The end of Christianity in the Middle East could mean the demise of Ar

[Yervant1]

The end of Christianity in the Middle East could mean the demise of
Arab secularism

In a Middle East rebuilt on intolerant ideologies, there is likely to
be little place for beleaguered minorities


William Dalrymple
The Guardian, Wednesday 23 July 2014 16.47 BST
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/23/arab-christians-secular-arabs-isis-middle-east-minorities

An Iraqi security officer guards the Church of the Virgin Mary in the
northern town of Bartala, near Mosul, in 2012. Photograph: Karim
Sahib/AFP/Getty Images

The past decade has been catastrophic for the Arab world'sbeleaguered
12 million strong Christian minority. In Egypt revolution and
counter-revolution have been accompanied by a series of anti-Copt
riots, killings and church burnings. In Gaza and the West Bank
Palestinian Christians are emigrating en masse as they find themselves
uncomfortably caught between Netanyahu's pro-settler government and
their increasingly radicalised Sunni neighbours.

In Syria most of the violence is along the Sunni-Alawite fault line,
but stories of rape and murder directed at the Christian minority, who
used to make up around 10% of the population, have emerged. Many have
already fled to camps in Lebanon, Turkey or Jordan; the ancient
Armenian community of Aleppo is reported to be moving en masse to
Yerevan.

The worst affected areas of Syria are of course those controlled by
Isis. Last weekend it issued a decree offering the dwindling Christian
population of eastern Syria and northern Iraq a choice: convert to
Islam or pay a special religious levy - the jizya. If they did not
comply, "there is nothing to give them but the sword". The passing of
the deadline led to possibly the largest exodus of Middle Eastern
Christians since theArmenian massacres during the first world war,
with the entire Christian community of Mosul heading off towards
Kirkuk and the relative religious tolerance of the Kurdish zone.

Even before this latest exodus, at least two-thirds of Iraqi
Christians had fled since the fall of Saddam. Christians were
concentrated in Mosul, Basra and, especially, Baghdad - which before
the US invasion had the largest Christian population in the Middle
East. Although Iraq's 750,000 Christians made up only 7% of the
pre-war population, they were a prosperous minority under the
Ba'athists, as symbolised by the high profile of Tariq Aziz, Saddam's
foreign minister, who used to disarm visiting foreign dignitaries by
breaking into Onward, Christian Soldiers in Aramaic, the language of
Jesus.

According to tradition it was St Thomas and his cousin Addai who
brought Christianity to Iraq in the first century. At the Council of
Nicea, where the Christian creed was thrashed out in AD325, there were
more bishops from Mesopotamia than western Europe. The region became a
refuge for those persecuted by the Orthodox Byzantines, such as
theMandeans - the last Gnostics, who follow what they believe to be
the teachings of John the Baptist. Then there was the Church of the
East, which brought the philosophy of Aristotle and Plato, as well as
Greek science and medicine, to the Islamic world - and hence, via
Cordoba, to the new universities of medieval Europe.

Now almost everywhere Arab Christians are leaving. In the past decade
maybe a quarter have made new lives in Europe, Australia and America.
According to Professor Kamal Salibi, they are simply exhausted: "There
is a feeling of fin de race among Christians all over the Middle East.
Now they just want to go somewhere else, make some money and relax.
Each time a Christian goes, no other Christian comes to fill his place
and that is a very bad thing for the Arab world. It is Christian Arabs
who keep the Arab world 'Arab' rather than 'Muslim'."

Certainly since the 19th century Christian Arabs have played a vital
role in defining a secular Arab cultural identity. It is no
coincidence that most of the founders of secular Arab nationalism were
men like Michel Aflaq - the Greek Orthodox Christian from Damascus
who, with other Syrian students freshly returned from the Sorbonne,
founded the Ba'ath party in the 1940s - or Faris al-Khoury, Syria's
only Christian prime minister. Then there were intellectuals like the
Palestinian George Antonius, who in 1938 wrote in The Arab Awakening
of the crucial role Christians played in reviving Arab literature and
the arts after their long slumber under Ottoman rule.

