The John-Henry Westen Show - November 30, 2021


Christians face horrific persecution in Islamic countries： New book exposes what the media won't

Topics
prayer and persecuted Christians
Hosted by
John-Henry Westen
Mentioned
Casey Chalk Benedict Chris Smith Ilhan Omar Asia Bibi Muhammad Diobandi Gospels Parler
Trump COVID advisor： Don't let your kids get the jab, it's no benefit to them or us A saint who fought the Freemasons has the battle plan against today's dictatorship

Episode Stats


Length

19 minutes

Words per minute

166.42

Word count

3,263

Sentence count

194

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

18

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In our politically correct culture, sometimes even the most horrific abuses do not get talked about. One of those abuses is the persecution of Christians in Islamic countries, and very few are willing to talk about it. There is a new book released by Casey Chalk through Sophia Press, a man who, yes, is a great writer, but he has actually spent time with the families and victims of this kind of persecution. And he s found great hope and inspiration for all of us as we are going through some persecution today and might in the near future experience such.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 In our politically correct culture, sometimes even the most horrific abuses do not get talked
00:00:06.800 about.
00:00:07.440 One of those is the persecution of Christians in Islamic countries.
00:00:12.300 We heard about the case of Azia Bibi, yes, but that was very few and far between.
00:00:18.520 In fact, this persecution is going on on a daily basis and very few are willing to talk
00:00:23.700 about it.
00:00:24.420 There's a new book released by Casey Chalk through Sophia Press.
00:00:28.600 This is a man who, yes, he's a great writer, but he's actually gone and spent time with
00:00:34.440 the families and the victims themselves of this kind of persecution.
00:00:38.400 And he's found in them great hope and inspiration for all of us as we are going through some
00:00:44.680 persecution today and might in the near future experience such.
00:00:49.920 We're going to talk to Casey Chalk.
00:00:52.920 Stay tuned.
00:00:58.600 Casey Chalk, welcome to the program.
00:01:14.080 Thank you, John Henry.
00:01:14.620 It's a pleasure to be with you.
00:01:16.460 All right.
00:01:16.780 Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross.
00:01:19.440 In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
00:01:23.300 Amen.
00:01:25.340 So very interesting, a time of persecution, I think the whole wide world is feeling, but
00:01:31.620 particularly our brothers and sisters who are suffering in Muslim lands.
00:01:38.060 It's not a topic that's spoken of very often.
00:01:41.000 Sophia Press has dared to publish your new book.
00:01:44.940 So let's learn a little bit from you, first of all, about the scope of what's going on in
00:01:50.740 Muslim lands.
00:01:51.420 The current news regarding the persecution of Christianity from all of the countries where
00:01:58.260 there is a Muslim majority, and usually the countries have Islam actually in their constitution
00:02:03.520 and in their laws.
00:02:04.800 So we're talking from West Africa through the Middle East, Pakistan and Iran, and then all
00:02:11.600 the way into Southeast Asia, places like Malaysia and Indonesia.
00:02:14.900 A lot of these countries, not only are they explicitly Muslim, but they have various soft and hard 1.00
00:02:23.200 ways that they persecute and coerce Christian minority communities. 0.98
00:02:28.100 So, for example, in Pakistan, which is the country I focus on the most in my book, the blasphemy 1.00
00:02:33.740 law would perhaps be the most egregious example of persecution of Christians.
00:02:38.800 Basically, the way that this is used, often by Islamic hardliners, is to accuse Christian
00:02:46.600 minorities of having committed blasphemy against Islam, the Quran, Muhammad, and then they can
00:02:56.760 be prosecuted under Pakistani law.
00:02:58.980 And the penalty can be as severe as death, which was the case for the very famous Pakistani 1.00
00:03:07.260 Christian, Asia Bibi, who was actually on death row for several years before there was enough 1.00
00:03:14.100 international outrage regarding her case, including, thanks be to God, Pope Benedict mentioning it
00:03:19.320 from Rome, that we were able to, you know, get her out of Pakistan, and she has been since
00:03:25.600 repatriated to Canada.
00:03:27.580 But like I said, the problem goes far beyond Pakistan.
00:03:31.820 And yeah, Christians across the Muslim world are experiencing daily threats, just simply for
00:03:38.080 living their faith.
00:03:39.120 Asia Bibi's case was very public, but that's one of so many cases, but yet they're very rarely
00:03:46.640 heard about.
00:03:47.480 Maybe you can give us your take on why that is.
00:03:50.600 Well, I think some of it has to do with the nature of the media.
