An unfair indictment of India by the World Watch List
By Maria Wirth
Media is not mainly about giving information. It is about influencing opinion to further the agenda of certain interests and lies are apparently an accepted tool. Lies are often disguised as surveys. Nobody would believe lies if they were too obvious. Yet when a World Watch List by Open Doors in England gives out a ranking regarding the level of persecution of Christians, and when nobody less than the British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt releases and tweets about it(in January 2019), the ranking acquires respectability, even if it contains plain falsehood. From now on, people, who heard about this list, will “know” that the level of persecution of Christians is extremely high in India, higher than in Syria or Nigeria.
Now this list falls clearly under propagating falsehood in the name of an agenda. There is no other country where members of other religions are as safe as in India. Jews gratefully acknowledged that India is the one country where they were never persecuted. Syrian Christians under their leader Thomas of Cana were given refuge in the 4th century. Parsis came in the 10th century to escape the Muslim invaders in Persia. And in 1959, some 100,000 Tibetan Buddhists fled over high Himalayan mountains and found shelter in India – only 12 years after the British had left India as one of the poorest countries on earth – a country that was one of the richest when they had seized power.
Yet now the British Foreign Secretary tweeted that nobody should be persecuted for their faith and obviously endorsed the ranking of India in the “extreme level” at number 10 out of 50 countries.
Of course, nobody should be persecuted for their faith. Yet why is there persecution? Who is likely to persecute others for their faith?
Naturally it must be those who believe in an ideology which considers the faith of those others as unacceptable. There exist mainly three such ideologies – communism, Christianity and Islam.All three are known for not only persecuting, but killing dissenting voices in the millions.
Communism wants to stamp out religion as it considers it as a disease.
Christianity wants to obliterate all other faiths except itself, and Islam has the same goal. Both won’t tolerate other faiths and therefore are likely to persecute them.
So the countries which top the list may indeed deserve their rank and persecute Christians. North Korea due to communism and up to rank 17, all areMuslim majority countries with one exception. On rank 10 is India with a Hindu majority.
How did India get in there? Is there an agenda to obfuscate and muddle the issue? Hinduism does not condemn other faiths as wrong and does not persecute others. It has the most liberal world view possible. Everyone can seek his own connection to the source of his being.
So why is India ranked together with countries where Christians are indeed persecuted? Surely the compilers of the list must have reason to include India, won’t they? Was there not a young American missionary killed by tribals in the Andaman Islands recently? And is this not brutal persecution?
Yes, he was killed. The young American was naïve. The Sentinelese tribe is cut off from civilization and hostile, and nobody is allowed to go there. Yet he went nevertheless, feeling called to bring the Gospel to them, as if they were in need of it. His superiors should have warned him, yet they rather encouraged a possible ‘martyrdom’.
Yet this cannot possibly be called persecution of Christians. It was a defense against an unwanted intruder by tribals, who had earlier had bad experiences under the British colonial rule. It also cannot be called persecution of Christians, when villagers occasionally chased away missionaries who had come to convert. These villagers have every right to protest against their gods being called devils and being pestered to leave their ancient tradition. Did the missionaries not cross decent human behavior by not respecting others’ views, if those views are not harmful to anyone? Unfortunately, Christian missionaries are notorious for crossing decent human behavior and for putting out blatant fake news.
An example:
Swiss friends were alarmed by a forward they had got on 23. November 2018 and asked me if there was truth in it. It was in German and I translate it here:
SAD NEWS: Please pray! Pray for the Church in India. Last night 20 churches were burnt down. And tonight more than 200 churches in the Olisabang province are meant to be destroyed. They want to kill 200 missionaries in the next 24 hours. All Christians hide in villages… Pray for them and send this message to all Christians whom you know the world over. Pray to God that He has mercy for our brothers and sisters in India. When you receive this message, pass it on urgently to other people. Please pray for the 22 Christian missionary families who have been condemned to be executed. Please pass on this message as fast as you can, so that many will pray!!!
With love
Joyce Meyer
A Google search shows that this message is circulating since 2010 and is a hoax. Even the province doesn’t exist.
Would a persecuted religious group dare to spread such blatant, outrageous lies? Would it dare to have a detailed plan like the Joshua Project about how to convert maximum number of Hindus? So who is actually persecuting whom?
Yet instead of condemning the devious agenda of the missionaries, the world accuses India of persecuting Christians.
Why?
The west knows that they cannot bully Islamic countries. But in India, which is a high target for conversion, there are enough western oriented Indians, who will willingly falsely accuse Hindus of persecuting Christians. In this way, Hindus and India get a bad image and Christians receive support and compassion.
Mainstream media has tremendous power to shape opinions. Churches have tremendous financial and political clout. Both obviously cooperate to portray Hindus as intolerant of other religions – absolutely contrary to facts. There is a third contender that wants India to get a bad image, at least as bad as its own image is. It’s Pakistan, which is at rank number 5 in the list.
Intriguingly, not a single European or American country is among the 50 top countries where Christians are persecuted. But was there not a shooting in a church in USA? Were Christian refugees in Europe not attacked by Muslim migrants? Are those French or German or English citizens, who are randomly stabbed or blown up in terror attacks, not targeted for their faith? For not being Muslim?Does this not count as persecution?
Those who are persecuted FOR their faith, are always persecuted by members of a different faith which is dogmatic and considers those other views as wrong – so wrong that some even kill to wipe this wrong faith out. Islam is one such dogmatic faith, but also Christianity.
So, in a tweet, I suggested to the British foreign secretary a slight change in his comment. Instead of “Nobody should be persecuted FOR his faith” I suggested “Nobody should be persecuted BY a faith”.
Will he understand?
