In defense of Christians

By standing up for religious minorities in the Islamic world, Obama would be standing up for moderate Muslims, too

Tish Durkin

Thankfully, Koran-torching moron Terry Jones has come and gone as a news sensation, at least till his next Muslim-baiting stunt. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the Islamist fury that Jones all too easily tapped. With or without the pyromaniac pastor, tensions between America and the Islamic world would still be burning steadily. It is time for President Barack Obama to do one of the most positive, if counterintuitive, things he could do to put out this fatal fire: Stand up for Christians.

Lord knows they need it. So far this year, Pakistan has seen the assassination of two very senior officials — one of them Muslim — for opposing a long-standing law that prescribes the death penalty for blasphemy against Islam. In Afghanistan, even under the American-influenced constitution of 2009, apostasy, or conversion out of Islam, is a capital offense; one man jailed for this “crime” has recently been spirited to Europe, but another still faces possible execution. In Iraq, the burning of a Baghdad cathedral made headlines in October, while the continuous quaking of nuns in their convents garners no attention. One of the first post-Mubarak stories out of Egypt was about a church being set on fire, and Muslims attacking Christians who protested.

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Tish Durkin is a journalist whose work has appeared in publications including the New York Observer, the Atlantic Monthly, the National Journal, and Rolling Stone. After extensive postings in Iraq and throughout the Middle East, she is now based in Ireland.