If the Islamic state proclaimed by Isis turns into a permanent,
Christian-free zone, it could signal the demise not just of an
important part of the Arab Christian realm but also of the secular
Arab nationalism Christians helped create. The 20th century after
1918, which saw the creation of the different Arab national states,
may well prove to be a blip in Middle Eastern history, as the old
primary identifiers of Arab identity, religion and qabila - tribe -
resurface.

It is as if, after a century of flirting with imported ideas of the
secular nation state, the region is reverting to the Ottoman Millet
system (from the Arabic millah, literally "nation"), which represented
a view of the world that made religion the ultimate marker of
identity, and classified Ottoman subjects by their various sectarian
religious "nations".

Despite sizeable Christian populations holding on in Lebanon, Jordan
and Egypt, there is likely to be little place for Christian Arabs in a
Middle East rebuilt on intolerant ideologies like those of Isis. Their
future is more likely to resemble that of the most influential
Christian Arab intellectual of our day, Edward Said. Born in Jerusalem
at the height of Arab nationalism in 1935, Said died far from the
turmoil of the Middle East in New York in 2003. His last collection of
essays was appropriately entitledReflections On Exile.

* The headline of this article was amended on 24 July 2014.

[Yervant1]

Al-Akhbar, Lebanon
July 24 2014


Christian leaders express shock at world silence after ISIS expels
Iraqi Christians

by Asad Abu Khalil


The patriarchal residence in the town of Atchanah in Lebanon's Metn
region brought together yesterday representatives of the churches of
Mosul five days after the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)
forced Iraqi Christians out of the city. This is the first time that
Mosul's Christian population has been driven out of the city and is
the largest forced displacement since the Armenian genocide.
Nevertheless, there are people who still believe in returning despite
a Western and Arab failure to act.

About 10,000 Christians left Mosul. Nothing like this has happened
since the Armenian genocide in Turkey about a hundred years ago.Until
last week, ISIS was just a "joke" or a "boogieman created by the
Syrian regime to scare minorities and keep them by its side." That is
why kidnapping the two bishops, Boulos al-Yazigi and Youhana Ibrahim,
near Aleppo a year and a half ago did not serve as an adequate warning
of how serious and extremist these fundamentalist movements are. The
occupation of Maaloula and the burning of its churches did not change
anything in the Syrian scene and the kidnapping of the nuns was not
met with a response proportional to the crime. All this passed in
absolute lightness as some Lebanese politicians scoffed at the
fundamentalist danger: this is the people's revolution.

Last February, ISIS issued a decree similar to Mosul's decree in the
Syrian city of al-Raqqa, asking Christians to pay a religious levy in
gold and minimize the appearances of any of their religious
paraphernalia. Then they began carrying out judgements based on
"Islamic law" from lashes to killing, crucifixions and stoning. But it
is that same old lightness - intentional perhaps - that drove some to
say "there are people extending the life of the regime by fabricating
news and videos and misleading journalists and foreign news agencies."
That is why it took ISIS crossing the Syrian border towards Iraq for
some people to become conscious of the danger... and recognize it, if
only to avoid embarrassment.

Last Saturday was the deadline that ISIS gave Christians in Mosul to
either convert to Islam, pay a religious levy, leave the city or die
by the sword. As a result, about 10,000 Christians left Mosul. Nothing
like this has happened since the Armenian genocide in Turkey about a
hundred years ago.

Ignatius Aphrem II, patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church in Antioch
and All the East, said that most of the Christian families fled to
Kurdistan and the Nineveh Plains while others went to Jordan, Syria
and Lebanon. Remarkably, Aphrem II said that some families insisted on
staying in Mosul, adding: "we lost contact with them." Until now,
"there is no information whatsoever about the fate of these families,"
he confirmed.

