Minnesota Catholic Priest Apologizes for Saying Islam Is the ‘Greatest Threat in the World’
My latest in PJ Media:
The world is so crazy these days that if you enunciate unpopular truths, people who are supposed to be moral authorities will pressure you to retract and apologize. A Roman Catholic priest in Ilhan Omar’s Minnesota, the Rev. Nick VanDenBroeke, has been compelled by Catholic authorities to apologize “for saying in a sermon that Islam was ‘the greatest threat in the world’ to the United States and Christianity.” This is rather like making a man apologize for saying that water is wet, but that’s where we are these days.
The whole episode, which unfolded this week, encapsulates a great deal of what is wrong with the contemporary Catholic Church and the imperative of “interfaith dialogue,” and illustrates the apparently impenetrable confusion people have today between criticizing ideas and discriminating against human beings. The implications are also much larger than just Rev. Nick VanDenBroeke and the Catholic diocese of St. Paul, Minnesota. This incident illustrates a deep sickness in American society: when telling the truth earns you rebukes and condemnations, we’re all in trouble.
VanDenBroeke landed in hot water “for saying in a sermon that Islam was ‘the greatest threat in the world’ to the United States and Christianity.” Let’s see. There have been over 36,000 jihad attacks around the world since 9/11, each committed in the name of Islam and in accord with its teachings. Jihad groups routinely call for jihad massacres in the United States and of Americans.
As for Christianity, in 2019, Christians faced “extreme, very high or high levels of persecution” in 73 countries, affecting 245 million Christians. In the Middle East, the Christian share of the population has shrunk to about 5 percent (if that), down from more than 20 percent at the turn of the last century. The decline attests to a century of ruthless persecution — bookended by the Greek, Armenian, and Assyrian genocides committed by Turkey a century ago and the recent one attempted by ISIS. The ten worst countries in the world today for Christians, with the worst ranked first, are North Korea, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Pakistan, Eritrea, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran — eight Muslim countries, one with nearly fifty percent Muslim population, and North Korea.
So is Islam a threat to the United States and Christianity? That is obvious. But when VanDenBroeke noted this, those earnest patriots at the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) complained, and no one involved seems to have pointed out that CAIR has ties to Hamas, and has opposed virtually every counterterror initiative that has ever been proposed or implemented.
There is much more. Read the rest here.
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