As has been reported on these pages, Christians are now the most persecuted religious group in the world.  Brandon Morse had written on a recent study that determined this fact.  In some regions of the world, Christianity has been all but wiped out.  Attacks on Christians in sub-Sahara African nations are an almost daily and brutal fact of life.  In Nigeria, Boko Harem and Fulani tribesmen exact some of the worst acts of brutality cutting down men, women and children regardless of age with machetes and then burning villages.  Even though Nigeria is the focal point, there have been attacks against Christians in many other African nations from Kenya to Mozambique.

In the Middle East, Christians sects have been wiped out in what was formerly ISIS-controlled areas.  Those who had the means to avoid the chopping block paid exorbitant taxes and watched as shrines and churches dating back to the first Christians in the area were destroyed.  Of course, we are all aware of the attacks on Christian churches in the Philippines and, most recently, the horrid attacks on Easter Sunday in Sri Lanka.

These are examples of cold, hard genocide.  But perhaps equally insidious is soft genocide.  In this genre of genocide, people are not slaughtered by suicide bombers, mowed down with automatic weapons, or butchered with machetes.  Instead, in this form of genocide, Christians are shamed into submission.  This is the attempt by those with a gripe against Christianity to silence Christians the world over in Europe and the United States.

In Europe, once a bastion of Christianity, some areas of major cities in Germany, France, Holland and Sweden are now “no-go” zones where sharia law, not secular law, rules.  Willing governments downplay this state of affairs right up to denying that such areas exist at all.  The bending over backwards of appeasement of Muslim migrants at the expense of the native population (that is, Christian) by most members of the European Union is a disgrace and an example of soft genocide.

And there lies perhaps the deeper danger involved here.  Most of the genocide against Christians throughout the world is perpetrated by Muslims with a few exceptions.  It is not only an attack on Christianity, but on a deeper level it is an attack on Western culture.  Western culture and Christianity are intertwined.  The Holy Roman Empire was a purely western culture phenomena and most Protestant sects originated out of western culture in Europe.

In the 1800’s, the great Alexis de Tocqueville studying American democracy in action was stricken by the religiosity of the American public.  Along the way, he found that religion, specifically Christianity, was the glue that held the young republic together.  In Democracy in America, he argued that religion be the first political institution that should be upheld by any statesman.

Of course, America today is less “puritanical” and more religiously diverse than the America he studied in the 1830’s.  But, his observations are still relevant.  de Tocqueville did not write as a religious leader attempting to foster or propagate any faith, but as a political analyst who saw that Christian religious beliefs were a necessary precursor to the establishment and health of democratic institutions.

So it is sad that today our brothers in Europe from whence our heritage derives are turning their backs on Christianity either through government initiative, or appeasement of Muslim migrants.  It is sad that today in this country, we have so distanced religion from the public sphere that it now is considered “corny” to be religious.  We actually have people in our elected bodies who believe in a mythical “wall of separation” between church and state.  Religion, to these people, is something that should be hidden behind the doors of a church once a week.  In some areas, a cross is now viewed as a symbol of hate and the hammer and sickle as a sign of redemption.

Soft genocide is more insidious than the hard and brutal form of genocide.  In places like Nigeria, Chad, and Burkina Faso we see the hard genocide of Christian communities being wiped out at the end of a gun or sword.  What we fail to see is the soft genocide of religion in general and Christianity in particular in our own backyards.

It seems strange, but understandable that today’s Leftist would align themselves with Muslims.  The Leftist aim is to obliterate religion and Christianity from the public sphere.  Christianity, in the Western world, is the “opium of the masses” that must be stamped out to achieve their socialist Utopia.  To the Muslim, the presence of Christianity is a blight that must be necessarily stamped out through force because it stands in the way of the establishment of the next caliphate.

The question then arrives: Can Christians and Muslims peacefully coexist?  The evidence from Muslim-majority countries is not inspirational.  The evidence from Europe is also not inspirational.  Here in America, we should be thankful for the election of people like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib because they are showing their true colors.  They and people like them do not represent all that is good with American democracy.  Instead, they use democracy as a tool to achieve an ends.

The reason the American revolution succeeded whereas the French revolution failed was religion, particularly Christianity which is a purely western construct.  The more we push religion from the public sphere, the closer we come to an end result akin to that of the French revolution.