Not All Bombing Victims Are Created Equal

On page A8 of The New York Times today (I agree with this guy that a broad-sheet newspaper is superior to the Web as an information-delivery system) I came across, waaaaay at the bottom of the page, a story headlined "Bomber Strikes Nigerian Church, As Attacks on Christians Mount." (Here's a link to the web version of the piece, from Reuters.) According to the article, the Islamist group Boko Haram set off a car bomb outside the church in the city of Yelwa, killing at least 12 people. The placement of the story, and its brevity (seven short paragraphs), once again suggests to me that the most under-covered story these days is the sustained assault by Islamist terrorists on Christians. (The Islamist assault on cartoonists seems to get slightly more attention, but only slightly.) I don't know precisely why this story, and stories like it, disappear so quickly, though I assume it has something to do with the seeming unwillingness of Christian churches in the West to stand up for their persecuted brethren in countries like Nigeria, and also discomfort among left-leaning elites with a narrative that paints Christianity as victim, rather than as persecutor.

(By the way, for a comprehensive look at how radical Islam is persecuting all sorts of putative infidels and heterodox Muslims, please read this indispensable New Republic piece from Paul Berman.)