Religion is the sickness of the world. It is a destructive force, profoundly evil.

If there was an excuse for dogmatic superstition in ages past – say, as an explanation by which people tried to understand and influence the forces of nature – there is none now. Irrational belief can only be harmful.

History is hugely about the clash of religions. And in our time millions of people are experiencing an eruption of religious strife as widespread and catastrophic as any that has ever occurred, possibly the worst ever considering the numbers involved. Right now religion is the major cause of wars, massacres, and vast movements of desperate refugees.

Islam, the most belligerent of the world’s religions, is waging war fiercely on the rest of the world. Its methods are savage and cowardly. Wherever the faithful of other religions are weakest and most at their mercy, Muslims are torturing, burning, dismembering, raping, and slaughtering them.

Most of their victims (other than fellow Muslims of a different sect) are Christians. In Arab lands, Christians are being forced to flee or die.

In particular the Coptic Christians of Egypt are victims of the Muslim revolutionaries who rose demanding “freedom” for themselves, but are unwilling to grant it to the Copts.

Barry Rubin writes at PajamasMedia:

Christians in most of the Arabic-speaking world may be on the edge of flight or extinction. All of the Christians have left the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip which is, in effect, an Islamist republic. They are leaving the West Bank. Half have departed from an increasingly Islamist-oriented Iraq where they are under terrorist attack. …

In Lebanon while the Christians are holding their own there is a steady emigration. …

Egypt has more Christians than Israel’s entire population. There have been numerous attacks, with the latest in Cairo leaving 12 dead, 220 wounded, and two churches burned. …

We of this website do not mourn for the buildings, only the people. To us, every church, every mosque, every temple is a monument to intolerance, oppression, persecution, and massacre.

The Christians cannot depend on any support from Western churches or governments. Will there be a massive flight of tens or even hundreds of thousands of Christians from Egypt in the next few years? …

Very likely – but where will they go? What country will grant them asylum?

Up until now, the strength of the Muslim Brotherhood has been badly underestimated in the West. But increasingly it is also apparent that the strength of anti-Islamist forces has been overestimated.

Like most Western commentators, Professor Rubin nervously makes a distinction between Muslims and “Islamists” – by which he can only mean more actively jihadist Muslims, such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

I have noted that even Amr Moussa, likely to be Egypt’s next president and a radical nationalist, has predicted an Islamist majority in parliament. That should be a huge story yet has been largely ignored.

He is not creating his own party, meaning that a President Moussa will be dependent on the Muslim Brotherhood in parliament. Rather than the radical nationalists battling the Islamists these two forces might well work together.

And who will they be working against? …

Christians certainly. Christians everywhere in the Muslim world. But not only Christians. No non-Muslim is exempt from Muslim animosity.

So what does the Western world, where the children of the Enlightenment have a civilization ordered by reason, try to do about it? How do Western leaders diagnose the problem? If they will not consider that religion itself might be the cause, what do they prescribe for a cure?

First they hold a discussion.

That could be a good start, if opinion would eventually agree on the real cause of the disease.

We confidently predict that will not happen.

At Front Page, Faith J.H.McDonnell writes:

On April 29, 2011, the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom (IRF) co-sponsored a 2011 Hours Against Hate event. Hosted by George Washington University, the event was billed as a “Town Hall Discussion on U.S. efforts to combat discrimination and hatred against Jews, Muslims, and others.” Hopefully, the 100 million-plus Christians experiencing persecution around the world today, along with Hindus, Sikhs, Baha’i, etc., are included in “and others.” The IRF office should be reminded that advocates for persecuted Christians played a major role in its creation, along with the creation of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). Both were mandates of the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA).

