The Muslim world's new martyrs...

...is the title of a column in today's Daily News by foreign correspondent Richard Chesnoff. Well, we tried to tell you that the Jews were the canary in the coalmine, but noooo, you just didn't listen:

It's one of today's most compelling news stories, yet it's all but ignored by most of the international media. I'm talking about the growing persecution of Christian minorities in the Islamic world.

The story is similar wherever Sharia - orthodox Islamic law - reigns supreme. From Pakistan to Darfur, Christians have become regular targets for Islamic gangs who shoot at worshipers, then torch their houses of worship.
Even in Islamic countries not strictly run by Sharia law, pressures mount on local Christians to leave the homes they've known for centuries. Iraq's Christian sects, among the oldest Christian communities anywhere in the world, have been directly targeted by terrorist bombs

Thirty years ago, Lebanon was 60% Christian. Since then, an estimated 3.5 million Christians have emigrated, reducing the country's Christian population percentage to barely 25%. And in the Palestinian territories, direct and indirect pressures have also led to an increasing Christian exodus. One striking result: Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus and once a predominantly Christian Arab community now has an overwhelming Muslim majority.

Few people seem prepared to connect the dots....most mainstream church groups seem to ignore the threat

It's the silence imposed upon us by the PC orthodoxy, and by politicians of both stripes - we are not allowed to name the elephant in the room, or we shall be shamed into silence. We can no longer call a thing what it is; and that simple prohibition may cause an catastrophic amount of death and destruction in the not-too-distant-future, when the elephant goes on a worldwide rampage.

Mr. Chesnoff's conclusion is as obvious as the sun and moon, but again, we dare not speak it in public discourse:

...the rise of Islamic extremism is silencing even voices of limited tolerance. More than 800,000 Jews were forced to flee the Islamic world between 1948 and 1955. Unless there is an outcry against the new wave of discrimination now facing Christians, these ancient communities are also doomed to disappear.

Will the extinction of Christianity from its birthplace in the Middle East also be laid at the feet of the Americans and the Jews? Does anyone have the courage to speak out - religious leaders in America, our man in the UN John Bolton, or even the flippin' Pope himself - or are we resigning ourselves to an ethnic and historic cleansing of one the birthplace of Western religion; the spiritual home of at least two religions that really do worship peace?