Rupert Shortt and John Allen want readers to wake up. In books chock full of details—names, dates, places, circumstances—they document violence against Christian believers that in various forms has been building steadily in many parts of the world. Shortt, religion editor of The Times Literary Supplement, and Allen, senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, realize that they are addressing issues of great moral complexity. Both know that "religious persecution," "martyrdom," and related terms are hotly contested. Both are fully alert to the myriad objections—historical, theological, political, diplomatic, cultural, anthropological—that might respond to titles like "Christianophobia" and "the global war on Christians." Yet Allen and Shortt also say, in effect: "Yes, questions of definition, historical culpability, ethnic or religious differentiation, moral responsibility, and more are fiendishly complex. But it is not necessary to resolve all such issues before taking account of what is actually occurring, recurring, and occurring again at many, many places around the world." While neither author does in fact answer all of these questions, both books should nonetheless be exceedingly helpful for raising the consciousness of even the most casual readers.
John Allen opens with a visit to the Me'eter military camp and prison in a desert region of Eritrea near the African coast of the Red Sea. He describes the deplorable living conditions for the 2,000-3,000 people who are interned in this camp because they belong to branches of Christianity that Eritrea's single-party, hypernationalist rulers, the People's Front for Democracy and Justice, consider subversive. Their lot consists of desert heat, frigid nights, bodies crammed into unventilated 40' x 38' metal shipping containers, mindless tasks like counting grains of sand, death from heatstroke and dehydration, sexual abuse, and brutal beatings.[1] And Allen wants to know "why the abuse at Me'eter doesn't arouse the same horror and intense public fascination as the celebrated atrocities that unfolded at Abu Ghraib, for instance, or at Guantanamo Bay. Why hasn't there been the same avalanche of investigations, media exposés, protest marches, pop culture references, and the other typical indices of scandal? Why isn't the world abuzz with outrage over the grotesque violations of human rights at Me'eter?"
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