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.
00:05:32.000I would encourage all listeners and viewers to start with prayer.
00:05:35.740The more that we pray, the more that we align our hearts and minds with our Lord and our
00:05:40.900Lord's, his own desires and motivations.
00:05:45.040And the persecution of the church is very dear to his heart.
00:05:47.840He mentions it a number of places in the Gospels.
00:05:50.720But 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.
00:06:09.600As 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.
00:06:33.320As 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.
00:06:43.040But beyond prayer, certainly financial support is always welcome.
00:06:47.120There are many international organizations that focus on the plight of persecuted Christian minorities in Muslim countries.
00:06:53.580The USCCB has an entire arm dedicated to this, as does the Knights of Columbus.
00:07:03.620But 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.
00:07:16.820People might wonder, how can this continue?
00:07:19.120A lot of people have spoken about this in the past.
00:07:21.100It's not so much now, and it's become sort of politically incorrect, perhaps, to speak about this.
00:07:27.260But, you know, we have had this in the past.
00:07:30.580We have had, you know, even Pope Benedict call it out in a major way.
00:07:35.680How can this just keep on going with no stop?
00:07:39.740To some degree, I think that foreign policy and the foreign policy objectives of the United States works against us.
00:07:44.720I mean, look at an example like Saudi Arabia, a major U.S. ally, where it's illegal to be a Christian, right?
00:07:53.060And if you were to try and convert to Christianity, you would be imprisoned if not executed.
00:07:58.560And that's the case for many of these countries.
00:08:00.560So I think, you know, as long as the West uses kid gloves with many of these Muslim regimes, this is going to continue.
00:08:09.680And I think some of that also just speaks to the nature of many of the most dominant strands of Islam in the world today.
00:08:19.600And 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.
00:08:30.800So this more extreme brand of Islam has become, you know, very popular across the Muslim world.
00:08:37.100And we see that even with Afghanistan, right?
00:08:39.120The Diobandi school that the Taliban practice is very much related to this extreme form that we see with the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia.
00:08:47.660So 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.
00:09:00.680Yeah, I think that it works against the safety and security of these vulnerable Christian populations.
00:09:07.360Because 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.
00:09:20.560And the, you know, sort of absolute superiority of economic interests or energy interests or whatever, it's an incredible thing.
00:09:30.520Now, in terms of what you wanted to convey with this book, with The Persecuted, what was your main message you wanted to get out?
00:09:39.800I think sort of what you hinted at, John Henry, which is that first off, I just want to raise awareness regarding this.
00:09:45.040One 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.
00:09:55.480When 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.
00:10:13.340Muslims are not being killed in the West.
00:10:15.900Muslims are not being threatened and prohibited from worshiping.
00:10:19.500So we need, you know, our representatives and media to know more about these stories and to understand the severity of the problem.
00:10:29.880Beyond that, I want to bring relief to these communities.
00:10:33.820Thanks 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.
00:10:43.320And 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.
00:10:55.540I would like to see more of it, especially with Pakistani Christians, because their stories, I think, are so rarely told.
00:11:03.120Like, you know, like you said with Asia Bibi, I mean, that was that was a rarity to have that much international attention.
00:11:08.940So 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.
00:11:19.240It is very, very telling this Ilhan Omar's comment about the, you know, the persecution of Muslims in the in the West.
00:11:28.000Go into that, if you will, a little bit.
00:11:30.200Yes, we might see some kind of crazed action on the part of someone against a Muslim or a mosque or whatever.
00:11:36.880But what then is the difference between that, let's say, where rogue things do happen?
00:11:43.860But what's the difference between that and what you've seen in the Muslim countries, Saudi Arabia and others?
00:11:49.740For 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.
00:11:58.120Well, you saw the New Zealand government, all Western governments immediately condemn it.
00:12:03.480You saw all of the churches immediately condemn it.
00:12:05.680Right. 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.
00:12:14.260And, you know, the West is as in a coherent, unified voice, condemn these violent acts in Muslim lands like in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia.
00:12:27.820It's like I said, it's written into a lot of the laws.
00:12:30.660People cannot convert to Christianity.
00:12:32.400People are not allowed to spread their faith.
00:12:35.740It's very difficult, if not impossible, many of these places to build new churches or even renovate the ones they have.
00:12:41.120And 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.
00:12:51.940And extremism is a massive problem, often funded by these Muslim governments.
00:12:57.860Right. 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.
00:13:12.520This is the thing. There's like no comparison at all.
00:13:16.680And that then begs the question, where is the world outrage?
00:13:22.240And that is really what it comes down to.
00:13:24.920So you see this one sort of rogue element of something totally illegal, prosecuted, the world stands up and condemns.
00:13:32.740And yet there where it's formal, it's sometimes it's like government initiated.
00:13:48.080Like you mentioned, John Henry, a lot of it has to do with money, which, you know, which is sad.
00:13:52.860And 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.
00:14:06.000Right. And I know that we're having a lot of good conversations at the national level about China.
00:14:10.940Another terrible example where there's persecution not only against Christians, but even Muslims with, you know, vulnerable Uyghur populations in Xinjiang province.
00:14:20.800And there are things that we can do, right?
00:14:22.420There 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.
00:14:39.700You've you've experienced their you know, what their sufferings are and their lives.
00:14:44.260But yet you have described it as hope in their lives.
00:14:48.100And 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.
00:15:06.220How can we glean from those who are suffering in Muslim lands a kind of a hope and strength that they have?
00:15:16.140So 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.
00:15:38.440I mean, I mean, terrible things. I mean, enough that they fled their country to try to seek asylum in Thailand.
00:15:43.540And yet, in spite of it, some of the most gracious, charitable, hope filled people I ever met.
00:15:50.180I 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.
00:15:57.260You know, I can go out and eat dinner at night, that kind of thing. Right.
00:15:59.400They'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.
00:16:05.520Right. As a sign of thanks for just for us advocating on their behalf.
00:16:10.620They are. They're incredibly hope filled. That's the reason why they pray.
00:16:13.180That'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.
00:16:23.500And in many cases, I've seen Christ come through victorious to help them.
00:16:28.760I 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.
00:16:44.020So 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.
00:16:54.580They truly are heroes. Some of them are martyrs, which should also be a great inspiration for us as well.
00:17:00.760But, 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.
00:17:16.560And that, yeah, it's a remarkable testimony.
00:17:19.000Amazing. Casey Chalk, thank you for being with us. Your book, The Persecuted. Everyone should pick it up. God bless you.
00:17:24.720Thank you so much for having me. I very much appreciate it.
00:17:27.080And God bless all of you. And we'll see you next time.
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