Greg Daly
Greg Daly speaks to Aid to the Church in Need about the global war on Christianity
The persecution of Christians around the world is something increasingly spoken of, according to John Pontifex from Britain’s branch of Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), but the problem goes far beyond perception.
“It’s clearly very much getting worse in particular parts of the world, where until recently these problems really didn’t exist – certainly they didn’t exist in the way they are now,” he says. “So we would say, for certain, that the problem has deteriorated.”
This deterioration in religious freedom is a global phenomenon, he points out, stressing that while the major focus tends to be on the Middle East, the problem is broader. “We would highlight Iraq and Syria,” he says, “but we would also highlight other parts of the world as well, recognising that the likes of China have seen a major decline, also Eritrea and northern Nigeria of course, North Korea, and Pakistan as well as Sudan which has also seen the situation deteriorate.”
These, he says, are just “some of the major countries” where the situation has worsened in recent years. In Africa, for instance, he cites Ethiopia along with Tanzania and Kenya as other places where Christians face persecution, with things being worse in some countries than others.
Attacks
In Tanzania and Kenya, he says, “the extremist groups led by Al-Shabaab are very much prevalent”. Aside from the April 2015 attack on the university in Garissa, in which 148 people were killed, there have been other attacks, including some off the Tanzanian coast, which he describes as “pretty nasty”.
Driving much of the rise in persecution, he says, is the growing power of a particular strain of Islam. “What you have got is the rise of militant Islam as the dominant form that is clearly making matters hugely difficult not just in the Middle East but also in North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and also the Asian Subcontinent,” he says.
“Of course it’s not just Christians that Islamists are targeting, but Christians are a specific target,” he clarifies. “The extremist groups have declared their aim to eliminate Christianity from the regions in which they’re present, and there have been varied full-scale operations to drive them away.”
Having recently returned from a fact-finding trip to Syria, and having visited Iraq three times in his role with ACN, he speaks with real authority when he says: “I have been to some of the regions where this has happened and seen the devastation, seen the bombed churches, the desecration of religious items – sacred items – and the enforced displacement of people away from those regions where they have lived perfectly happily, perfectly at peace with their neighbours, for centuries until really quite recently.”
If Christians in Iraq and Syria are suffering in a lawless environment, “an institutionalisation of discrimination” challenges those in Pakistan, he says.
“Christians and other groups are effectively discriminated against, not just by the blasphemy law but by a number of other ordinances – penal laws – introduced under Zia-al-Huq when he was premier in the 70s and 80s,” he says, adding that this situation has been made “toxic” by “extremist groups within society who invoke these laws, take the law into their own hands and make people pay for alleged offences against the Prophet Muhammad or against the Koran”.
Such groups, he says, use laws to give a “fig leaf of respectability” to atrocities and attacks on defenceless groups. Even when people aren’t directly attacked because of their faith, as such, “Christians are seen as lesser mortals, and therefore you can turn the law against them in order to extract from them things that you want – be it their daughter, be it their house, be it their business, be it their land”. With fewer rights than others, he says, it’s “fair game” to exploit them.
Radical Islam isn’t the sole culprit when considering attacks on religious freedom, of course, with Hindu nationalism being to blame in India, for example. 2015’s Persecuted and Forgotten? A Report on Christians Oppressed for Their Faith highlighted the worsening situation in India, he says: “With a spike in acts of violence, nothing in the league of what we saw in Orissa in 2008, but systematic attacks that put Christians under pressure, with attacks on churches.” This rise, he says, has taken place despite government promises of protection for minorities.
China
In China, meanwhile, “we’ve seen an upsurge of attacks on supposedly unregistered churches and indeed those that have been registered have also been getting it in the neck,” he says. Dismissing as “just talk” claims of religious freedom in the world’s most populous country, he says: “In actual fact people are being prevented from being able to practice their faith and live an ordinary life where they’re free to express themselves within the confines of the law.”
This poses real moral questions for how we in the West deal with China, he says. Up to now people had hoped economic freedom would lead to religious freedom, but instead, he says, it seems the Chinese authorities “want the economic opportunity but they also want to control those people who seek to practice their faith and they want to be able to ensure party loyalty is in no way compromised by loyalty to whichever faith you practice”.
2014 saw a serious upsurge in violence against Christians there, he says, with a huge number of churches being targeted. “And we’re very concerned that what will happen is that in order to get the business deal governments in the west will simply overlook the atrocities that have been perpetuated against particular faith groups.”
The situation is worse again in North Korea, where “Christians have actually been executed for their faith under Kim Jong Un, and we understand that there are up to 200,000 Christians in prison or indeed in labour camps”, he says. For about the last 10 years, he adds, it has been the worst place in the world to be a Christian, though problems there long predate that.
Equally unknown is the number of Christians who live in North Korea, because the country’s draconian laws force them to live secret lives. “They certainly could not in any way profess their faith,” John says, “and they would have to be very, very careful about any public display because they would inevitably find themselves feeling the full weight of the law against them, so they are very much living in secret as Christians.”
If totalitarian atheism is behind North Korea’s oppressiveness, radical Islam underpins oppressive situations elsewhere. “The nearest to that has been Saudi Arabia, where any public display of Christian faith is strictly forbidden, and where you’ve got a hardline approach that’s put in place by the government there, and where you’ve got a religious police who go round doing surprise raids on families and on homes to ensure that people aren’t carrying out non-Muslim faith services,” John says.
Relations
Western relations with the country are “astonishing given the way in which that particular form of Islam is the one that’s being spread so widely and sometimes with devastating consequences”, he says, adding that “until now, we in the West have been very, very slow to recognise the repercussions of developing the economies of some of these nations given their commitment to the spread of a virulent form of Islam”.
