Must speak up

In the name of radical Islamic-inspired nationalism, Mideast Christians of all denominations, including Catholics, have faced devastating persecution for their religious convictions. From the Gaza Strip and Egypt to Iraq to Turkey, Christians have been murdered.

Ostensibly with the purpose of addressing these injustices and stemming the tide of a dwindling Christian population in the Mideast, Pope Benedict XVI convened a special Vatican Synod in Rome, composed of about 200 bishops mostly from Muslim countries.

Rabbi David Rosen, the American Jewish Committee’s International Director of Interreligious Affairs, has now called on the Vatican to issue a clear repudiation of Greek Melkite Archbishop Cyril Salim Bustros’s “outrageous and regressive comments.” We firmly join him in that call.

It it an undeniable fact that the bulk of Christian persecution in the Mideast is perpetrated in the name of radical Islam.

Open Doors, an organization that tracks attacks on Christians, regularly compiles a global “persecution index.” North Korea has topped the list for many years.

However, of the top 10 countries on the list, eight are Islamic and three — Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen — are in the Middle East.

So, if radical Islam is the principal persecutor of Christians in the Mideast, why was Israel singled out?

When secular Pan-Arabism was still in vogue, this tactic was much easier to pull off.

However, with the rise of Wahhabism, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaida, radical Shi’ism and other extremist Islamic movements, Arab Christians have had an increasingly harder time integrating into their respective societies.

Bishops from this region have distorted both church teachings and the facts to sully Israel, while the Vatican has remained silent, in the process turning a blind eye to Christian suffering.

Pope Benedict XVI still has a chance to distance himself from the synod’s declarations and make it clear that Bustros’s comments deviate from Church teaching. That is the right and necessary thing for the pope to do — not just for Jewish-Catholic relations, but also for the sake of the Middle East’s persecuted Christian minority.

— The Jerusalem Post