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New World Watch List 2011
ISLAMIC EXTREMISTS ARE CHRISTIANITY’S FIERCEST PERSECUTORS IN 2010
Despite Communist North Korea topping the annual Open Doors World Watch List for a ninth consecutive time, the toughest countries in which to practice Christianity are overwhelmingly Islamic ones. Of the top ten countries in the new 2011 WWL, eight have Islamic majorities and in seven of them persecution has increased. They are Iran, which clamps down on a growing house church movement: Afghanistan, where thousands of believers cluster deep underground; Saudi Arabia, which still refuses to allow any Saudi person to convert to Christianity; lawless Somalia, ruled by bloodthirsty terrorists threatening to kill even Christian aid workers from feeding their own people; tiny Maldives, which mistakenly boasts it is an 100% Islamic country, Yemen with its determination to expel all Christian workers, and Iraq, which saw extremists massacre 58 Christians in a Baghdad Cathedral in October. And of the top thirty countries, only seven have a source other than Islamic extremism as the main persecutor of the church. The annual Open Doors World Watch List is compiled by the Research Department of Open Doors International, and tracks the shifting conditions under which Christians live in seventy-seven countries, then ranks the 50 nations where it is hardest to practice the Christian faith. The country that saw the greatest deterioration in the reporting period - and the highest climber in the WWL from 17 to 8 - was Iraq. The country has seen a Christian exodus in recent years, with an estimated 334,000 Christians left in this ancient cradle of Christianity, a drop of over 50% since the 2003 toppling of Saddam’s regime. The cause is organized violence, often by Shia militia, sometimes armed by Iran, who systematically target neighbourhoods, especially in the northern city of Mosul and in the capital Baghdad, in an attempt to cleanse these areas of a Christian presence. A total of at least ninety Christians were martyred this year in Iraq, and hundreds more injured in bomb and gun attacks. A feeble government, exemplified by taking a tortuous nine months to form a working cabinet after elections in March, seems unable or even unwilling to restrain the extremist militia. The country with the largest Christian community in the WWL’s top fifteen is Pakistan, with over five million believers. They too faced a sharp erosion of their religious liberty, rising from 14 to 11 in the current List. Twenty nine Christians were martyred from 1st November 2009 to 31st October this year, with a fatal incident occurring every single month. Four Christians were given long prison sentences for blasphemy against Islam, at least 58 Christians were kidnapped, and over 100 Christians assaulted, and fourteen instances of damage to Christian churches and properties were recorded. Massive floods in the summer that displaced fourteen million people gave extremists their greatest opportunity yet to push whole Christian communities out of their traditional villages and towns. When the floods struck, Christians made their way to the mosques, which are usually situated on the high ground, but with some honourable exceptions, all too often were refused food and shelter on the grounds that “you are not one of us.” Open Doors moved quickly to mount a huge relief effort to channel aid through church networks to the bereft Christians, realizing in the words of one Pakistani pastor, “if the Christians leave their homes to find aid, the extremists will never let them back in to the places they have been born and raised...this is a critical moment for the witness of the church in Pakistan.” Like Iraq, Pakistan has a feeble and corrupt government which does little to discipline the extremists, despite public protestations to the contrary. Other countries that rose markedly in the new WWL were Afghanistan, up from six to number three, especially in the wake of ugly demonstrations when footage of Muslims being baptised were shown on network television. Dozens of Christians from the tiny Afghan church have had to move homes due to subsequent death threats, and in August a ten person medical aid team from a Christian NGO were slaughtered. Morocco rose from 37 to 31 when a relatively tolerant government turned on the Christian population, expelled 150 Christian expatriates allegedly for proselytizing, and Muslim leaders issued incendiary statements against local Christians, claiming that Christians were committing “moral rape” and “religious terrorism.” The year’s grizzliest headlines were found in Nigeria however, where a staggering two thousand Christians lost their lives in riots with Muslim extremists in some of the northern states in the country. Tension has been growing for over a generation in northern Nigeria, and escalated after 1999 when twelve northern states adopted sharia law. The critical region has been in the more central Plateau state, where tribal rivalries mix with religious claim and counterclaim to periodically ignite into devastating massacres. Clashes in January and March saw 500 and 700 Christians killed, and in some cases Christian communities felt they had to take up arms in order to defend themselves, especially as an ineffective and disinterested military offered little protection. Such situations start small however, often due to a failure to apply the rule of law. The Anglican Archbishop of Jos, Ben Kwashi, said sadly, “When I was raised here over forty years ago, a Muslim could kill a Christian and never face justice for the crime...that’s why it has come to this.” Persecution is increasing for vast numbers of Christians worldwide. Christians living in the countries of the top ten number more than 2.8 million, and roughly 114 million in the top twenty counties, though not all are equally persecuted. The general situation actually improved for China’s 85 million Christians in the past year. In the fifty-one countries of the 2011 WWL Christians total over 480 million world wide. Increasing persecution on a global scale is recognised more widely thanks to such tools as the OD-WWL. The 2010 edition of the famous prayer manual, Operation World, was published in November and was quick to highlight as a global trend, “...The rise in levels of persecution – especially for Christians.”The editors of the Operation World explained why: “The end of the European colonial era, the end of