World View: Do News Organizations Ignore Jihadist Attacks on Christians?

Reuters
Reuters

This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

  • Do news organizations ignore jihadist attacks on Christians?
  • ISIS kills almost 2000 in Syria in six months

Do news organizations ignore jihadist attacks on Christians?

Christians forced out of the town of Mosul by ISIS take shelter in a church. (Aleteia)
Christians forced out of the town of Mosul by ISIS take shelter in a church. (Aleteia)

There’s a frequently heard complaint that while the mainstream media frequently report on jihadist attacks, they seem to ignore the attacks on Christians. This criticism was directed at me after this article: “26-Dec-14 World View — ‘Barbaric’ ethnic massacre in Assam province shocks Indians”. One person wrote (paraphrasing): “John, my point is that you left Christians off your list entirely, while at the same time they are being brutally massacred all around the world. You didn’t get it then, perhaps due to your biases. You’re not getting it now.” Another person wrote, “Admit it. You don’t like Christians and you downplay violence against them.”

Let me assure you, Dear Reader, that I wouldn’t hesitate for a nanosecond to report on a massacre of Christians by jihadists or anyone else. So if that’s true, you may ask, then why don’t I write about massacres of Christians more often?

Let’s look at some numbers. How many Christians have actually been massacred by jihadists? I went to the anti-Muslim “Religion of Peace” web site where they have tables of jihadist attacks, including a table of Christians killed by jihadists. Here are the numbers:

  • Since 11-Sep-2001 (9/11) — that’s 13 years — less than 9000 Christians have been killed in jihadist attacks, according to the web site.
  • Since 1-Jan-2014 — that’s this year alone — about 30,000 people have been killed in jihadist attacks.

A new report sponsored by the BBC finds that more than 5,000 people worldwide died in November alone — just one month — as a result of jihadist violence. This would indicate that about 60,000 people have died from jihadist attacks per year.

If you put all these figures together, you can see that the number of Christians killed by jihadists is minuscule — less than 2% — compared to the total number of people killed by jihadists. Quite honestly, I would guess that in any given country in recent years, more Christians have been killed by traffic accidents than by terrorists. Overwhelmingly, the people being killed by jihadists are other Muslims.

So that explains the lack of media coverage of Christians killed by jihadists. If less than 2% of the victims are Christian, then you would expect Christians to get not much more than 2% of the coverage.

Once again, Dear Reader, when there is a massacre of Christians (let’s hope that it won’t happen), then I would not hesitate to report it. But what’s really going on is that jihadists are overwhelmingly attacking other Muslims. There’s a war going on, and it’s not between Christians and Muslims. It’s between Muslims and Muslims, and it’s going to have a huge effect on all our futures. The Religion Of Peace and BBC

ISIS kills almost 2000 in Syria in six months

According to figures published by the Syrian Observatory For Human Rights, there have been at least 1,878 documented executions by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (IS or ISIS or ISIL) since it became a self-declared “Caliphate” on June 28, 2014.

That figure includes 120 of its own ISIS members, who were executed for trying to return back home.

The dead included 930 members of the Shaitat tribe, an important Sunni Muslim tribe that’s been opposing ISIS. This is an example of Sunni Muslims massacring Sunni Muslims.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed in Syria since 2011, when Syria’s genocidal monster Bashar al-Assad began launching heavy weapons and chemical-laden barrel bombs on innocent women and children. Now they’ve been joined by ISIS in massacring thousands more Sunni civilians.

And by the way, I should also mention Pakistan. Last week’s horrific Taliban attack on a Peshawar army school, killing over 130 schoolchildren, shows that Pakistan is at war with itself, with Sunni Muslim terrorists killing Sunni and Shia Muslim civilians almost every day.

Once again, Dear Reader, we are not seeing a war of Muslims against Christians, although some Christians are targeted. What we’re seeing is something of historic proportions: A massive and growing war of Muslims against Muslims — Sunni Muslims against Sunni Muslims, Sunni Muslims against Shia Muslims, and Shia Muslims against Sunni Muslims. The intensity of this war has been growing for several years, and at some point will engulf at least the Mideast and South Asia. Syrian Observatory For Human Rights and AFP and Washington Post

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Christians, Muslims, jihadists, Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Iraq, Syria, Shaitat Tribe, Bashar al-Assad, Pakistan, Peshawar, Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims
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