WHEN THE LAMB IS SILENT

SOMEONE FROM THE MIDDLE EAST told me once that Westerners play games, looking for win-win outcomes. Islamists play for win-lose outcomes. Liberals have a very difficult time dealing with the kind of triumphal attitudes inherent in Islamism. They think that everyone should be able to paint reality in subtle shades of gray. Islamic intolerance and barbarism is often excused as merely cultural expression.

Several years ago my family was involved in liberating a young Philippina girl who had been given as a wedding gift to a Saudi student attending our local university. When challenged about the enslavement of this young girl by one of his students, the university provost cautioned that we should be more sensitive, because in Saudi culture this sort of thing is acceptable.

Silence can only be construed as tacit consent of the Left. Two million Southern Sudanese were killed in the 20 years of terrible blood letting. This genocide was a direct consequence of the jihad instigated by the Islamic Front leaders in Khartoum. Religious conservatives were in the forefront of the movement to halt the slaughter and bring about a comprehensive peace. When that same Khartoum regime launched its jihad against Muslims in Darfur, religious conservatives again protested. This time they were joined by liberals in calling for an end to the violence. In fact, liberal organizations made it the cause de jour for a myriad of celebrities. All well and good, but where were they when Christians and animists were being murdered?

All that the Christians and other non-Muslims of the Middle East want from the Left is a little more consistency in compassion. The liberal press has occasionally been responsive to the plight of the Christians of Iraq, but one suspects that it is not because of an authentic sense of solidarity, but the fact that the issue provides one more opportunity to show the failure of the Bush administration.

These comments are excerpted from an interview with Rev. Keith Roderick, a defender of religious prisoners of conscience since 1982 as the Director of the Society of St. Stephen and Co-Director of the International Taskforce on Soviet Jewery. After responding to the appeals of Coptic Christians in 1987, he began working for Christians and other minorities from predominantly Muslim countries. He organized the Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights in 1993, the largest umbrella organization representing these minorities. Fr. Roderick also serves as the Washington Representative of Christian Solidarity International and is the Canon for Persecuted Christians for the Diocese of Quincy, the only Canon defending persecuted Christians in the Episcopal Church.

Actually, I must add my own two cents in the form of a question. Where is the outrage of the Right? Where is the howl from the righteous independents we hear so much about around US election time? Roderick is one voice, strong and on the money with regards to understanding the historically persistent threat from Islam to these communities, but he certainly is not loud enough, and is only one voice in this never-ending cacophony of globally active agitators on the prowl. Where are these televangelists who claim to know God's will? Where are the million strong marches coming from the so-called powerful right-wing lobby for anything but their own self-interests? May God help us all as Islam continues its bloody and suffocating reign across the lands of peace-loving peoples, while everyone else stands around, hands in pockets, making excuses for these ruthless totalitarians! The long predicted weeping and the gnashing is surely not far away, if this blindness continue unchallenged at every level of confrontation.

Read the entire interview here.