The president’s ambassador to the United Nations, addressing Islamic State genocide, lumped Christians in with gays and other minorities facing a “death sentence” in the Islamic State’s terror campaign.
Samantha Power, answering a question about congressional urgings that the administration speak out against Christian persecution by the Muslim group, also said that while ISIS is “targeting very specific minority groups,” its goal is wiping out any who challenge its world view.
“On the genocide question, when president Obama decided to intervene militarily on behalf of the Yazidis, he himself also invoked the specter of genocide. There’s no question that the Yazidis, and Christians and Shia and LGBT, and if you find yourself of a minority of a certain type in ISIL territory, Americans, that has proven a death sentence for many. If not a death sentence, certainly a displacement sentence,” she said this week in an even hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.
“Having said that, Sunni in ISIL territory are also living under horrific hardship and anybody even suspected of dissenting or in being any way in opposition to ISIL’s rule, you’ve seen whole tribes and whole Sunni families wiped out. So while ISIL is targeting very specific minority groups as such, its monstrous ideology applies well beyond ethnic national religious groups as such to anybody who doesn’t share its worldview,” she added.
It was the latest example of what critics claim is the administration’s reluctance to focus on Christian persecution in the Middle East, and by the Islamic State specifically.
George J. Marlin, author of the new book “Christian Persecutions in the Middle East,” said that Washington and the West is allergic to singling out Christianity when talking about terrorism.
He recalled in an interview how the White House, reacting to this year’s Islamic State beheadings of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya, didn’t mention their faith.
The White House statement said, “The United States condemns the despicable and cowardly murder of twenty-one
Egyptian citizens in Libya by ISIL-affiliated terrorists. We offer our condolences to the families of the victims and our support to the Egyptian government and people as they grieve for their fellow citizens. ISIL’s barbarity knows no bounds. It is unconstrained by faith, sect, or ethnicity.”
Marlin, chairman of Aid to the Church in Need USA, an international group that helps Christians facing persecution, said “they weren’t murdered because they were Egyptians. The West can’t bring themselves to use the words ‘Christian persecutions,’ they can’t put that sentence together.”
He added that he hopes Pope Francis, in visiting the United States next week, urges the president and United Nations to raise the issue of Christian persecution.
“It fits the definition of genocide, but no one wants to deal with it,” said Marlin.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
