THINK-ISRAEL

CAN CHRISTIANITY TAKE ROOT AGAIN IN THE ARAB WORLD?

by Paul Merkley, July 3, 2017


Impending Liquidation of the Christians of the Middle East

With every passing day, our governments are enabling the transplantation onto our own ground of hundreds of thousands of Muslims, fleeing from the consequences of many centuries of incompetent and venal governance. Simultaneously, the Middle East is being emptied of its Christian people — most of whom had been Christian for about half a millennium years before Muhammad came into the world.

At the United Nations, the Muslim caucus is blocking any action that might give comfort to these fleeing Arabs — such as opening the gates to Saudi Arabia and the other oil potentates — all of them Muslim. In our own corner of the world, a powerful determination not to appear "Islamophobic" prevents any honest address to this theme among policy-makers and leaders of opinion.

Only a miracle of the first order can save the Christian people of the Middle East.

It is profoundly ironic that it is only in Israel, the Jewish State, that these Christian victims of Islam have found succor. There, Christian numbers as a percentage of the entire population have held steadily throughout the entire sixty-nine years of the existence of the state. Massive numbers of Christians are, as I write, taking shelter in Israel from Muslim mobs. In Egypt, where approximately ten percent of the whole population is reckoned as Christian, Muslim preachers and Islamist agitators are ceaselessly working up civilians to make daily life impossible for the Christians. Christian numbers are declining precipitously Every few weeks more churches in Egypt are attacked by religiously-inspired arsonists and a few more Coptic families are subjected to bombings and assassinations. Many hundreds of thousands of Egyptian Christians have already fled the land to join brothers and sisters who have preceded them in establishing new homes in North America and Europe.

Elsewhere in the Arab world, Christians have been driven out by Muslim mobs. No Arab voices are heard denouncing or even regretting this reality.

Prospects for Christianity as ISIS' Empire is Rolled Back

As I write (July 3, 2017), Iraqi armies, strengthened by U.S. military, have almost completed the rout of the armies of what had been since 2014 the Islamic Caliphate. We are apparently only hours away from the fall of Mosul .

The leading elements in this campaign to rout ISIS are Sunni Muslims and Kurds. The question, therefore, must be: what are the prospects for Iraq's Christians when the dust settles?

In 1947, 4.7 million Iraqi Christians represented about 12% of the population; in 1987, they were 1.4 million, or 8% of the population; the moment that Saddam Hussein fell, Muslim mobs acting on the advice of their religious teachers, began attacking the churches. By 2013 the number of Christians had dropped to perhaps 450,000. Even before the Islamic State got into the game, Christians everywhere in Iraq were being murdered by other Iraqis because of their Christian faith. In the wake of ISIS' campaign of liquidation, their numbers are now estimated to be as low 200,000.

Meanwhile, next door, nearly a third of Syria's Christians, about 600,000, have fled that country. Tens of thousands have joined the Muslim swarm that is now beating down the borders between European countries.

The Kurds have generally received a good press for their display of courage in battle — contrasting dramatically with the general performance of Iraqi forces, whose effectiveness is fatally undermined by division between Sunnis and Shias. But the Christians remain distrustful of the Kurds. They recall to this day (as the rest of the world has forgotten) the role played by Kurdish militia in the attempted genocide of the Assyrians in the 1930s, during the early years of the separate existence of Syria and Iraq from Ottoman rule.

Significance of the EU Initiative

Belatedly, as the triumph of anti-ISIS armies appears imminent, the European Union is taking on the task of organizing Iraqi politics Typically, the EU intends to accomplish this by holding another one of its futile gab-fests. Lars Adaktusson, EU parliamentarian from the Swedish Christian Democratic Party is proposing a conference, entitled A Future for Christians for Iraq to be held in the EU Parliament in Brussels.

Risking the ill-well of the entire righteousness empire — the UE, the UN, and a plethora of NGOs —the major Assyrian political elements, including the leaders of the major Assyrian churches, have announced their intention to boycott this conference. (See, "Assyrian Groups to Boycott EU conference on future of Ninevah Plains." AINA.org, June 24, 2017.) According to these Assyrian organizations, "the conference is set up for the real purpose of bringing the security situation in the Nineveh Plains back to the disastrous reality that existed prior to ISIS, when the area was controlled by the Kurdish peshmerga, Iraqi army units and local forces loyal to the KDP political party headed by the president of the Kurdish led region, Massoud Barzani." In short, the purpose of this diplomacy is to give to the Kurds control of the Nineveh Plains. Here, as everywhere else in the Arab world, Christians will be excluded from the political process.

Little can be learned of this situation from our major mews media; but Assyrian sources report that on the ground the anti-ISIS forces have already cleared the ground for the elimination of Christians from this world altogether. According to the Unrepresented Peoples and nations Organization,

Following the reclamation of many Iraqi towns from ISIS, places that were largely Christian are not seeing their populations return with any rapidity. The Northern Iraqi town of Qaraqosh, for instance, has been razed to the ground by the extremist group, leaving little infrastructure intact and therefore little for Assyrian community members to return to. Previously bustling towns have remained empty, and families are not returning due to a lack of protection coupled with fears of an extremist resurgence. ("Assyria: Christian Towns Remain Deserted Due to Perpetual Insecurity June 28, 2017, http://unpo.org/article/20166.)

On the Ninevah Plain, the future of Christianity in the Arab world is being finally decided. The Kurds have well-equipped and battle-hardened militia indoctrinated in the hope of creating a Greater Kurdistan — something which Erdogan of Turkey has vowed to prevent.

Meanwhile, we can take the EU initiative just noted as proof of the readiness of Europeans to throw Christian people to the lions — and proof, as well, as the determination of our media and our governments not to notice.



Paul Charles Merkley was born and educated in Toronto. He taught history for over forty years in Canada and California and has been a visiting Professor of American Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He has written several books including 'American Presidents, Religion and Israel' (Praeger, 2004) and 'Those That Bless You, I Will Bless: Christian Zionism in Historical Perspective' (Mantua, ISBN 9780986941412). He has delivered scholarly papers on Christian Zionism in Israel, Canada and the United States and is active with the Canadian branch of International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem. This article appeared July 3, 2017 in the Bayview Review and is archived at
https://thebayviewreview.com/2017/07/03/can-christianity-take-root-again-in-the-arab-world/.
At Think-Israel it is archived as
http://www.think-israel.org/merkley.christianityinarabworld.html



Return _________________________End of Story___________________________ Return