Sri Lanka

The horrific attacks on hundreds of churchgoers this Easter Sunday in Sri Lanka has prompted some much-needed examination of the persecution of Christian minorities around the world, as well as some timely self-reflection on the Left's relative quiescence -- if not silence -- on their plight as a human rights issue. Instead of playing into narratives that exaggerate the reach and ideological coherence of the threat of "global jihadism," the New York Times ran a thoughtful piece Sunday that framed these attacks within the context of threats to religious minorities in the region generally, and called attention to the parallels between the violence Christians face and the oppression of other religious groups.

Across South and Southeast Asia, the piece argues, religious minorities face a shared threat in the form of rising ethnic nationalism, chauvinism, and majoritarianism from the dominant religious community in each state. Thus, a Christian living under Hindutva ideology in Modi's India or the official doctrines of political Islam in Indonesia or Bangladesh has as much in common with a Muslim in today's Buddhist-dominated Burma or the Han ethno-state of contemporary China as they do with their co-religionists in Christian-majority countries. It is a point, of course, that could be extended to the whole world.

There is no religion that is safe from persecution when it lacks political power; and there is no religion that is constitutionally incapable of persecuting others when it has the ability to do so. What is needed, therefore, is solidarity across all religious groups facing exclusion and violence, regardless of sect or creed. For our part as outside observers, meanwhile, our sympathies must take the part of the marginalized wherever they are found, and whatever faith they practice. We should strive to be in our hearts, as Graham Greene put it, "a protestant in a Catholic society, a catholic in a Protestant one."

Mehdi Hasan penned a moving essay today that makes much the same point, and suggests the Left has thus far failed to play this role. Inclined to see Christians solely in the role of the "powerful," he notes, progressive groups have tended to downplay the threat and reality of persecution facing Christian minorities in countries dominated by Hindutva, Islamism, and other majoritarian ideologies. He calls on left-wing groups to attend to the parallels between the threats these minorities face and those of other marginalized groups, including Muslim minorities in Russia, China, Burma, India, and elsewhere.

Hasan's sincere call for a reckoning with the reality of anti-Christian violence puts one in mind -- by force of contrast -- with the rancid insincerity of certain others political actors, who have spoken out on (ostensibly) the same issue in recent years. I am thinking, for one, of Franklin Graham's proposed "World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians," to be held in Russia, reflecting Graham's fondness for Vladimir Putin. Had it taken place, the proposed summit would have included an in-person meeting between Trump and Putin, long before the results of the 2016 election were announced.

Invoking the name of "persecuted Christians" in the context of a summit in partnership with an autocrat known for persecuting and surveilling religious minorities - including both evangelical Christians and Muslims - is cruelly perverse, to say the least. The fact that this event was to be organized by Graham, a supposed "humanitarian" who defended Trump's ban on Muslim and Syrian refugees long before it was enacted -- and who has aligned himself with both the current U.S. president and the Russian dictator -- places this proposed "summit" firmly in the ranks of the world's sicker Orwellian jokes.

In the context of an event organized by people who have systematically worked to deny refugee protections to people solely because they are Muslim or come from Muslim-majority countries, the summit's reference to "persecuted Christians" is really an act of aggression, similar to Neo-Nazis shouting "White Lives Matter." The point of the slogan is not who it includes but who it leaves out -- whose lives, by implication, don't matter; whose persecution, by implication, is less important.

The faithlessness and hypocrisy of Trump's supposed interest in "persecuted Christians" is perhaps revealed nowhere so starkly, however, as in the fact that his own administration's asylum policies restrict avenues for survivors to escape this persecution. Last year, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a notorious ruling in Matter of A-B- that dramatically narrowed the grounds for seeking relief on the basis of persecution by non-state actors. As a number of faith organizations hastened to point out, this decision will effectively shut the door to many people who have fled religious violence (in cases where that violence was carried out by criminal groups, terrorist networks, and other non-state entities) -- including (but certainly not limited to) persecuted Christians.

But then, if to be a Christian is to take the part of one who bears the cross -- to sorrow with the suffering -- then Trump and Graham (still less Putin) are no Christians. Nor do they associate with Christians. Nor should it surprise us that Trump lifts no finger to support persecuted Christians abroad, and in fact works to foreclose their chances of escaping and seeking a safe haven in the United States. As T.S. Eliot once wrote in his "Choruses from 'The Rock'":

It is hard for those who have never known persecution,
And who have never known a Christian,
To believe these tales of Christian persecution.