00:03:53.680 I think that a lot of journalists are not terribly religious themselves.
00:03:57.360 So I think there's probably just a less sympathy, natural sympathy for Christians.
00:04:01.880 I think also there's, I think there's a lack of understanding that in many parts of the world
00:04:07.780 that are not majority Christian, that the Christians are actually the ones who are in the minority
00:04:13.000 and the ones suffering under various governments who, you know, would prefer that they go away,
00:04:19.200 or at least that they would like to use whatever authorities they have to oppress them in various
00:04:25.700 ways.
00:04:26.480 So I think just the natural media environment that we have in the West and that covers a
00:04:31.940 lot of these stories internationally is something that hurts us.
00:04:35.120 So something pretty remarkable has to happen to even warrant international media attention,
00:04:39.680 right?
00:04:39.960 So oftentimes in the case of Pakistan or what we saw with Iraq and Syria during the rise
00:04:45.480 of the Islamic State several years ago is, yeah, they have to see dead bodies in order 1.00
00:04:49.680 to attract attention.
00:04:50.840 But like I explained in The Persecuted, there are many other forms of suffering that Christians
00:04:57.080 are facing on a daily basis in Muslim countries.
00:04:59.600 One of the fascinating aspects of your book is that you actually talk about a way out of this mess.
00:05:06.780 And I think that's a lot of people want to know, what can we do?
00:05:10.260 Because we're seeing this, we've heard the stats about, and stats are pretty dry.
00:05:14.680 The fact that you actually go into the depths with actual victims themselves is beautiful.
00:05:20.100 But, you know, we've heard this is going on.
00:05:22.900 It's sort of remote for us all.
00:05:24.580 We don't see it much on the news.
00:05:25.960 But everybody then does what could we do about it anyway?
00:05:30.320 What could possibly be done?
00:05:32.000 I would encourage all listeners and viewers to start with prayer.
00:05:35.740 The more that we pray, the more that we align our hearts and minds with our Lord and our
00:05:40.900 Lord's, his own desires and motivations.
00:05:45.040 And the persecution of the church is very dear to his heart.
00:05:47.840 He mentions it a number of places in the Gospels.
00:05:50.720 But what that also does is it helps us to start to inculcate a feeling of sympathy and a yearning to see justice done and comfort and care and the alleviation of suffering for these persecuted Christians.
00:06:06.260 And prayer really does work.
00:06:09.600 As I talk about in the persecuted, there are a number of examples where my family, while we were living in Thailand, working with a lot of these persecuted Christians, and these families who, I mean, they put Muslims and Ramadan and the fasts to shame in terms of the amount of intercessory prayer and fasts that they are willing to do.
00:06:31.120 And it works.
00:06:33.320 As I explain in the story, we've seen some remarkable things happen with some of these Christians being able to get out of harm's way and being repatriated to the West.
00:06:43.040 But beyond prayer, certainly financial support is always welcome.
00:06:47.120 There are many international organizations that focus on the plight of persecuted Christian minorities in Muslim countries.
00:06:53.580 The USCCB has an entire arm dedicated to this, as does the Knights of Columbus.
00:06:59.380 The Barnabas Fund is another one.
00:07:01.280 It's not Catholic, evangelical.
00:07:03.620 But the thing I love about the Barnabas Fund is that, like my book, they provide a lot of stories about individual Christians and what they're encountering, so that it makes it real for people living in the West and brings it present to them.
00:07:16.820 People might wonder, how can this continue?
00:07:19.120 A lot of people have spoken about this in the past.
00:07:21.100 It's not so much now, and it's become sort of politically incorrect, perhaps, to speak about this.
00:07:27.260 But, you know, we have had this in the past.
00:07:30.580 We have had, you know, even Pope Benedict call it out in a major way.
00:07:35.680 How can this just keep on going with no stop?
00:07:39.740 To some degree, I think that foreign policy and the foreign policy objectives of the United States works against us.
00:07:44.720 I mean, look at an example like Saudi Arabia, a major U.S. ally, where it's illegal to be a Christian, right?
00:07:53.060 And if you were to try and convert to Christianity, you would be imprisoned if not executed. 0.99
00:07:58.560 And that's the case for many of these countries.
00:08:00.560 So I think, you know, as long as the West uses kid gloves with many of these Muslim regimes, this is going to continue. 1.00
00:08:09.680 And I think some of that also just speaks to the nature of many of the most dominant strands of Islam in the world today.
00:08:17.280 In Saudi Arabia, it's Wahhabism. 0.94
