On 25 November 2014, Pope Francis addressed the European Parliament and drew attention to the severe persecution of Christians and other religious minorities around the world:
Here I cannot fail to recall the many instances of injustice and persecution which daily afflict religious minorities and Christians in particular, in various parts of the world. Communities and individuals today find themselves subjected to barbaric acts of violence: they are evicted from their homes and native lands, sold as slaves, killed, beheaded, crucified or burned alive, under the shameful and complicit silence of so many.
In the reporting of the speech in the mainstream media which followed, little was said about these particular comments, which sadly illustrates the point that was being made.
This era is probably the most violent for Christians in modern history. As has been patiently documented by the organizations who support them and advocate on their behalf, innumerable Christian communities are subject to rampant forms of intolerance, both religious and secular. The problem has got much worse since the turn of the millennium and Christians are more often under severe threat than any other faith group (see, for example, the data in Rupert Shortt, Christianophobia: a faith under attack (2013)). Therefore, one might expect this to have been for some time a major foreign policy concern for governments in many parts of the world. The fact that it has not been, helps reveal a persistent, powerful and rarely acknowledged hierarchy of victimhood.
As painfully detailed in this book, persecution of Christians and other minorities in the Middle East has risen to levels approaching religio‐ethnic cleansing. Although it is hoped that the dismantling of the Islamic State will offer some respite and the possibility of return to Iraq and Syria (something which is far from guaranteed), Christians continue to be killed or otherwise treated brutally and driven from their homes, in the lands which were some of the cradles of Christianity and where communities trace their histories back to the earliest church. Only recently have the sufferings, persecution and genocide of these Christians been admitted in certain quarters. That recognition has been the result of the tireless and courageous work of a handful of organizations and individuals, some of whom are contributors to this book.
In July 2015, it was again Pope Francis who was one of the first global leaders to use (and insist upon) the term ‘genocide’ with reference to the situation of persecuted Christians in areas of the Middle East. ‘Genocide’ is primarily a legal concept. It entails a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups. The legal concept is narrowly circumscribed and reserved for a particular subset of atrocities. For this reason, the legal concept has been criticized, because situations which cause dreadful suffering to many may nonetheless fall short of genocide and so not engage certain obligations under international law.
While many are aware of sporadic attacks against Christians in the Middle East, few properly appreciate that under ISIS a programme of total eradication was taking place. Nina Shea's fine essay in this volume details the evidence that supports the view that – despite certain public statements to the contrary ‐ ISIS in fact sought the complete elimination of Christians and other minorities from the lands of the caliphate. She describes what that programme meant for the people targeted. She also explains the obstacles that stood in the way of the eventual political designation by the United States, on 17 March 2016, of an ongoing genocide (for only the second time in the country's history). Theoretically at least, this designation should have an ongoing positive effect of raising international awareness of what has been happening and compel other states to act.
This book is the fruit of an international expert meeting, organized under the auspices of the International Centre on Law, Life, Faith and Family. The participants included academics, politicians, lawyers, theologians, journalists and humanitarian relief workers, some of whom are leaders in their fields. The resulting collection of essays is not in any sense narrowly legal or technical. The majority of the essays are accessible to a general reader, although some background understanding of international law would be helpful for an understanding of a couple of the papers. The book offers a detailed, informed and often moving accounts of the situation of this religious minority in the region. Further essays provide depth of perspective by exploring relevant topics, such as the history of Christian persecution, the politics of genocide declarations, the theological meaning of religious freedom, sharia provisions affecting Christians (and, in particular, Christian women), and the international mechanisms by which those guilty of crimes may be brought to account. (The title is a little misleading in that the focus is in fact almost entirely on Iraq and Syria, and is not as exclusively legal as the subtitle may suggest.)
One obvious reason why the extent of the persecution of Christians in the Muslim world has not been revealed is that parts of the media and others have made the error of equating the criticism of some Muslims and certain interpretations of Islam with racism. This attitude has been cemented by the amazingly prevalent view that Christianity is somehow a ‘Western religion’. The current authors show courage in attempting to grapple with some of the thorny problems that arise in this context. How exactly do you characterize the nature of the threat that certain Islamic theologies pose? (The question is crucial if some kind of strategy is going to be developed to counter that specific threat.) What is the historical nature of Christian and Muslim co‐existence, and what can be learned and applied from that? (A recurrent and chilling theme is the misconceptions that Westerners sometimes entertain about the realities of the special status Jews and Christians notionally enjoy as ‘People of the Book’.) The answers provided to some of these questions are necessarily introductory, but there is a commendable refusal to shirk the issues.
