Source/Credit: Houston Chronicle |
By Houston Chronicle | March 29, 2012
In the United States, citizens who label themselves as Christians have long been in the majority. Though that majority has decreased in the past two decades or so, from 88 percent in 1988, it is still placed at 76 percent in most independent head counts.
In this country, thankfully, we do not often see incidents of what would be considered blanket persecution of Christians, whether institutional or individual. But that is not so in other parts of the world, most notably China, in parts of Africa and in many areas across the Middle East.
Persecution of Christians in Iran, Egypt and elsewhere by those countries' Muslim majorities have made headlines in recent days, and these acts deserve the world's condemnation. As does the widely reported remark by the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia - the highest Islamic law authority in Saudi Arabia - that it is "necessary to destroy all the churches of the [Arabian Peninsula] region."
This is an attitude that is repugnant to Americans and most others who embrace tolerance of those with different religious, political or philosophical beliefs. The Grand Mufti's remarks must not go unnoticed; indeed, they deserve the widest condemnation. And so we offer ours.
As others have pointed out, the fomentation of such views about mosques, Islamic places of worship, by a major Christian leader would bring immediate calls for condemnation - and rightly so. Recall that an obscure Florida fundamentalist pastor's decision to burn a copy of the Quran, Islam's holy book, provoked deadly violence in Afghanistan.
The basis for the Grand Mufti's ruling is the hadith, or moral tradition in Islam, that holds the Prophet Muhammad said on his deathbed that "there are not to be two religions in the [Arabian] Peninsula." There are no churches in Saudi Arabia, by far the largest nation in the region. But the peninsula also is home to the nations of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Yemen, where Christian churches do exist.
This decree opens the possibility of even more violence against Christians across the Muslim world, where persecution is already shockingly common against groups such as the Coptic Christians in Egypt.
Of note, leaders of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, USA, the oldest Muslim organization in America, have called on leaders in the Muslim world to honor the free exercise of faith, citing these far different words from the Prophet: "Every help shall be given (Christians) in the repair of their churches." That is the spirit of Islam that must prevail.
Read original post here: Editorial: Mufti's remarks deserve condemnation
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