00:08:19.600 And the Saudis have spent a lot of money funding madrasas around the world, not only in the Middle East, but even far-flung places like Thailand and Malaysia and Indonesia.
00:08:30.800 So this more extreme brand of Islam has become, you know, very popular across the Muslim world. 0.99
00:08:37.100 And we see that even with Afghanistan, right? 0.98
00:08:39.120 The Diobandi school that the Taliban practice is very much related to this extreme form that we see with the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia. 0.90
00:08:47.660 So unfortunately, yeah, I think just the dominance of Islam and a lot of the foreign policy decisions the United States makes, you know, for energy reasons and security reasons and many other. 1.00
00:09:00.680 Yeah, I think that it works against the safety and security of these vulnerable Christian populations.
00:09:07.040 Certainly does.
00:09:07.360 Because the amount of attention and support which is given by the United States and other so-called civilized countries to countries which are doing full-on Christian persecution is quite something. 0.78
00:09:20.560 And the, you know, sort of absolute superiority of economic interests or energy interests or whatever, it's an incredible thing.
00:09:30.520 Now, in terms of what you wanted to convey with this book, with The Persecuted, what was your main message you wanted to get out?
00:09:39.800 I think sort of what you hinted at, John Henry, which is that first off, I just want to raise awareness regarding this.
00:09:45.040 One of the stories I talk about in The Persecuted is when Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey, who is a devout Catholic and a great advocate for persecuted Christians around the world.
00:09:55.480 When he raised this during a subcommittee for Congress, Ilhan Omar, which is also a member of that committee and a Muslim, she tried to turn the conversation to talk about the persecution of Muslims in the West, which, I mean, there's just no comparison.
00:10:13.340 Muslims are not being killed in the West.
00:10:15.900 Muslims are not being threatened and prohibited from worshiping.
00:10:19.500 So we need, you know, our representatives and media to know more about these stories and to understand the severity of the problem.
00:10:29.880 Beyond that, I want to bring relief to these communities.
00:10:33.820 Thanks be to God that during the height of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, I think there was a lot of attention that was given, even by secular mainstream media.
00:10:43.320 And we saw the church in the West rise up and send a lot of money and prayers and various other forms of support to those vulnerable communities.
00:10:54.260 I'm very grateful for that.
00:10:55.540 I would like to see more of it, especially with Pakistani Christians, because their stories, I think, are so rarely told.
00:11:03.120 Like, you know, like you said with Asia Bibi, I mean, that was that was a rarity to have that much international attention.
00:11:08.940 So I would love to see, you know, governments, media and in our in our churches care more about these stories and take the appropriate steps to alleviate their suffering.
00:11:19.240 It is very, very telling this Ilhan Omar's comment about the, you know, the persecution of Muslims in the in the West.
00:11:28.000 Go into that, if you will, a little bit.
00:11:30.200 Yes, we might see some kind of crazed action on the part of someone against a Muslim or a mosque or whatever.
00:11:36.880 But what then is the difference between that, let's say, where rogue things do happen?
00:11:43.860 But what's the difference between that and what you've seen in the Muslim countries, Saudi Arabia and others?
00:11:49.740 For example, in New Zealand, right, when this this extremist, you know, shot a bunch of Muslims at a mosque and killed a lot of people.
00:11:57.460 Terrible.
00:11:58.120 Well, you saw the New Zealand government, all Western governments immediately condemn it.
00:12:03.480 You saw all of the churches immediately condemn it.
00:12:05.680 Right. I mean, these are fringe actors that have I mean, the only place that they're able to operate are on these weird, you know, fringe websites.
00:12:14.260 And, you know, the West is as in a coherent, unified voice, condemn these violent acts in Muslim lands like in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia. 1.00
00:12:24.600 This is just par for the course.
00:12:26.000 Christians experience this every day.
00:12:27.820 It's like I said, it's written into a lot of the laws.
00:12:30.660 People cannot convert to Christianity. 0.97
00:12:32.400 People are not allowed to spread their faith. 0.83
00:12:35.740 It's very difficult, if not impossible, many of these places to build new churches or even renovate the ones they have.
00:12:41.120 And like I said, there's blasphemy laws on the books where Christian extremists are able to leverage that in order to antagonize and threaten Christian communities.
00:12:51.940 And extremism is a massive problem, often funded by these Muslim governments. 1.00
