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U.S.
State Dept. Blocks Christians from Testifying about Islamist Persecution
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Excerpt from Raymond Ibrahim's monthly
roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around
the world.
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The
State Department initially refused to give a visa to Sister Diana
Momeka of Iraq when she planned a visit to Washington earlier this year
to advocate on behalf of Iraqi Christians.
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During the height of one of the most
brutal months of Muslim persecution of Christians, the U.S. State
Department exposed its double standards against persecuted Christian
minorities.
Sister Diana Momeka, an influential Iraqi Christian leader, who was
scheduled to visit the U.S. to advocate for persecuted Christians in the
Mideast, was denied
a visa by the U.S. State Department even though she had visited the U.S.
before, most recently in 2012.
She was to be one of a delegation of religious leaders from Iraq --
including Sunni, Shia and Yazidi, among others -- to visit Washington,
D.C., to describe the situation of their people. Every religious leader
from this delegation to Washington D.C. was granted a visa -- except for
the only Christian representative, Sister Diana.
After this refusal became public, many Americans protested, some
writing to their congressmen. Discussing the nun's visa denial, former
House Speaker Newt Gingrich said:
This is an administration which never
seems to find a good enough excuse to help Christians, but always finds
an excuse to apologize for terrorists ... I hope that as it gets
attention that Secretary Kerry will reverse it. If he doesn't, Congress
has to investigate, and the person who made this decision ought to be
fired.
The State Department eventually granted Sister Diana a visa.
This is not the first time the U.S. State Department has not granted a
visa to a Christian leader coming from a Muslim region. Last year, after
the United States Institute for Peace brought together the governors of
Nigeria's mostly Muslim northern states for a conference in the U.S., the
State Department blocked the visa of the region's only Christian
governor, Jonah David Jang.
According to a Nigerian human rights lawyer based in Washington D.C.,
Emmanuel Ogebe, the Christian governor's "visa problems" were
due to anti-Christian
bias in the U.S. government:
The U.S. insists that Muslims are the
primary victims of Boko Haram. It also claims that Christians
discriminate against Muslims in Plateau, which is one of the few
Christian majority states in the north. After the [Christian governor]
told them [U.S. authorities] that they were ignoring the 12 Shariah
states who institutionalized persecution ... he suddenly developed visa
problems.... The question remains -- why is the U.S. downplaying or
denying the attacks against Christians?
The testimony of another nun, Sister Hatune Dogan, also made in May,
indicates why the State Department may not want to hear such
testimonials: they go against the paradigm that "Islam is
peace." According to Sister Hatune:
What is going on there [Islamic State
territories], what I was hearing, is the highest barbarism on earth in
the history until today... The mission of Baghdadi, of ISIS, is to
convert the world completely to the Islamic religion and bring them to
Dar Al Salaam, as they call it. And Islam is not peace, please. Whoever
says ISIS has no connection to Islam or something like this is, he's a
liar. ISIS is Islam; Islam is ISIS... We know that in Islam, there is no
democracy. Islam and democracy are opposite, like black and white. And I
hope America will understand. America today has the power that they can
stop this disaster on the earth, with other Western countries.
For the rest of Ibrahim's monthly
roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world, click
here.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Judith
Friedman Rosen Fellow at the Middle East Forum
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