Last month, at the Values Voter Summit, a gathering of conservative activists from around the country, Senator Rand Paul gave a speech on what he called "a worldwide war on Christians by a fanatical element of Islam."
Anti-Christian persecution, violence, and "religious cleansing" have become common in many Muslim-majority countries. The media, as Paul pointed out, have turned a blind eye. So, too, have President Obama and European leaders.
The senator was careful not to paint all Muslims with the brush of fanaticism. He stressed that only a minority of Muslims read Islamic scripture as mandating an armed struggle against Christians and other "unbelievers." But because the global Muslim population is so large - more than 1.5 billion - even a relatively small percentage translates into tens of millions of jihad supporters.
Paul cited a few of the atrocities not making the evening news: a priest shot in the head in Zanzibar; churches bombed in Kenya; the beheading of three girls on their way to a Christian school in Indonesia; converts to Christianity murdered in Cameroon; churches burned and worshipers killed in Egypt; a pastor in Iran tortured and ordered to renounce his faith.
In the ancient Christian city of Maaloula, in what is now Syria, "Islamic rebels swarmed into town" demanding everyone convert or die, he said. "Sarkis el Zakhm stood up and answered them, ‘I am a Christian and if you want to kill me because I am a Christian, do it.' Those were Sarkis's last words."
Paul added: "These rebels are allies of the Islamic rebels President Obama is now arming.
American tax dollars should never be spent to prop up a war on Christianity. But that is what is happening right now."
Well, not precisely: Almost three years ago, Syrians began to peacefully demonstrate against Bashar Assad. The brutality of the dictator's response sparked a civil war that was led by nationalists - not jihadists. They asked for American support and were turned down, in part because the administration saw Assad's fall as inevitable with or without U.S. assistance.
That analysis turned out to be dead wrong - and there are now more than 100,000 dead to date. Iran's rulers - who, as Paul noted, persecute Christians at home and, as he did not note, were responsible for hundreds of American deaths in Iraq, and who scrawl "Death to America!" on their missiles - sent Assad battalions of reinforcements, including elite fighters from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. They also arranged for combatants from Hezbollah, Iran's Lebanon-based foreign legion - the murderers of 241 American servicemen in 1983 - to come to Assad's rescue.
While this has been going on, al-Qaeda forces, decimated during the American "surge" in Iraq, were taking advantage of America's withdrawal from that troubled country to regroup and rebuild. Volunteers streamed in from Algeria, Chechnya, and other corners of the Islamic world. They soon became strong enough to cross the border, declaring the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
