Blood on Christian hands

Submitted by Amir S. Zadeh (United States), Nov 26, 2002 at 21:53

The claims by some commenters here that the hands of Christianity are clean from blood in 20th century, clearly show pure ignorance of history. Yet it is quite significant that the commenters implicitly agree that Christianity was responsible for centuries of bloodshed and dark ages before 20th Century, at the same time where other civilizations were thriving. If the idea of tolerance came from fundamentalist Christianity, where was this tolerance during the fist 1700 years of Christianity?

Just over the last decade, the two largest acts of genocide since WWII was committed by Christians: Bosnia and Rwanda. In both cases, Christian churches were indicted for incitement of hatred against others, or direct participation. In Rwanda, two church nuns were convicted of helping their fellow Christians burn pagan Tutsis alive. 800,000 pagan Tutsi were killed in Rwanda, and 200,000 Muslims in Bosnia. A Washington Post report shows that the conversion rate from Christianity to Islam in Rwanda has been growing at an exponential rate since the massacre.

Missionaries in many part of the world have been responsible for incitement of hatred, division, and rebellion among Christian minorities. One example in my own country (Iran) where Christians and Moslems had lived together for hundreds of years: In 1911, a group of American evangelist missionaries in North western part of the country used their private money and donations to arm local Christians for the purpose of creating a Christian country from Armenia to eastern Turkey. Their rebelion resulted in massacre of thousands of Muslims in the area, and they had almost achieved their purpose when a disagreement with another ethnic minority, the Kurds, started a local war that put down the rebellion.

The Holocaust of World War II remains the worst atrocity against religious and ethnic minorities, and even though the western Christian societies have tried to blame it on Nazis only, it is clear that the Christian populations of Europe allowed it to happen. Israeli historians announced earlier this year that a large number of Jews in Poland, the most conservative and devoted Christian state in Europe, were actually killed by their neighbors and villagers rather than Nazi soldiers. The Polish government admitted this fact and offered its apology.

The claim that Christianity's hands are clean, is false.

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".