NYT Magazine Chronicles Plight of Christians In the Middle East

Today's New York Times Magazine carries a long article, captioned in its online version: Is This the End of Christianity in the Middle East?,with the subtitle: "ISIS and other extremist movements across the region are enslaving, killing and uprooting Christians, with no aid in sight." The article comments:

It has been nearly impossible for two U.S. presidents — Bush, a conservative evangelical; and Obama, a progressive liberal — to address the plight of Christians explicitly for fear of appearing to play into the crusader and ‘‘clash of civilizations’’ narratives the West is accused of embracing. In 2007, when Al Qaeda was kidnapping and killing priests in Mosul, Nina Shea, who was then a U.S. commissioner for religious freedom, says she approached the secretary of state at the time, Condoleezza Rice, who told her the United States didn’t intervene in ‘‘sectarian’’ issues. Rice now says that protecting religious freedom in Iraq was a priority both for her and for the Bush administration. But the targeted violence and mass Christian exodus remained unaddressed.