Though outspoken in their denouncement of hurtful language, the folks at Foggy Bottom have been silent about the massacre of hundreds of Christians in Kaduna State, and several other states in northern Nigeria that took place after Nigeria’s federal elections last month. Angry that Christian President Goodluck Jonathan defeated Muslim candidate Muhammadu Buhari, Islamists in the Shariah-ruled north began rioting on Monday, April 18, 2011, after preliminary results of the April 16 election were announced. Soon newspapers featured grisly photos of charred bodies lining the streets.* Hundreds of churches were burned and thousands of Christian-owned businesses destroyed, according to the Christian human rights group, Open Doors. And International Christian Concern reported that the Kaduna-based Civil Rights Congress was still “discovering more details of massacres that have been carried out in the hinterland.” Upwards of 40,000 Christians have been displaced in the past few weeks.

In its comments about the situation in Nigeria, the U.S. State Department disregarded the religious aspect of the post-election mayhem. Secretary of State Clinton’s April 19 statement on the elections (available in Arabic as well as English) “deplored violence,” but ignored the targeting of Christians. …

Although some, including U.S. State Department officials, would paint the post-election violence as purely political, the head of the advocacy group Justice for Jos, attorney Emmanuel Ogebe, refutes this claim. … [He]  says that for the Islamists in northern Nigeria, “anything is used as an excuse to kill Christians — beauty pageants, lunar eclipses, school exams, political elections….” These are the sundry reasons in the last dozen years alone that have sparked violent, deadly attacks against Christians. …

Strikes on Christians took place simultaneously in rural districts of a dozen Nigerian states … Some initial attacks took place in the middle of the night, when the Christians were least able to defend themselves. And anti-Christian sentiment was inflamed in many of northern Nigeria’s mosques … Victims were made to quote the Quran, not identify for whom they had voted. …

Pastor Emmanuel Nuhu Kure … demanded, “How would you explain a spontaneous call to prayer on most of the loudspeakers of the mosques across the city at the same time, at 9 p.m. or thereabout in the night, with a shout of ‘Allah Akbar’ as Muslims began to troop towards the mosques and designated areas, to be followed at 10 p.m. with another call on loudspeakers – this time with a spontaneous shout of “Allah Akbar” from the mosques and most of the streets occupied by Muslims and the burst of gunfire sound that shook the whole city?” Kure said that these actions were repeated a few times, and then “the killings and burnings began.” And … Bishop Jonas Katung, national vice president of the North Central Zone of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, stated that the post-election attacks “were ‘a descent into barbarism’ in which northern Christians were targeted and subjected to horrendous and relentless acts.”

After performing the obligatory “deploring” of “the violence” in an April 28 press briefing, Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Johnnie Carson assured the media that “the president and the main opposition candidates both called on their supporters to not support violent activities and to work to restore peace as quickly as possible.” Yet the media has reported in the past that Buhari told his supporters “never again allow an infidel to rule over you” …

The US State Department, and the governments of the Western world generally, are propitiating Islam. That’s like treating the plague with soothing syrops. Islam is a symptom. The sickness is religion itself.

*For a picture of the lined up bodies of Christians burnt to death in Nigeria, see our post Acts of religion, November 6, 2010.

An ardent supporter of the Wahhabi fundamentalists who rule Saudi Arabia, John Duke Anthony, has been appointed by the Obama administration as an adviser to the State Department. He has been zealous in promoting Arab and Islamic propaganda in American colleges, in some of which the Saudis have invested millions to pursue such programs. What advice is Anthony giving to Hillary Clinton’s department? If he urges a US ‘dialogue’ with Hamas, which he has already called for, he  is unlikely to arouse outrage. Hillary Clinton has provided billions indirectly to the terrorist organization that rules Gaza, while insisting that the money would never reach its coffers.

From Campus Watch:

Most Americans, even many of those concerned with the problems of academic Middle East Studies, have probably never heard of the Model Arab League (MAL), an American exercise similar to the better-known Model United Nations. The stated aim of such efforts is to expand awareness of world affairs among high school and college students. Participants compete in regional role-playing sessions as representatives of constituent countries in the corresponding world bodies and receive awards for their performance. They are then sent to contend at “nationals” held in Washington, D.C. and similar to matches sponsored by many other student societies and sports associations.