00:12:57.860 Right. Many of the Christians that have died in places like Pakistan have been killed by extremists who are educated and indoctrinated by Saudi funded and another Gulf state funded religious clerics.
00:13:12.520 This is the thing. There's like no comparison at all.
00:13:16.680 And that then begs the question, where is the world outrage?
00:13:22.240 And that is really what it comes down to.
00:13:24.920 So you see this one sort of rogue element of something totally illegal, prosecuted, the world stands up and condemns.
00:13:32.740 And yet there where it's formal, it's sometimes it's like government initiated.
00:13:40.920 There's a veritable silence.
00:13:42.800 And that's really the incredible double standard.
00:13:46.620 It definitely is a double standard.
00:13:48.080 Like you mentioned, John Henry, a lot of it has to do with money, which, you know, which is sad.
00:13:52.860 And I think that goes all the more to show that we need to be conscientious, you know, not only about the active things that we can do to help alleviate the suffering of persecuted Christians, but also the things that we can do with our finances and where we throw our money.
00:14:06.000 Right. And I know that we're having a lot of good conversations at the national level about China.
00:14:10.940 Another terrible example where there's persecution not only against Christians, but even Muslims with, you know, vulnerable Uyghur populations in Xinjiang province.
00:14:20.800 And there are things that we can do, right?
00:14:22.420 There are products we can buy and and not buy in order to demonstrate our our disfavor of of regimes that that, you know, are totalitarian and oppressed Christian minority communities. 1.00
00:14:35.580 The persecution is real.
00:14:37.560 You've talked to the victims.
00:14:39.700 You've you've experienced their you know, what their sufferings are and their lives.
00:14:44.260 But yet you have described it as hope in their lives.
00:14:48.100 And I think a lot of people, especially today, where it seems like there is pretty oppressive things going on for a lot of Christians who are trying to live out their faith, who are saying perhaps that, you know, they don't agree with imposition of of all sorts of things that are going on nowadays.
00:15:06.220 How can we glean from those who are suffering in Muslim lands a kind of a hope and strength that they have?
00:15:16.140 So that was one of the things that was the most remarkable to me about developing close friendships with a lot of these Pakistani Christians who had experienced so much suffering from, you know, being being physically harassed and being assaulted, having relatives who were abducted by Muslim extremists and forced to marry Muslim men being set on fire, being shot at.
00:15:38.440 I mean, I mean, terrible things. I mean, enough that they fled their country to try to seek asylum in Thailand.
00:15:43.540 And yet, in spite of it, some of the most gracious, charitable, hope filled people I ever met.
00:15:50.180 I mean, here I am. You know, I'm not a wealthy person, but, you know, in comparison to them living in Thailand, a tremendous amount more wealth.
00:15:57.260 You know, I can go out and eat dinner at night, that kind of thing. Right.
00:15:59.400 They're scraping by eating rice and beans. And yet they would go through the trouble of making my wife and I meals and give them to us.
00:16:05.520 Right. As a sign of thanks for just for us advocating on their behalf.
00:16:10.620 They are. They're incredibly hope filled. That's the reason why they pray.
00:16:13.180 That's the reason why they go to mass every day, beseeching our Lord to, you know, to solve their problems and help them is because they really do believe in the power and the grace of Christ.
00:16:23.500 And in many cases, I've seen Christ come through victorious to help them.
00:16:28.760 I meant one of the families in particular has been able a number of them have been able to get visas and repatriate to the Netherlands where they're rebuilding their life, learning Dutch and assimilating into a new culture and worshiping Christ freely, you know, in a Catholic church.
00:16:44.020 So their remarkable ability to have hope, even in the midst of so much more suffering, even than what we're experiencing in the United States, is, yeah, it's a great inspiration.
00:16:54.580 They truly are heroes. Some of them are martyrs, which should also be a great inspiration for us as well.
00:17:00.760 But, yeah, I want readers and listeners to understand that we really do have present day heroes in the church that are refusing to bow down or reject Christ for the sake of what he did for us on the cross.
00:17:16.560 And that, yeah, it's a remarkable testimony.
00:17:19.000 Amazing. Casey Chalk, thank you for being with us. Your book, The Persecuted. Everyone should pick it up. God bless you.
00:17:24.720 Thank you so much for having me. I very much appreciate it.
00:17:27.080 And God bless all of you. And we'll see you next time.
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