Christian persecution in the Middle East is at a crisis level, but the Obama administration isn’t doing anything about it, Middle East expert and author Walid Phares tells
Newsmax TV.
"The number of
Christians in Iraq 10 years ago were 1.5 million, now not exceeding 350,000," Phares said on "America’s Forum." "In Mosul, there were about 15,000 to 20,000 Christians. Today, we see zero or we don't know — maybe some people are still hiding. This is a real exodus. This is a real ethnic cleansing that, unfortunately, the United States administration and the international committee didn't do much about."
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Phares – author of
"The Lost Spring: U.S. Policy in the Middle East and Catastrophes to Avoid" – charged that the administration is under the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and its Iranian counterpart.
"This lobby, the Muslim lobby, the Iranian lobby, has paralyzed U.S. policy in the protection of the minorities, and now we see ethnic cleansing as a result of that," he said, noting that Egyptian journalists and other Middle East experts have been speaking out about Washington’s foreign policy toward the Middle East, which is "deeply influenced by the Muslim brotherhood."
Along with Christians, Muslim extremists are persecuting civil societies and Muslim moderates, according to Phares, who spoke of a Mosul professor executed by the Islamic State 48 hours ago, after challenging the terror group’s actions.
"This is a universal threat against the Christian minorities in the Middle East, in Iraq, in Syria, in Egypt," Phares said. "In Iran, they have been executed, they are in jail in Libya, in Lebanon, and all of that is because of the rising of jihadists. The more you have jihadists and Islamic fundamentalism going up, the more you are going to have persecution against, not just the Christian minorities, but also the societies and Muslim moderates, as well."
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