{"id":4750,"date":"2010-07-10T14:14:44","date_gmt":"2010-07-10T18:14:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/?p=4750"},"modified":"2010-07-13T14:28:28","modified_gmt":"2010-07-13T18:28:28","slug":"a-long-catalog-of-injustice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2010\/07\/a-long-catalog-of-injustice\/","title":{"rendered":"A Long Catalog of Injustice"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Chuck<\/a>
Chuck Colson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

7\/9\/2010 – Chuck Colson –
\nShould American taxpayers pay for economic aid to a nation that persecutes Christians? This isn\u2019t a trick question.<\/p>\n

Imagine that you are a government official in a country I will call \u201cM.\u201d Despite your efforts to promote economic growth, unemployment and poverty rates remain high. As a result, many of your citizens have gone abroad in search of work.<\/p>\n

What has been called \u201cthe human face of a long catalogue of socio-economic ills\u201d are the many thousands of orphaned and abandoned children living throughout your country. Their plight has been the subject of news reports and even an award-winning film.<\/p>\n

So what do you do about it? Well, if you are Morocco, you declare war on those seeking to help them. <\/p>\n

In early March Moroccan police entered the Village of Hope, a Christian-run orphanage, and interrogated its children and staff. They asked questions like, \u201cHow do you pray?\u201d They searched the compound for Bibles and other evidence of \u201cproselytizing.\u201d<\/p>\n

They didn\u2019t find any. An orphanage officer, Jim Broadbent, told Time magazine the orphanage took great care to obey laws against proselytizing. It didn\u2019t matter: Broadbent and the rest of staff were summarily deported a few days later. The heartbreaking scene of the children being torn apart from the only family they had ever known was something Broadbent will never forget.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s not alone: according to Time, in Morocco, \u201cdeportations are part of what appears to be a widespread crackdown on Christian aid workers.\u201d At least 40 foreign Christian aid workers have been deported under similar circumstances. This despite the fact that, like the Village of Hope, nearly all of them had been certified by the government as having met its standards, including those against proselytizing, some for more than a decade.<\/p>\n

This certification makes the government\u2019s claims that the aid workers were \u201ctrying to undermine the faith of Muslims,\u201d hard to believe.<\/p>\n

The real explanation lies not in the actions of the workers but the government\u2019s desire to appease Islamists. Measures like this one, enforcing the Ramadan fast, and harassing Moroccan Christians have the added benefit of diverting attention from Morocco\u2019s \u201clong catalogue of socio-economic ills.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, the price for this diversion is paid by those least able to afford it: orphaned and homeless children. The government that can\u2019t or won\u2019t help them has declared war on those able and willing to do so.<\/p>\n

What makes this especially infuriating is that Morocco receives approximately $140 million every year from the American taxpayers through the Millennium Challenge Corporation or MCC. These grants are intended to promote sustainable economic growth and are conditioned on \u201cruling justly.\u201d<\/p>\n

As representative Frank Wolf has argued, however vague \u201cruling justly\u201d might be, it at least includes not persecuting religious minorities. Wolf has suggested that Morocco be suspended from the program if it continues on its present course. I couldn\u2019t agree more. And if you agree, tell your congressman to vote with Frank Wolf when this issue comes before Congress. If you\u2019ve seen my Two-Minute Warning this week, you know how important it is to defend religious liberties here at home, and to protect widows and orphans in places like Morocco.<\/p>\n

HT: Break Point<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

7\/9\/2010 – Chuck Colson – Should American taxpayers pay for economic aid to a nation that persecutes Christians? This isn\u2019t a trick question. Imagine that you are a government official in a country I will call \u201cM.\u201d Despite your efforts to promote economic growth, unemployment and poverty rates remain high. As a result, many of … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":497,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[103,113],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-bashing","category-christian-persecution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/497"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}