Almost 20 years ago, Samuel Huntingdon forecast a ‘clash of civilisations’.
Almost 20 years ago, Samuel Huntingdon forecast a ‘clash of civilisations’. In the past few months, this clash has become outright war.
Christian minorities, who have lived peacefully in Muslim countries for generations, are finding themselves subject to increasingly violent persecution. Churches are being attacked in Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Indonesia and the Philippines. The recent assassination in Pakistan of a Muslim politician who defended a Christian woman sentenced to death for ‘insulting’ Islam was particularly shocking.
Pakistan has had blasphemy laws since its inception, but never before have they been used to persecute Christians. The Church of England has had a bishop in Lahore since 1877 to minister to Pakistan’s three million Christians, but only now has this become a dangerous mission. The victims are not just Christians. In the last two years, the Muslim world has sought to expel most minorities. The Sufis and Ahmadis in Pakistan feel just as anxious as the Christians. The Baha’i in Iran have long been persecuted, while the West turns a blind eye.
What we are witnessing is a growing, violent, worldwide intolerance. Pakistan’s steadily more aggressive application of its blasphemy laws has been mirrored by an ominous enthusiasm for religious registration laws in many countries, from Serbia to Uzbekistan. Europe knows only too well what manner of evil can spring from a mania for registration.
President Sarkozy put it succinctly a few weeks ago. ‘We are witnessing a wicked kind of religious cleansing,’ he declared.
It’s all too easy to imagine what might happen next. Persecution will lead to counter-attacks which could spark a civil war. A civil war will claim far more lives than any straightforward battle between nations.
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