George Jonas errs seriously

It's been a busy week, and by lunch now I have managed to skim-read the piled up newspapers and get them out for recycling.  What caught my attention, as per usual, are well written commentaries in the National Post, which we still pay for and have delivered to the doorstep.

George Jonas is a very good writer and I generally enjoy his quirky observations.  But what frightened me today is the statements in his this week's column on Syria:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/09/25/george-jonas-syrian-subterfuge/

He says that  "Christians dwelled safely in the House of Islam for 1400 years."  Ayaan Hirsi Ali has challenged people publicly on this statement.  Christians have been held as Dhimmis in Islamic societies, that is as second class citizens, paying extra taxes and suffering other disadvantages.  It is astounding to think that our elite commentators are not aware of this and other long-standing problems.  It frightens me that the West knows so very little about history, about religions, about history of religions.  Our elite has been teaching us "to think" but no facts.  Thinking is supposed to supersede and facts are always debatable.  But now we are a society of ignoramuses.  When will people actually read the Bible and read the Koran and know something of what they speak?  When will we again go to primary sources and read, study and meditate and then spout forth? No, we just spout forth.  It is deplorable;  so very deplorable. DEPLORABLE.

Another reader responded in the Post with this rebuttal. 

Religious persecution

Re Syrian Subterfuge: George Jonas, Sept. 25.

George Jonas errs in suggesting that Christians “dwelled safely in the House of Islam for 1400 years.” Christians, along with Jews, have been persecuted or forcibly converted since the beginning of the Muslim conquest of the Middle East and beyond.

In modern times the Middle East has been ruled by secular tyrants with whom the Christians usually sided because those dictators offered them freedom of religion. With the collapse of these dictatorships, there is a growing religious persecution, in Iraq, Egypt and now Syria.

The Western public must awake and see the Syrian rebels for who they really are. The dwindling pro-democratic element among them no longer calls the shots and has no chance of gaining the political power once Bashar al-Assad is gone. If the right to protect is the Western political mantra, we must look ahead and focus on protecting the Syrian religious minorities from the assured persecution that is coming, should the Al-Nusra Front and other al-Qaeda-affiliated groups in Syria win and establish a Sunni caliphate over the land.

Anthony Ludmilin, Surrey, B.C.