Christianity’s status as state religion in most of the West and the resurgence of religious sentiments globally, especially fundamentalism, all mean that Christians generally no longer operate from a position of power or privilege. Christians are subject to persecution in much of the world. Evangelicals are subject to even more due to their proselytism and commitment to the uniqueness of Christ. The presence of persecution and hardship in the life of the Church appears to be normative in Scripture; contexts where persecution does not exist at all should be as much a cause for concern as places where it is intense.” Dr Ron Boyd-MacMillan, head of Research and Strategy at Open Doors International and the author of Faith that Endures: The Essential Guide to the Persecuted Church” speaks of “the three big megatrends in the world of persecution right now.” He explains, “The Islamic world is becoming more extreme; the Western world is becoming more secularist, and the Asian world is becoming more capitalistic.” The Islamic world is becoming more extremist – according to Boyd-MacMillan - because Iran and Saudi Arabia are exploiting a significant loss of American influence in the Middle East as it seeks to exit Iraq and Afghanistan with stability far from assured in either state. Iran not only takes a hard line against Christians within its borders, but freely bankrolls Shia extremist movements abroad that hurt Christians, such as Hezbollah in the Lebanon, and insurgent groups in Iraq. Saudi Arabia uses its oil millions to export its hard line version of Sunni extremism, Wahabbism, and often this aid comes with a requirement to less Islamic governments to become more intolerant of their religious minorities. Countries such as Egypt and Syria, which have a largely nominal ruling regimes, have felt the pressure in recent years to get tougher with their Christian minorities as a result. Morocco’s anti-Christian crackdown this year may be explained by playing to these newer regional dynamics as well. Secondly, Western governments are becoming more aggressively secularist, especially in the aftermath of 9/11 when the tendency among some political elites was to regard all religion as dangerous. Traditionally secular states bind themselves to neutrality, refusing to prejudice one religion or denomination over another. But in more recent years this understanding of secularism has shifted, with many politicians now saying the state should not be content to be neutral between religions but should have nothing to do with religion at all. This has the effect of pushing religious activity out of the public square, and when Pope Benedict visited Britain in September he rebuked politicians for an “aggressive secularism,” calling for the voice of religion, and Christianity in particular, to be welcomed back as a vital partner in building more tolerant societies. As religious liberty commentator Oliver McTiernan says, “We need secular societies, not secularist societies...the first allows for all views to flourish, the second refuses to let any view other than secularism flourish.” And with massive demographic shifts occurring especially in Western Europe, and significant Muslim minorities refusing to accept this understanding of their role, polarisation is significantly increasing. This is not all bad however, stresses Boyd-MacMillan, “as Christians and Muslims can find themselves as allies in this fight to avoid marginalisation.” This year for the first time – Russia – became part of the WWL. Thirdly, Asian societies are becoming more capitalistic, especially with China and India on the verge of becoming new economic superpowers. This has mixed results in the world of persecution. One the one hand, it does bring more freedom and a relaxation of control, as the government is forced to cede power to the market. China and India have both gone down in the recent WWL, as the situation of the churches there has improved slightly. On the other hand, the type of capitalism that Asian societies embrace tends to create a wealthy super elite that still leave hundreds of millions in grinding poverty. When churches embrace a more holistic ministry, and seek to empower the poor, they find themselves at odds with corrupt elites who view their work as unwarranted interference. Many of China’s house churches are pushing for the rights of factory workers for example, who work sixteen hour days under chronic conditions for a pittance. This will create conflict over time. Extremism of all guises is on the rise around the world with painful consequences for the church. Dr Adjith Fernando, a world renowned bible teacher from Sri Lanka, told 4200 delegates at the 3rd Lausanne Congress on World Evangelism that extremism was hurting evangelism. He said to the audience of mission leaders gathered in Cape Town in October, “Extremists trade in suspicion, and so when Christians for example set up a hospital in India, the Hindu extremists say you are buying converts, and although the charge is untrue, it creates a defensive reaction on the part of the church.” This reaction, Fernando argues, is that ministries and churches split off social and humanitarian activities from evangelistic activities for suffering is the gift by which we see our need of Him who came for us and loves us.” , with the unfortunate result that social work gets well funded, because it can be talked about openly, while evangelism gets dangerously underfunded, because it cannot be talked about openly any more, lest extremists twist the claims and create more persecution. Fernando lamented about his own country, Sri Lanka: “The standard of ministry has gone down since the Asian Tsunami,“ he said, “because pastors are too busy concentrating on distributing aid fairly to teach the scriptures to their flocks properly.” In the end, the rise of persecution is paradoxically for Christians something to protest and to celebrate, for as a Beijing house church pastor says, “The church is always persecuted when it does something right...it shows Christ to a world that rejects him.” Persecution is the continual replaying of John chapter one verse ten: “[Jesus] came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. He came to his own people, but even they rejected him.” And so in the challenging words of a Palestinian pastor, “Every Christian must rejoice to be persecuted, and fight for Christ to be recognised in the midst of suffering,
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