Will Christianity Survive in the Middle East? A Christian Perspective

Diane Knippers Memorial Lecture Institute on Religion and Democracy

Dr. Kent R. Hill Executive Director Religious Freedom Institute

October 4, 2016 Army Navy Club Washington, D.C.

Martyrdom always remains the supreme enacting and perfecting of Christianity. This great action has been initiated for us, done on our behalf, exemplified for our imitation, and inconceivably communicated to all believers by Christ on Calvary. C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain1

The Context of Global Christian Persecution

According to the most recent information available from the Pew Research Center, in

2014, “roughly three-quarters of the world’s 7.2 billion people (74%) were living in countries with high or very high restrictions or hostilities…”2 Although these statistics globally were modestly better over 2012 and 2013, 2014 showed a “marked increase in the number of countries that experienced religious-related terrorist activities,” and this was primarily due to Islamic terrorists associated with Boko Haram in west Africa, and al-Qaida and ISIL (or ISIS), often in the Middle East.

The number of countries with injuries or deaths from “religion-related terrorism” rose from 51 countries in 2013 to 60 countries in 2014. Eighteen of twenty countries in North Africa and the Middle East experienced “religion-related terrorism.” (It should be noted that the

1 C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1962), p. 102. 2 “Trends in Global Restrictions on Religion” (for 2014), released June 23, 2016. http://www.pewforum.org/2016/06/23/trends-in-global-restrictions-on-religion/. Americas, Asia, and the Pacific also witnessed a rise in such violence.) It is also important to note that since 2014, there has been an increase in Islamist terrorism OUTSIDE North Africa and the Middle East. This is a clear reminder that what happens in the Middle East and North

Africa does impact very directly the rest of the world.

Not surprisingly, most victims of religious violence and persecution are and

Muslims – the two largest religions. There has also been a rise of anti-Semitism, including violent anti-Semitic attacks in Europe.

The most dangerous place to be a Christian in the world is North Africa, the Middle East, and Pakistan, and these are Muslim-majority settings.

Open Doors reports that every month 322 Christians are killed, 214 churches or Christian properties are destroyed, and 772 forms (acts) of violence are committed against Christians. 3

The great majority of the countries on the top fifty list of where Christians face the most persecution are Muslim-majority.4 This represents a very real challenge to Christians, but also to

Muslims throughout the world, the majority of whom do not even live in the Middle East. It is critically important to remember that only twenty percent of the world’s Muslims live in the

Middle East.5

Though the relationship between Christians and Muslims has frequently been strained through the centuries, it has often been better and more tolerant than that which has emerged in

3 https://www.opendoorsusa.org/christian-persecution/ 4 https://www.opendoorsusa.org/christian-persecution/world-watch-list/ 5 Pew Research Center. The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010- 50. This was the estimate as of 2010. http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp- content/uploads/sites/11/2015/04/PF_15.04.02_ProjectionsTables71a.png. 62% of Muslims live in the Asia-Pacific region and 15.5% in Sub-Saharan Africa.

2 recent decades. In fact, Muslims and Christians have often been capable of living together quite peaceably in the past.

In the Middle East, it is the reputation and heart of Islam which is at stake, not just the existence of Christians and other religious communities.

Will Muslims find within their faith the will and the means to utterly reject and defeat

Islamist extremism which threatens to distort and destroy the very best of Islam? More specifically, will Muslims who critique Islamist (mis)representations of their faith be able to go beyond public rejections of radical Islamist ideology and violence to realize concrete actions impacting law in Muslim-majority countries, the presentation of Islam and religious freedom commitments in school curriculum, communications with the faithful in Friday sermons, and effective advocacy and communication with the young through social media? Much will depend on the answer to these questions.

The Plight of Christians in the Middle East

In the global digital age, images splashed across our electronic devices have a profound power to shock, dismay, and move us.

So it was on September 15, 2015, when the world finally began to awake to the horror of the greatest crisis since World War II – all because of an indescribably sad image of a lifeless three-year old Syrian boy, Aylan Kurdi, washed up on a Turkish shore. All of a sudden, the tragedy of sixty million worldwide, but particularly from , began to touch the consciousness of the world. The refugee crisis became real, became personal.

So it was exactly eight months to the day earlier in 2015, on February 15, when ISIL released to the world a chilling five-minute video of the brutal execution of 21 mainly Egyptian

Coptic Christians. We watched in horror as the kidnapped, Egyptian and Ghanaian migrants in

3 orange jump suits, hands tied behind their backs, were led to the shore, forced to kneel, and then beheaded. The genocide of Christians became real, became personal.

There are three factors in recent decades which have been and are key to understanding not only conflict and anarchy of the Middle East, but the devastating impact on Christians and other smaller religious communities.

First, there is the rise of radical Islamist thought – something which we dare not forget long precedes the rise of ISIL (the Islamic State of and the Levant, or “Daesh,” in ; also known as ISIS, the and Syria; ISIL now insists on being called the

“Islamic State” though most Muslims reject this name). The seeds of Islamist extremism can clearly be seen stretching back over a century, and can be particularly found in the rise of

Wahhabism in the eighteenth century in Saudi Arabia, in the genocidal impulses of the latter stages of the Ottoman Empire, and in the rise in the 1920s in Egypt of the Muslim Brotherhood.6

A second factor contributing to the precarious state of Christians and other religious communities in the Middle East in recent years is the sectarian violence and anarchy which followed the overthrow in 2003 of .

