Baroness Ashton in political correctness row over word ‘Christian’
Baroness Ashton is under fire after the EU failed to agree on a statement condemning attacks on religious minorities in the Islamic world because it is not politically correct to use the word “Christian”.
Bruno Waterfield
Telegraph [UK]
01 February 2011
A meeting of EU foreign ministers failed to agree on a condemnation of sectarian attacks over the Christmas period that targeted Christians in Egypt and Iraq.
Talks ended angrily when Italy accused Lady Ashton, the EU’s foreign minister, of “excessive” political correctness because she refused to name any specific religious group as a victim of attacks.
Franco Frattini, the Italian foreign minister, demanded an EU response on the persecution of Christians after a New Year suicide bombing at a Coptic church in northern Egypt in which 23 people were killed.
The Egyptian bombing followed attacks in Baghdad and fears, expressed by the Vatican, of persecution leading to a Christian exodus from the Middle East.
Mr Frattini, backed by France, said it pointless to issue statements defending religious tolerance without any references to the specific minority, Christians, that was under attack.
“This position is an excess of secularism, which is damaging the credibility of Europe,” he said on Monday night. “The final text didn’t include any mention of Christians, as if we were talking of something else, so I asked the text to be withdrawn.”
Diplomats have accused Lady Ashton of appeasing Muslim sensibilities to avoid a “clash of civilisations” after Egypt reacted furiously to a request from Pope Benedict XVI for better protection for the country’s Christian minority…
Read the rest at the Telegraph.
H/T and photo Weasel Zippers
Update: Ace of Spades HQ, EU Foreign Minister Just Can’t Quite Bring Herself to Admit that Christians Were Attacked
I bring this up only because it echoes President Obama’s statement, wherein he had to make up fictitious Muslim victims because he couldn’t just admit that the New Years attacks were against Christians.
As I wrote then, it doesn’t fit within the warped worldview of leftists to admit that Christians are being murdered by members of the Religion of PeaceTM…
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