Assyrian Democratic Organization ADO
Bigotry and violent Muslim fanatics have forced many Christians to flee the region of Jesus’ birth — but the world has barely noticed, writes Salim Mansur
Again this year, in the land between two rivers, the Nile and the Indus, Christians will gather to celebrate the birth of Christ and pray for deliverance from their ancestral homes.
The cradle of Christianity is the Middle East, but in recent times Christians have been departing in record numbers from the Arab-Muslim world to escape organized bigotry and violence of Muslim fanatics and terrorists.
The August bombings of four churches and a monastery in Iraq barely lifted the veil on the subject — the precarious situation of Christians and other minorities in Muslim-majority countries.
Iraq has been home to one of the oldest Christian communities in the region, the Assyrians, who still speak a form of Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke.
The Christians in Iraq, belonging to various denominations, were estimated to be around 800,000 or 3% of the population. But this population is dwindling as Christians flee in increasing numbers.
The general sentiment is that Christians have no future in the Middle East as pressures mount on them to conform to the militant fundamentalist values of Islamist fanatics on a warpath against the West.
In the past several months, according to some estimates, approximately 40,000 Iraqi Christians left through Syria and Turkey for refuge abroad.
The situation of Christians elsewhere in the region — Pakistan, Palestine, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt — is about the same as discrimination increases and periodic violence encourages them to depart.
Earlier this month, an outrage in Egypt gripped its Coptic Christian community in fear and anger, but it barely got reported in the mainstream North American media.
The story of Wafaa Constantine Messiha, wife of a Coptic priest, abducted by Muslim fanatics and forcibly converted to Islam, is emblematic of the perils surrounding Egypt’s Copts.
The Egyptian regime of President Hosni Mubarak has offered little support to the besieged Copts, who are regularly subjected to organized violence. Messiha’s story is not an isolated incident, according to the Coptic Pope, Shenouda III.
15% of population
The U.S. Copt Association estimates Copts in Egypt number around 12-15 million, or about 15% of the population. Their history in the Nile valley goes back to the first century of the Christian era and the ministry of Apostle Mark bringing Christianity to Egypt.
The tragic irony in Muslim persecution of Copts, as the Egyptian government watches, is how little tolerance these fanatics have for their own faith tradition, if nothing else. It was Maria — a Coptic woman sent by Egypt’s ruler as a gift to Muhammad — who bore the prophet a son (who died in infancy) as his bondmaid.
Egypt is the most populous state and cultural centre of the Arab world. It is the second largest recipient of U.S. aid, and a strategic ally in the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians.
Hence, for foreign policy reasons, the present U.S. administration — like previous ones — prefers quiet diplomacy with Cairo despite mounting evidence of religious intolerance.
But there is no reason, except sheer hypocrisy, for Muslims in North America to remain silent over the systematic human rights abuse of Christians in the Arab-Muslim world.
Immense tragedy
There is real concern that eventually a time might come, unless the political situation dramatically improves, when Christian communities of the Middle East no longer exist. This will then be an immense tragedy for all concerned.
Ethics and prudence demand of Muslims in the West, as a religious minority, to speak out loudly against Muslim fanatics and terrorists persecuting minorities in the Arab-Muslim world.
Otherwise any complaint of bigotry in Canada, or in other democracies, experienced by Muslims might quite properly be considered frivolous and be deservedly ignored.