But the Model Arab League could be described better as a propaganda network for Arab nationalism, including promotion of the Arab states’ hostile postures toward Israel, than as a contributor to excellence in international studies or debate.

The Model Arab League was created in 1983 at Georgetown University by the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations (NCUSAR), which came into existence that same year, and the website of which prominently features MAL activities. NCUSAR’s president and chief executive officer is an indefatigable Saudi apologist named John Duke Anthony. In May 2009, Anthony was appointed by the Obama administration to the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy. He has been an adjunct professor at the Georgetown Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS) since 2006.

Saudi prince Turki al-Faisal, the former head of the Saudi General Intelligence Directorate who served briefly as Saudi ambassador to the U.S. in 2005-06, joined Anthony at CCAS in fall 2008. Al-Faisal has admitted dealing with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, allegedly in the 1980s during the anti-Soviet resistance war, and in the 1990s with Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban.

The original Arab League, known formally as the League of Arab States, was conceived in 1944 and comprises 22 Arab and African nations, [and includes] the Palestinian Authority (P.A.). The following year, the League promulgated a pan-Arab boycott on the purchase of products from “Zionist” enterprises in Palestine. This was followed by a full embargo against commercial relations with Israel after the latter proclaimed its independence in 1948. The League has extended the embargo to a secondary ban on any individual, enterprise, or agency operating in any of the Arab League member countries that does business in Israel. Individuals, companies, or public institutions maintaining relations with Israelis are placed on the League’s boycott blacklist. A tertiary boycott prohibits dealings with companies from America and elsewhere that have been blacklisted.

Yet the anti-Israel embargo is not the only topic on which the Arab League finds itself in conflict with U.S. policies and laws. In late 2009, Secretary-General [Amr] Moussa held a joint press conference in Cairo with Iranian parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani at which Moussa announced the League’s support for Iran’s nuclear program.

Back in America, the Model Arab League will hold its college “nationals” at Georgetown in March. High school “regionals” are pending, with local sessions at Marist High School in Atlanta later this month and in Boston, where students will meet at Northeastern University in April. Separate high school “nationals” will take place at Georgetown on April 16-17.

College-level MALs are held at 10 campuses around the U.S. These include, aside from Georgetown: Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina; Texas A&M, Miami University of Ohio; the University of San Francisco; the University of Montana-Missoula; and several others.

Students and faculty at Montana-Missoula got a taste of who and what the NCUSAR, the MAL, and John Duke Anthony represent when the latter keynoted a seminar on “New Avenues for U.S. Middle East Policy” on March 4, 2009 at the University of Montana … Anthony called on the Obama administration to begin a dialogue immediately with the Palestinian terrorist movement Hamas and otherwise spent his time on the Montana campus, according to student sources, assailing Israel as the sole perpetrator of problems in the Middle East.

While U.S. policy condemns the Arab League embargo against Israel and questions the goals of Iranian nuclear development, the Model Arab League indoctrinates American high school and college students into a radical Arab-Muslim paradigm. This is unsurprising in that the MAL is a creation of Anthony, one of Washington’s veteran servants of the Saudis, and has its focus at Georgetown, already well-known for its Saudi endowments, including the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, financed by a $20-million donation from the Saudi prince after whom it is named. …

The Model Arab League is offered to the educational establishment — including high schools — as a teaching device for the betterment of young Americans’ knowledge of essential contemporary issues. In reality, its origins and content reveal it to be an intrusion of Saudi-financed ideology into American academic life, the appropriateness of which should be questioned … In addition, the appointment of John Duke Anthony to an advisory economic position in the State Department, given his advocacy for Saudi interests (which do not coincide with U.S. economic needs) should be subject to public scrutiny.