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Comment: Christian flight will haunt the Arab world: In a Middle East
rebuilt along less tolerant lines, it's not just minorities that face
exile, but virtually a century of secular thought
BY William Dalrymple
GUARDIAN LEADER
PAGES; Pg. 30
The past decade has been catastrophic for the Arab world's 12 million
Christians. 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 as they find themselves caught between Israel'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 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 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
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 the
Armenian massacres of the first world war, with Mosul's entire
Christian community heading for the relative 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, as symbolised by
Tariq Aziz, Saddam's foreign minister - who used to disarm foreign
dignitaries by breaking into Onward, Christian Soldiers in Aramaic,
the language of Jesus.
According to tradition St Thomas and his cousin Addai 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 the
Mandeans - 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 such as Michel Aflaq - the Greek Orthodox Christian from Damascus
who, with other Syrian students 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 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"), a view of the
world that made religion the ultimate marker of identity.
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 such as that 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 entitled Reflections on Exile.
William Dalrymple is author of From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among
the Christians of the Middle East
rebuilt along less tolerant lines, it's not just minorities that face
exile, but virtually a century of secular thought
BY William Dalrymple
GUARDIAN LEADER
PAGES; Pg. 30
The past decade has been catastrophic for the Arab world's 12 million
Christians. 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 as they find themselves caught between Israel'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 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 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
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 the
Armenian massacres of the first world war, with Mosul's entire
Christian community heading for the relative 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, as symbolised by
Tariq Aziz, Saddam's foreign minister - who used to disarm foreign
dignitaries by breaking into Onward, Christian Soldiers in Aramaic,
the language of Jesus.
According to tradition St Thomas and his cousin Addai 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 the
Mandeans - 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 such as Michel Aflaq - the Greek Orthodox Christian from Damascus
who, with other Syrian students 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 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"), a view of the
world that made religion the ultimate marker of identity.
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 such as that 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 entitled Reflections on Exile.
William Dalrymple is author of From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among
the Christians of the Middle East