthy as things that occur rarely.
February 9th, 2012 | 6:30 pm
An excellent article by Miss Ali, as usual. One quibble. She writes:
“It is the protection of the freedom of conscience and speech that distinguishes free societies from unfree ones. But we also need to keep perspective about the scale and severity of intolerance. Cartoons, films, and writings are one thing; knives, guns, and grenades are something else entirely.”
Here she has lost all historical perspective, especially given the recent history of propaganda in Europe, Asia and elsewhere. “Cartoons, films and writings” often have, and still do, result in the use of “knives, guns and grenades” by those who feel compelled to engage in violent persecution. Even “spontaneous,” non-state violence does not exist in a cultural or ideological vacuum, as anyone who is acquainted with the presence of Salafist propaganda in the Middle East and elsewhere well knows.
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