Even the pleas of Pope Francis haven't awakened the Obama administration to the reality that Christians in several countries today are targets of systematic, genocidal violence, the author of a new book on modern-day religious persecution told
Newsmax TV on Tuesday.
"People are being murdered, discriminated against, persecuted, particularly in the Middle East, strictly because they are Christian. For some reason, the administration can't accept that fact," writer and charitable activist George Marlin told "Newsmax Now" co-host John Bachman.
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Marlin, chairman of a Vatican-backed Catholic charity, Aid to the Church in Need-USA, cited the starkly different responses from Washington and Rome
to the killings of 21 Egyptian Christians in February.
"Pope Francis said … they were murdered specifically because they were Christians," said Marlin. "What did the administration say? 'We're appalled by the Egyptian citizens that were killed.' "
The 21 Copts — Coptic Christians from Egypt — were kidnapped and beheaded in Libya, in a mass killing the Islamic State (ISIS) took credit for in a video of the atrocity. A screen caption identified the victims, as they were marched to their deaths, as "people of the cross, followers of the hostile Egyptian church."
"The Egyptian citizens were killed because they were Christians," said Marlin.
Yet the White House, listening with a "tin ear" and living inside of an "ideological bubble," seems unable or unwilling to acknowledge the truth, even when it's
uttered by the Pope, he said.
"There is this denseness where they cannot accept the fact that there is specific persecution going on," said Marlin. "And one could make the argument, based on the definition of genocide that the U.N. put out in 1948, this is genocide against Christians, and the objective of the persecutions going on is to wipe Christianity off the face of the earth."
Marlin said he wrote his forthcoming book, "
Christian Persecutions in the Middle East: A 21st Century Tragedy," to lay bare the ongoing campaign to exterminate Christians.
"I want to make it clear to Americans, in particular, and to Europeans — to the West — that before ISIS, systemic persecutions were happening throughout the 21st Century, going back to the 20th Century, in countries like Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and South Sudan," he said.
"This is nothing new," he said.
It's also more than just sectarian cleansing, he said, describing a collective subjugation, persecution and dehumanization of Christians.
"What we've seen in the Middle East and in the countries I've just mentioned, Christians are treated as second-class citizens," said Marlin. "They have to pay taxes for being Christians. They're forced into conversion. There's job discrimination against them, education discrimination.
"Mobs destroy their homes," he continued. "Mobs destroy their Christian businesses. They blow up their cathedrals and churches on high holy days. They murder priests. They abduct and murder bishops, and they murder the daughters of Christians, and Christian girls then are sold into slavery.
"Persecution means more than just killing people," said Marlin. "This is systemic persecution that's been going on for a very long time and, sadly, the West has chosen to ignore this. And I don't think it can be ignored much longer, or the last remnants of Christianity will be completely wiped out in the Middle East."
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