JCPA PRESS RELEASE

MIDDLE EASTERN CHRISTIANS: BATTERED, VIOLATED, ABUSED AND DENIED BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS.
DO THEY HAVE ANY CHANCE OF SURVIVAL?
Justus Reid Weiner
Justusdocs@Gmail.com
The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs has been investigating the persecution of Christians in the
Middle East for the past two decades on the ongoing violations of the religious freedom and the
rights of Christians to practice their religion in countries that are predominantly Muslim including
Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt and Pakistan.
Christians face lawlessness and widespread corruption, the disinterest of the relevant government
authorities and security forces, and are confronted by increasingly xenophobic and restless relevant
Muslim populations. The Christians have been abandoned by the very officials whose responsibility is
to protect them.
Muslim abuses include:
Forced marriage of
Christian girls to
Muslim (often much
older) men
Apostates forced to
return to Islam at
gunpoint
Destruction and
burning of Churches
Employment denied
to Christians
Extortion Land theft Kidnapping Blasphemy
Ethnic cleansing Beheading Intimidation Torture
Pressure to wear
Muslim garb
Demands to pray
according to Islam
Destruction of non-
Muslim holy sites


Who is responsible for Christian suffering? How are these states shirking their Human Rights
obligations? Do the state authorities step in to curtail these crimes? Why did the Arab Spring have
no positive or lasting influence on the lives of Christians? Why is Israel often blamed for the suffering
of Palestinian Christians? Why are Middle Eastern Christian targets so vulnerable? How does the
international community respond to such persecution? How can the Christian suffering reach a wider
awareness?
It is important to make Prof. Weiners new monograph broadly distributed as he analyzes the
Christians plight, and discloses why the 2000 year-old communitys very survival is in doubt.
The monograph is available at http://jcpa.org/text/book.pdf