Editor's note: The Rev. Canon Patrick P. Augustine recently testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on International Operations and Human Rights, offering a valuable perspective on the persecuted church in the Islamic world.

The persecution of Christians is on the rise in Pakistan, Sudan, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran and other countries. It is manifested in harassment, killing, unjust laws and many other types of aggressive prejudice.

Hoping for similar action by other dioceses, the 200th annual council of the Diocese of Virginia unanimously adopted resolution R-10 on the State of the Suffering Church, which encourages congregations to form a link of prayer in support of Anglicans and other Christian bodies currently under persecution.

Since the beginning of the Islamic faith in the middle of the sixth century, the Christian community has had dhimmi status. As second-class citizens, these non-Muslims must pay a special tax, jizya, for protection. The dhimmi practice is based on a verse in the Quran:

Fight those who believe not

In God or the last Day,

Nor hold that forbidden

By God and His Apostle,

Nor acknowledge the Religion

of Truth, (even if they are)

Of the people of the Book,

until they pay the Jizya

with willing submission

And feel themselves subdued

(Sura 9:29 translation by Yousaf)

This second-class status is reflected in laws as well as custom in these countries. If a Muslim marries a Christian, for example, the children are automatically classified Muslim. Some countries refuse to acknowledge the conversion of a women from Muslim faith to Christianity.

Anyone wearing a non-Islamic religious symbol (such as a cross) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is liable to be arrested or publicly harassed by the metawah (religious police). There is no non-Muslim place of worship. Christian workers meeting in a private home for prayer have been arrested, beaten and thrown into Saudi jails.

In Sudan, it is difficult for anyone with a Christian name to get a job. Hundreds of thousands of Christians in southern and western Sudan have been taken into the desert and abandoned without food or water. Relief was only provided to those who converted to Islam.

Christians in Arab countries survive by keeping their witness to Christ at a most discreet level, advised a Greek Orthodox Lebanese, speaking before the Middle East Council of Churches in 1988. They reside in communities considered either "militant ghettos" (Lebanon's Maronites) or "non-militant ghettos," such as Copts of Egypt or Chaldeans of Iraq.

Muslim Arab soldiers receive special compensation for wedding Southern Sudanese Christian or animist women and fathering children raised as Muslims. This practice encourages enslavement and rape.

As a result of a Shariat Bill (supreme religious law) passed by the Pakistani Government in 1985, Christians have been charged with blasphemy and beaten, jailed or killed. Three were accused of blasphemy when a young illiterate member of their family wrote slogans on a mosque wall; he and two uncles spent months in jail before one uncle was killed. The other two fled to Europe, leaving their families facing the wrath of the militant Muslims.

St. John's Church in Cairo was in danger of collapsing in 1988, but the Copts recognized that the state would prevent reconstruction. They secretly built a new and smaller church inside the old, then carefully "peeled off" the carcass to reveal the new church.

Following an International Conference of Islamic Organizations meeting at Mecca in 1974, during which it was stated: "All Christian activities must be stopped, no matter what secular expression," hospitals, orphanages, schools, and universities were taken over. By 1977, all Christian institutions were nationalized by the Islamic Government of Pakistan.

Of course, for those immature in their Christian faith, official pressures or financial incentives result in a conversion to Islam. Libya, for example, offered to sponsor major development projects in other north African countries providing local village communities became Muslim. In Pakistan, some conversions have been forced by physical violence, including under gunpoint.

Many Middle Easterners, in search of a better economic life and freedom to pursue their Christian faith, simply move away. Immigration is an option which threatens the survival of the Christian presence in the Middle East.

The Church in the West has little knowledge or understanding of the suffering of our brothers and sisters in Christ. In his second letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul writes: "We do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of the affliction we experienced in Asia" (1:8). His concern was that the church should be informed of the appalling suffering which he and fellow Christians were undergoing.

We must become actively involved in supporting the persecuted in our church in the Muslim world. In addition to prayer, the church in the West needs to provide knowledge through sermons, meditations and small-group discussions to promote understanding and national support. Christians living in freedom need to form partnerships with these brothers and sisters abroad, thus breaking the isolation that currently exists. o

The Rev. Canon Patrick P. Augustine is associate rector of the Church of the Holy Comforter in Vienna, Va. A native of Pakistan, he is a member of the Presiding Bishop's advisory committee on Christian-Muslim Relations.