John Rhys-Davies, ‘Lord Of The Rings’ Actor, Says Christianity Is Being ‘Wiped Out’ In Africa, Middle East

John Rhys-Davies, the Welsh actor perhaps best known for playing cantankerous dwarf Gimli in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, claimed this week that America has lost its moral compass and that Christianity is being “wiped out” in Africa and the Middle East, MSN is reporting.

The 71-year-old Rhys-Davies appeared this week on Adam Carolla’s podcast to promote the DVD release of Return to the Hiding Place, a 2013 drama about Dutch Jews during the Holocaust, in which he stars. And when given the chance to promote his political views, Rhys-Davies took it.

“Basically, Christianity in the Middle East and in Africa is being wiped out — I mean not just ideologically but physically, and people are being enslaved and killed because they are Christians. And your country and my country are doing nothing about it.”

And while Christianity itself may not be in danger of being wiped out in the U.S. and Europe, says Rhys-Davies, both places are in danger of losing their civilization to Islam.

“Unless we find [our moral compass], we’re going to lose our civilization. I think we’re going to lose Western European Christian civilization, anyway.”

Such remarks are not out of character for John Rhys-Davies, whose political views, by European standards, are almost extremely far-right. In 2004 according to Wales Online, Rhys-Davies made similar remarks concerning Europe and Islam.

“There is a demographic catastrophe happening in Europe that nobody wants to talk about, that we daren’t bring up because we are so cagey about not offending people racially. And rightly we should be. But there is a cultural thing as well. By 2020, 50 per cent of the children in Holland under the age of 18 will be of Muslim descent.”

On Carolla’s podcast, John went back to his themes about political correctness, and fear of offending people, and how he believes those things are allowing radical Islam to destroy Western civilization.

“This notion that we’ve evolved into a species that’s incapable of judging other groups and what they are doing, especially when it is beheading people or setting people on fire or throwing acid in the face of schoolgirls — I like that kind of judging. It’s evolved! This is a unique age. We don’t want to be judgmental. It’s an age where politicians don’t actually say what they believe. They are afraid of being judged as being partisan. Heaven forbid that we should criticize people who, after all, share a different value system.”

Do you find John Rhys-Davies’ remarks on Islam offensive?

[Image courtesy of: Getty Images/Vivien Killilea]