Yesterday Aphrem II headed a meeting at the patriarchal residence in
Atchanah - Bikfaya, five days after the "war crime," as he called it
in his message, that included representatives of the five churches
found in Mosul to discuss the situation of Christians in the city. The
ecclesiastic gathering was large, it included patriarchal vicar of the
Syriac Catholic Patriarchal Diocese, Youhanna Jihad Battah, Chaldean
bishop of Lebanon, Michel Kasarji, priest of the Assyrian Church of
the East in Lebanon, Fr. Yathroun Koulianos, general secretary of the
Middle East Council of Churches, Fr. Michel Jalkh, Fr. Carlo Yeshuah,
associate secretaries of the Middle East Council of Churches, Deacon
Jimmy Danho and Mr. Elias Halabi, bishops of the Syriac Orthodox
Church in Lebanon, president of the Syriac League, Habib Afram in
addition to the Iraqi cleric Abdel Rahim al-Musawi, Iraq's Ambassador
in Lebanon Dr. Raad al-Alousi and Iraq's consul in Lebanon, Dr. Walid
Abdel Qader al-Issa.

In his message, Patriarch Aphrem II condemned incidents "considered
barbaric and unprecedented in the history of Christian-Muslim
relations in this region. ISIS systematically forced Christians out of
the city of Mosul labeling them with racist signs and symbols,
humiliating and luting them." He called on Muslims and their leaders
to "take a clear stance," expressing astonishment at the prevailing
silence "except for some Muslim religious leaders and civil
dignitaries." He went on to say that injustices such as "burning
churches and taking over holy sites will not compel us to ask for
Western protection or help."

He declared however: "We are going to address the United Nations (UN)
and the highest international and human rights fora to hold them
accountable to the Bill of Rights they claim to support." He called on
the Iraqi government and "Kurdish brothers" to protect Christians. He
also said that an urgent meeting will be convened soon with the
patriarchs of the East and a Christian delegation from the East will
be formed to take this issue before the UN and other international
platforms.

"Mosul deserves a united news bulletin like Gaza."In response to a
question on whether the church is in contact with Iraqi authorities,
Ephram II said there is no direct coordination with any of the civil
or political authorities in Iraq but the bishops are in contact with
Kurdish authorities to "secure a decent living for our children." The
patriarch asserted that "these terrorist parties are supported by
states." At the same time, he held the Iraqi government responsible
for the security and safety of Iraqi Christians.

Sheikh Abdel Rahim al-Musawi described what is happening as "ethnic
cleansing. It is our moral, national and religious duty to stand in
solidarity. Not just stand in solidarity but we should go a lot
further than that, we should go to the highest international
organizations in the world to put a stop to this abuse of people's
lives, blood and property."

The conference, which was broadcast live on a number of TV stations,
did not last more than half an hour. However, as expected, its
resonance ended with the end of the broadcast. Iraq's Christians were
forcibly displaced from their homes in 2003 and now they are going
through the same experience again after 11 years amid a lethal Western
and Arab silence. One of the churches of Mosul, built 1,500 years ago,
was burned and crosses have been removed from other churches.

Mosul's Christian families have fled to relatively safe areas in Iraq.
Most of them today are housed in schools or are simply out on the
sidewalks as they wait for refugee camps to be built or to be
transferred to decent housing. According to those present, there are
no armed Christian groups except those guarding villages and cities.

This is the first time that Mosul is emptied of its Christians amid
fear that ISIS might reach other areas in the Nineveh province.
Patriarch Aphrem II and the heads of other churches are trying as much
as possible to put pressure on relevant parties, for "we still believe
in returning." In the end, they issued a message to the Lebanese
media: "Mosul deserves a united news bulletin like Gaza."

This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.


Roula Ibrahim
http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/20871/

[Yervant1]

The Blaze
July 24 2014


It's Open Season on Christians in Iraq and Around the World and the
West Is Doing Nothing to Stop It

Jul. 24, 2014 9:33am
by John Zmirak, Jason Jones

Jason Jones and John Zmirak are co-authors of the forthcoming "The
Race to Save Our Century," which will be released July 28, the 100th
anniversary of the outbreak of World War I.

For first time in 1,600 years, there were no Christian services in the
ancient city of Mosul, as believers in Jesus were hounded out of the
city with barely the clothes on their backs.

In other parts of Iraq, Christians are seeing their front doors marked
with the Arab symbol for "Nazarene," as Jewish businesses were marked
with a Star of David by the Nazis during Kristallnacht.

