No Noose is Good Noose

During a phone conversation the other night with my good buddy, Don…the topic of Yassir Arafat’s full-court press against Israel and the Jews at last week’s Durban racism conference came up. As usual, my insightful friend asked me quite a thought-provoking question.

"Todd," he began, "how is it that the Muslims have any right to complain about Zionism when they treat Christians the way they do in the Sudan and Afghanistan?"

He had me there.

While Muslim speakers lined up to take pot shots at Israel, simply because it has the audacity to exist, the topic of persecuted Christians in Arabic lands was somehow missing from the official program. Clearly, this was by design.

Rather than spending precious time defending Israel’s policy of targeting known baby killers for extinction, it occurred to me that the best defense is a good offense. And truth is the most potent weapon of all.

About three months ago, I had the distinctly unsettling pleasure of interviewing Dennis Bennett, Director of the Christian "Blue Nile Project" in Sudan; a man responsible for sending relief supplies to beleaguered believers in that genocidally challenged land to the south of Egypt.

Conditions in that nation were far worse than I had anticipated. Millions have died in the civil war that pits the belligerent Muslim Sudanese government forces in the North against Christian and Animist believers in the South.

Mr. Bennett told us how Sudanese military leaders dealt with innocent Christian non-combatants. They were first offered the chance to renounce Jesus Christ. If they did not, they were rounded up into a grass hut. Then a Russian-built main battle tank would smash into the tribal hut and grind the martyrs to pieces under its rolling treads.

Another favorite form of execution included lining up those who clung to their faith and driving a nail through the top of the skull of every man, woman and child. Nails could be reused, you see, and were far cheaper than bullets.

Now, let’s examine the treatment Christians are receiving in Afghanistan, another Muslim nation. A fundamentalist faction rules that land with an iron grip and attempts to spread any faith other than Islam are dealt with harshly.

So, how were eight foreign relief workers thanked for their efforts to help provide food and shelter for suffering Muslims in Afghanistan? The religious police arrested them for showing the "Jesus" film and attempting to share their Christian faith. A court cleric will hear their cases and determine whether they qualify for death by hanging.

I was on the Internet the other night, visiting one of my favorite Christian news bulletin boards when a Muslim showed up, sharing that faith’s party line on Jesus Christ. They believe He was a great prophet and will return again. They do not believe He died, was resurrected or that He was the Son of God. But they claim they revere the same Jesus that Christians worship.

Then, he responded to a Christian challenge that Muslims are not allowed to investigate other faiths, freely. Azeem claimed that was not true…that followers of Mohammad could indeed search out and test the teachings of Christianity.

Maybe that is true…in this, Christian society.

But if he attempted to hold such an interfaith dialogue in a land where those of his ilk have already triumphed, he might be receiving an invitation to a necktie party instead of an altar call.

I, for one, have decided I can never consider as valid the anti-Zionist racism claims of Yassir Arafat and his crybaby coterie. Not until they’re willing for Christians to brand Islam guilty of far worse crimes against humanity.

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