Despite the predominance of identity politics -- where the skin and/or non-Western religious identity of any victim is constantly highlighted -- the identity of that one group most persecuted around the world -- Christians -- is always dissembled over whenever they are slaughtered (which is daily, globally speaking).

Consider the establishment’s reaction following the March 27, 2023 killings in Nashville, where a woman claiming to be a man (aka “transgender”) stormed her former Christian school and murdered three nine-year-old children and three staffers.

Although she left a manifesto spelling out her motive, American authorities -- including the FBI, ATF, National Police, and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland -- concluded that the murderer’s motive is “unknown.”  At the same time, and bowing to pressure from the lgbt-etc lobby, they have refused to release her manifesto to the public.

Of course, for those whose common sense is still intact, the motive is as clear as day; no manifesto required. As (the now “canceled”) Tucker Carlson had put it:

[The] victims were murdered because they were Christians. It’s that simple. Transgenderists hate Christians above all not because Christians are a physical threat -- the third graders [killed] were not a physical threat -- but because Christians refuse to join every other liar in our society and proclaim that transgenderists are gods with the power to change nature itself. Christians are not allowed to say that, they have their own God. And for that refusal, that unwillingness to bow down and worship a false idol, in this case of transgenderism, they were murdered.

Such obvious connections were missed by none other than the commander-in-chief, Joe Biden.  When asked if he thought the slain victims of the Nashville shooting were targeted due to their Christian identity, Biden replied “I have no idea.”  This is the same man who, with zero evidence, suggested that the killer of Muslims in Arizona must be a white supremacist.  (It was later revealed that the killer was a Muslim.)

For those aware of how the establishment covers -- or rather covers up -- the Muslim persecution of Christians, the response to and “coverage” of the Nashville murders should be very familiar.

On the one hand, the establishment is trying to downplay the identity of both the (“trans”) murderer and her (Christian) victims.  This is always the case when Muslims slaughter Christians.   Over the last two decades, I have read countless media reports of “terrorist” attacks that kills dozens of “people” only to find at the very end of the report, or by reading between-the-lines, that those slain were Christians, and those targeting them, the hitherto generic “terrorists,” were Muslims.

On those rare occasions that the terror-strike on Christians is spectacularly large enough to demand a response from the establishment, identity is again dissembled.  When Muslims bombed three churches in Sri Lanka during Easter Sunday, 2019, killing some 300 Christians, Democratic leaders, including Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton, could not even bring themselves to identify the slain victims as “Christians.”  Instead, they condemned a “terror” attack on “Easter worshippers.” 

The “unknown motive” currently being used for the Nashville murders is also a mainstay whenever the Christian identity of Islam’s victims surfaces.

In the Congo, for example, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which, despite its name -- or perhaps in keeping with it -- is closely allied to the Islamic State, has for years been terrorizing that overwhelmingly Christian-majority nation in an effort to create a caliphate. Although the ADF has slaughtered countless Christians in the name of jihad, while recently reporting on one of its more lethal attacks on Christians, Reuters declared: “There was no indication as to the motive.”

Another tactic that the establishment resorts to whenever forced to acknowledge the identity of slain Christians is to somehow reverse the roles and present the victims as oppressors and the murderers as victims

As Tucker said in the same segment:

Transgenderists and their allies spent today attacking Christians, just days after a transgenderist murdered Christian children.

Indeed, many in the media implied that Christians “had it coming.”  One published statement claimed that the trans murderer’s life was made difficult by anti-trans legislation promulgated by Christians, and, therefore, “anti-trans hate has consequences.” Similarly, immediately after reporting on the Nashville murders and the trans identity of the murderer, ABC News’ Terry Moran stressed that “earlier this month Tennessee passed a bill banning transgender care for minors” -- again, implying a “cause and effect” relationship. According to this “logic,” because Tennessee Christians banned the sexual mutilation of children, a trans person only naturally sought vengeance.

Even some of the media headlines seemed intentionally misleading, including (no surprise) Reuters: “Former Christian school student kills 3 children, 3 staff in Nashville shooting.”  Anyone just reading the headline -- as most people increasingly do -- would likely conclude that a Christian targeted non-Christians.

Such misleading headlines and worse are par for the course whenever Christians are targeted by Muslims.  Thus the New York Times’ headline for a 2011 Islamic terror attack on an Egyptian church that left 21 worshippers dead was “Clashes Grow as Egyptians Remain Angry after an Attack” -- as if frustrated and harried Christians (referred to by the generic “Egyptians”) lashing out against their persecutors was the big news, not the unwarranted butchery they just experienced.

Similarly, NPR once ran a report accompanied by a large photo of what appeared to be a “fanatical” Christian mob waving a crucifix -- not what prompted that particular display of Christian solidarity: the nonstop persecution of Copts in Egypt.

Or consider a 2012 BBC report on a church attack in Nigeria that left three Christians, including an infant, dead.  It objectively states the bare-bone facts before jumping to the really big news: “the bombing sparked a riot by Christian youths, with reports that at least two Muslims were killed in the violence. The two men were dragged off their bikes after being stopped at a roadblock set up by the rioters, police said. A row of Muslim-owned shops was also burned…”

The report goes on and on, with an entire section about “very angry” Christians till one confuses victims with persecutors, forgetting what the Christians are “very angry” about in the first place: nonstop terror attacks on their churches and the slaughter or enslavement of their women and children.

Incidentally, since that 2012 church attack, literally thousands more churches have been attacked, torched, or bombed by Muslims in genocidal Nigeria, where one Christian is killed every two hours. But the establishment continues to point to anything and everything for a “motive” -- most recently, climate change.

There’s a global war on Christians.  As recent events in Nashville make clear, it is well ensconced in America.  And the enemies of Christians -- whether Muslims or trans, whether the establishment or media -- are legion.

Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West and Sword and Scimitar, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

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