Throughout Nigeria, the thugs of Boko Haram ("education is evil") are
kidnapping Christian girls and selling them into slavery.

The Christians of Syria rest their slender hope of survival on the
outcome of a brutal civil war.

Christians were ethnically cleansed from Kosovo by the Islamists whom
the West helped put into power.

There has not been such a widespread, unchecked attack on Christians
for being Christian since the Russian Revolution and the Armenian
Genocide.

And what is the U.S. government under President Barack Obama doing
about these atrocities? Virtually nothing.

It is, however, issuing executive orders to deprive Christian
charities of billions of dollars in federal contracts unless they are
willing to hire avowed homosexuals--which means acknowledging and
insuring their same-sex "spouses." There are some human rights that
are sacrosanct, after all.

The values of contemporary Westerners are so contorted and
self-destructive that they would have baffled our grandparents, and
might well poison our grandchildren. We can't unpack the moral baggage
of modern man in a single column; it would take an entire book. So we
wrote one.

In our upcoming "The Race to Save Our Century," we warn that the
genocides, wars, and tyrannies that bloodied the 20th century might
very well happen again--unless the West wakes up and embraces the core
principles of a truly humane moral code. The first of these principles
is the infinite dignity of the human person, the image of God. Here is
how this principle takes root in the human soul:

We start as absolute solipsists in the cradle, then slowly come to
realize that our mothers are separate human beings. Through patient
discipline, we overcome the primal selfishness that marks every
2-year-old and come to recognize the humanity and the rights of our
parents and siblings.

The next lesson in altruism comes in the classroom, when we are forced
to extend this recognition to strangers in our little tribe of
schoolmates. As we mature and expand our experiences, we encounter
people who look and act quite alien, and must learn to respect them as
well--even (this is the last and highest stage of humanism) to feel
solidarity with human beings as human beings, though they live in
foreign countries and hold opposing views.

Empathy expands like a drop of ink in a glass of water. It is meant to
be "thickest" for our close family, neighbors, friends and fellow
believers--but never to spread out so "thin" that we do not respect the
full humanity of people who are distant and different from us.

So it makes sense for Jews to feel concern about anti-Semitism on
other continents, even more concern than they might about other kinds
of hate and human rights abuse. They are part of an international
family--one which has suffered cruelly over the centuries.

So are Christians. Why don't we realize that and act accordingly? Why
aren't outraged Christians marching in streets across the world,
demanding rescue and protection for their hunted fellow-believers? Do
we feel that Christians in underdeveloped countries, who are racially
and culturally thoroughly "un-American," are somehow second-class
Christians? Would we care more if they worshiped in modern
megachurches, or if they had red hair and freckles and sang their
hymns in English?




It's entirely possible. It is sad but true that ethnic fellow feeling
sometimes outweighs the much deeper solidarity that comes from being
fellow disciples of Christ. Churches throughout American history have
themselves been divided along frankly racist lines--a scandal that we
must acknowledge, and try to heal.

But we can't just leave things like that. If we want the Judge of
Souls to recognize us as His own, we must overcome our shallow, sinful
prejudices and see our fellow Christians for who they are: our
brothers and sisters, who share with us a bond that is deeper than
even kinship. We share the same Blood, which when Jesus shed it washed
us clean, and we must act accordingly.

We are proud to be part of a new movement called "I am a Nazarene,"
which co-opts the symbol of shame and discrimination that Iraqi
jihadists have imposed on believers in Christ. We urge every
Christian, whatever his denomination, to adopt and display this sign
of solidarity with the most endangered Christians on earth--and to
generously support the charities and aid agencies that are working to
create safe places where the persecuted can find refuge and freedom
for faith.

"For I was hungry, and you gave me food: I was thirsty, and you gave
me drink: I was a stranger, and you took me in." (Matt 25:35)

Jason Scott Jones and John Zmirak are co-authors of the upcoming "The
Race to Save Our Century."

http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/its-open-season-on-christians-in-iraq-and-around-the-world-and-the-west-is-doing-nothing-to-stop-it/

[onjig]

Thankyou Yervant, for finding and posting these.