The author of a new book about the persecution of Christians says she wants to “shed light” on the issue because it has become ingrained in Western thinking that “the Christian is not a victim because, historically, he has been an executioner”.
Spanish journalist and politician Pilar Rahola told Christian news site Protestante Digital that Christian martyrs are “too exotic” for right-wing sensibilities, and “lefty people demonise Christians because they cannot be victims when they are guilty”.
“It is very important to tell the Western world, in which religious faith is lived in a very calm way, that living your faith can also be very dramatic,” says Rahola, who describes herself as “alien to any belief”.
Rahola’s book, SOS Christian, documents persecution of Christians in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Rahola asks why there is a lack of condemnation of persecution when it happens “in communities of millions of people”. She says it was “necessary to tell the world that there are people who die, not because they were in the worst place at the worst moment, not because of a random bullet, but because they were Christians”.
It would take another book to talk about Christians in the West, Rahola says, though she does include a chapter on “Subtle Christianophobia”, where she points out that political correctness has become a form of censorship.
Political correctness “has been very good to put on the table issues of discrimination and intolerance, to tell society that being racist, homophobic or misogynist is not cool. This is good, but it has been established in such a way in society that it has also begun to be a way of censorship of thought. And I detect that everything politically correct is quite Christian phobic”, she says.