How bad will it get? Bracing for religious persecution in the West
by Lea Singh, LifeSite:
A poignant passage in Immaculée Ilibagiza’s book Left to Tell recounts how her father, a proud and prominent Tutsi in their village, resisted leaving Rwanda in the spring of 1994, shortly before the genocide. The signs of brewing violence were becoming increasingly obvious, but Ilibagiza’s father was determined to be a sign of hope for his Tutsi community. He remained almost incomprehensibly optimistic, refusing to believe that the worst could happen. So, his family forfeited chances at making an escape, rejecting the last getaway plan the very night before their own village was attacked.
Then, suddenly, it was too late. The killing sprees began like rain out of gathered clouds, and Ilibagiza’s mother, father and two brothers lost their lives almost immediately. Ilibagiza herself survived only by miraculous luck, spending three terror-filled months crammed into a small hidden bathroom with several other women.
When I first read Left to Tell, the attitude of Illibigaza’s father struck me as incredibly naive. Even though he paid the ultimate price for his quixotic hope in human goodness, I felt a certain anger at him for being so stubbornly blind as to throw his whole family into the path of machetes. How could he have been so foolish?
But as I continued reading about the Rwandan genocide, I discovered a rather surprising thing: the story of Ilibagiza’s father was not unusual. In the face of oncoming danger, many people seem remarkably resistant to the suggestion that very terrible things can happen. For instance, one author writes:
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