by Tom Goodfellow, TCW
LET me state from the outset that I regard anti-Semitism to be horrific. The sight of Oxford students marching in London shouting ‘globalise the Intifada’ or ‘from the river to the sea’, implying that all Jewish people should be exterminated, makes me ashamed of my country.
The attack on the Manchester synagogue, and Jewish children too frightened to go to school is beyond the pale. The October 7 massacre and the atrocity on Bondi Beach are simply the most dreadful manifestations of ‘the oldest hatred’. Innocent Jewish victims of this behaviour have my sympathies and fullest support.
However, it is concerning that while the media focus on such dreadful things, a bigger picture is ignored, which is the appalling persecution of Christians in many parts of the world. This is confirmed by latest World Watch List annual ranking of the 50 countries in the world where Christians face the most extreme persecution just published by Open Doors. The numbers are quite dreadful.
In November for example hundreds of children were abducted by terrorists from their Catholic school in north Nigeria. Since the notorious Chibok abduction in 2014, when more than 200 schoolgirls were kidnapped, such abductions have escalated, almost exclusively Christian children. Many of the girls taken in 2014 were forced to convert to Islam and married to terrorists (ie raped). There are a number of terrorist groups in Nigeria, and Christians are repeatedly targeted, tortured and killed, and church buildings destroyed.
Nigeria is not alone in Africa. There is extreme violence against Christians in Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Sudan and Eritrea. In Pakistan and India Christians are regularly persecuted. If a Muslim does not like his Christian neighbour all he needs to do is accuse him of disrespecting a copy of the Koran, and he will be immediately arrested and tried for blasphemy, almost certainly found guilty and imprisoned, and his family expelled from their home.