Economic possibilities offered by trade with Saudi Arabia and elsewhere might be tempting, he says, “but if at the same time it’s enabling the spread of a virulent form of faith that threatens the safety of so many people around the world we have to think twice about what we’re doing, and we have to – if necessary – withdraw from deals that we feel would put ordinary people’s lives at risk.”
Focusing on economic relations in such a context is profoundly short-sighted, he says. “It’s simply extraordinary the extent to which forms of militant religious expression are the result of them being bankrolled by certain groups, certain countries, and that money doesn’t come from nowhere – it comes from those willing to trade with them,” he says, “and we do have to face the fact that if you want to perpetrate these virulent forms of religious expression you need money and that money is not self-generating.”
The ripples of radical Islam, particularly in the Saudi-driven Wahhabi vein, are having a devastating effect on Christian life throughout the Middle East, with Syria having lost most of its Christians in the last few years. “They used to have 1.25 million, then we had a report last year given in the European Parliament which claimed that 700,000 of them had left,” John says. “In certain cities, where Christians were particulary populous, the communities have completely collapsed in terms of numbers, and I’ve been to those communities and seen just how very sharp the decline has been.”
Safety
In terms of addressing this, he says getting people to safety and making their homelands liveable again aren’t mutually exclusive objectives. “In our assessment, the priority is to move people away from places where they are at direct risk – it is the absolute urgent need not to encourage people to stay in places where they’re likely to get bombed or killed or kidnapped,” he says, adding, “That is a duty of care that we owe them.”
At the same time, he says, this does not necessarily mean removing people from the region entirely, as the “fractional” nature of Syria’s conflict, for instance, means there are certain areas, such as around Tartus, where the government has the situation under control, such that “it’s inevitably becoming a rallying point for displaced people”.
Some would contest the wisdom or rightness of relying on Bashar al-Assad’s government for protection, but John says he has met nobody in Syria who takes seriously the suggestion that there could be a “middle party” between the government and Islamist militants, “offering a more positive, democratic, independent approach”.
Such areas as Tartus have seen far less violence than other places, he says, and there’s scope for Christians and other displaced peoples to build their communities there while they plan for what to do when the conflict ends.
“But as soon as you unleash the floodgates and have them come over to the West the chances of them returning to Syria are massively reduced,” he warns. Such an exodus might also make resolving the situation in their homeland less urgent, he adds, saying, “We’re very clear that we want to save Christianity in the Middle East by, first of all, saving lives, and also by providing areas where the Christians can gather, find safety, and rebuild their lives with a view to either settling there for good or to return home to their native countries.”
Many would argue that we in the West share responsibility for the situation in the Middle East, whether by enriching countries like Saudi Arabia or destabilising such countries as Iraq, Syria, and Libya, and John says “any suggestion that we’re in no way culpable for what’s happened begins – once you look at the evidence – to become a case that’s very difficult to argue”.
Stressing that this does not mean that the birth of ISIS can be blamed on the West, he nonetheless says, “We unfortunately, it certainly can be said, have played a part in this, and part of the solution is about us recognising that sadly we played our cards wrong.”
Stopping playing cards altogether would not help things, John argues. “I think any suggestion that we completely withdraw from any involvement in the Middle East is naive and it’s not practical anyway.” Instead, he says, we should do “much more reading of the situation on the ground and test our ‘solutions’ against the realpolitik situation on the ground and shape them accordingly”.
Listening
In general, he says, “It’s not for us to dictate terms and we must be very conscious of the need to listen as well as to speak and act, and very often the listening is absent in international affairs. We need to do much more listening.”
The number of Christians martyred each year has been estimated at anything from 7,000 to 100,000, with the lower number being probably more reflective of reality, but John is clearly wary of being caught in a numbers game.
“I have looked at any number of figures over the years, and the more I’ve looked at them, the more I’ve found them unbelievable,” he says. “If it was you and your job was to go round and find out how many people are persecuted, you would begin to think ‘Gosh, how do I do this? How do I go into North Korea, or get somebody in North Korea to tell me how many?’
“It’s impossible,” he continues, “and I think actually it’s really unhelpful, because you see journalists, academics and others bandying around figures, and they make a fool of themselves.”
A more realistic option, he thinks, is to point to trends about whether situations are worsening or improving, adding that some things are very clear, such as the situation in the Middle East.
“What you can see is, for example, that Christians have been subjected to a genocide,” he says. “A very clear genocide has unfolded, not just for Christians, but also for Shiite Muslims and other minority Muslims and the Yazidis.”
Describing how people have been killed and driven from their homes, their churches and religious artefacts destroyed, John is adamant that those responsible have done this deliberately.
“They’ve sought this outcome and they’ve sought it over a very sustained period and it’s worked – it’s working,” he says. “We are entering a stage where within five or 10 years, there will be parts of the Middle East which will be bereft of Christians and this in the very place that was their homeland, the cradle of Christianity. And it all could have been avoided.”
Recognitions
While welcoming recent recognitions, such as by US Secretary of State John Kerry, that ISIS’ actions constitute genocide, he worries people might think simply declaring that genocide is happening is enough.
Acknowledgements of genocide entail obligations to punish the guilty and to protect their victims, he says, adding, “It is clear that ISIS represents as much of a threat to us as it does to them, so it is not just acting in a good and holy way to go after ISIS – it is a moral imperative for the sake of our own safety to place before ourselves the objective to eliminate this evil in the world.”
These might seem strong words, but John says he uses them fully conscious of their weight. “If you go and see as I did the blood and the devastation and the sheer horror that’s been inflicted, you will see what I mean when I say that these people have blood on their hands,” he says, “and none of us are safe in our beds until justice has caught up with them.”
*John Pontifex will speak at the Davenport Hotel, Dublin on Thursday, April 7, at 8pm.