'Ethnic cleansing' of Armenian Christians: Time for the press to rethink persecution?

What with Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine raging unabated, and now Israel’s retaliation after extensive Hamas terror attacks from Gaza, it’s understandable that journalists, their audiences and politicians have paid little attention to a massive ongoing humanitarian crisis in interior Asia where western media lack observers on the ground.

Beginning Sept. 19, Azerbaijan’s military crushed the self-proclaimed (and not internationally recognized) Artsakh republic in the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh enclave within its borders.

The attack panicked and drove out at least 100,000 ethnic Armenians — now forced to cope as refugees in neighboring Armenia. This followed Azerbaijan’s cutoff of the crucial transit corridor from Armenia that had resulted in dire shortages of food, fuel and medical supplies. One factor here is the erosion of Russia’s history of providing Armenia’s security and regional peace-keeping because of its Ukraine entanglement.

The September takeover of the population’s ancient homeland is a straight-up case of “ethnic cleansing,” according to the European Parliament and a Council on Foreign Relations analysis. “In one fell swoop, one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships destroyed one of the world’s oldest Christian communities,” writes Joel Veldkamp, the head of international communications with Christian Solidarity International.

The vanishing ethnic enclave dated back to 1,722 years ago when Armenia became the first state to collectively adopt the Christian religion. As geography evolved, the Nagorno Armenians found themselves caught in a sector within Azerbaijan.

The latest “World Christian Encyclopedia” edition reports that Azerbaijan is 96% Muslim while most of the Nagorno population, and 84% of the population in neighboring Armenia, belong to the Armenian Apostolic (Orthodox) Church. Tensions were contained when the entire area was controlled under the Soviet Union, but that regime’s collapse led to the ongoing religio-ethnic struggle between newly independent Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The Nagorno collapse is historically important in its own right but, importantly, it raises how religious liberty should be understood and championed.

Notable Muslim angle in that Wall Street Journal survey of religious changes in Africa

The New York Times “Sunday Opinion” section, a consistent source of valuable news analysis by journalistic pros in its former incarnations, has oddly transmogrified by indulging in off-the-news features, self-absorbed memoirs and random social psychology musings, often running at considerable length.

By contrast, the “Review” section of the weekend edition at The Wall Street Journal’s has maintained its customary serious mix of news analyses, book reviews and snappy little running features.

In particular, the in-depth articles that lead off each Journal section have emerged as must reading. In particular, religion writers and the news consumers that follow the beat should note that the first two pages in the June 24-25 edition offered an important survey under the capitalistic headline “The Competition for Believers in Africa’s Religion Market (yes, this is behind a paywall).”

Much of the Journal scenario in this essay — written, in part, by Vatican correspondent Francis X. Rocca (who frequently covers other religion news and trends — will be familiar to those who closely follow international religion news, but The Guy will spotlight one notable news angle here regarding Islam.

We’re told that the African continent, apart from its Muslim northern tier and south of the Sahara Desert, is “one of the world’s most active and contested religious markets.”

The Guy would amend that to say it’s clearly the single most contested market, one where shrinking indigenous faiths have given way to strong and all-too-often violent religio-political competition between Christians and Muslims.

The experts at the World Religion Database say the region had 7.4 million Christians in 1900 and is projected to have 1.3 billion by 2050, by then making up 38% of the world’s Christians. The team at the Pew Research Center figures that by 2037 the region’s Muslims will outnumber those in their religion’s historic heartland of North Africa and the Mideast.