6 According to Christopher Blanchard, “The Islamic Traditions of Wahhabism and Salafia,” Congressional Research Service Report, January 24, 2008, “Wahhabism is a puritanical form of …. The word ‘Wahhabi’ is derived from the name of a Muslim scholar, Muhammad bin Abd al-Wahhab, who lived in the Arabian peninsula during the eighteenth century (1703- 1791). Today, the term ‘Wahhabism’ is broadly applied outside of the Arabian peninsula to refer to a Sunni Islamic movement that seeks to purify Islam of any innovations or practices that deviate from the seventh-century teachings of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions.” Page 1. Ibn Taymiyah (1263-1328) was influential on the thought of al-Wahhab. “What is Wahhabism? The Reactionary Branch of Islam said to be ‘the Main Source of Global Terrorism,’” Telegraph, March 29, 2016. Another earlier influence on al-Wahhab was Ahmad Ibn Hanbal (780-835). See Wikipedia, “Wahhabism,” Wikipedia. The highly influential Egyptian thinker and political figure Sayyid Qutb (1906-66) was a key leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, before his execution by Egyptian authorities.

4 A third factor, of course, is the catastrophic civil war in Syria which began in 2011 and which has produced between 400,000 and 500,000 casualties,7 over 4.8 million registered Syrian refugees, and over 6.1 million IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons).8 Ironically, many refugees from Iraq fled to Syria, and to Aleppo, only to find themselves once again in the midst of chaos and danger.

I want to begin with a quick summary of what is happening to the Christian communities in Iraq and Syria, since that is where the problem at present is most acute, but it is important to understand that Christianity in the Middle East must also include what is happening in ,

Iran, Lebanon, , Egypt, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the Gulf States, and North Africa. Of 30-35 million of the worldwide Middle Eastern Christians, less than half still live in the Middle East.9 According to the Pew Research Center, as of 2010, there were approximately 12.7 million Christians living in the Middle East and North Africa, which represented approximately 3.7% of the population of this region.10 Given the turmoil in Iraq

7 The Syrian Center for Policy Research reported in February 2016 that at least 470,000 Syrians had died as a result of the war. Anne Barnard, “Death Toll from War Now 470,000, Group Finds,” New York Times, February 11, 2016. UN Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura on April 22, 2016, estimated 400,000 deaths in the conflict in Syria. http://www.unmultimedia.org/radio/english/2016/04/syria-envoy-claims-400000-have-died-in- syria-conflict/#.V_G0G5MrLox. 8 The 6.1 IDP number is as of September 2016, according to OCHA (the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) http://www.unocha.org/syria. (Actually, the same source also lists 6.5 million IDPs; we also know that many refugees are not registered, such as in Lebanon.) Here are the locations of the registered refugees: Turkey: 2,733,655; Lebanon: 1,033,513 (but the total number of refugees, since many are not registered, may be 1.5 million or more); Jordan: 656,400; Iraq: 239,008; and, Egypt: 114,911. 9 O’Mahoney, Anthony and John Flannery eds., The in the Contemporary Middle East” (London: Melisende, 2010), p. 7. Cited in “Hope for the Middle East,” p. 7. See footnote 11 for full citation. 10 The Future of World Religious Population Growth, 2010-50, Middle East-North Africa, April 2, 2015, Pew Research Center. http://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/middle-east-north-africa/ 93% of the population in the Middle East and North Africa is Muslim and 1.6% Jewish. The vast majority of Jews are living in Israel.

5 since 2003, and the war in Syria since 2011, the number of Christians in the Middle East has certainly declined from that number, plus many Christians, even if still in the Middle East, have been forced to flee from their homelands as refugees or IDPs.

Later in my presentation, when I address specifically the question of whether Christianity will survive in the Middle East, I will expand the context of our discussion to include a very brief discussion of the following specific countries (not all, by any means, of the countries in the

Middle East):

• one of the places with the sharpest declines of Christianity in the Middle East

(Turkey)

• the unique situation of Christians in the Holy Land – Israel and the Occupied

Palestinian Territories (Christian decline fueled primarily by political, not religious

freedom factors).

• the relatively tiny Christian population in

• the largest Christianity population in the Middle East (Egypt),

• One of the largest percentage of Christians in a Middle Eastern country (Lebanon,

perhaps 38%),11

• Jordan, the Middle Eastern country with the most positive Muslim leadership towards

Christians.

11 Estimate of 38.3% is for 2010. “Table: Christian Populations as Percentages of Total Population by Country,” December 19, 2011, Pew Research Center. http://www.pewforum.org/2011/12/19/table-christian-population-as-percentages-of-total- population-by-country/. According to the Pew Research Center, about 61% of the population of Eritrea is Christian, overwhelmingly Copts, but though religion is very controlled here for the four registered religions, and banned for the rest, Eritrea is not nearly as strategic in the discussion of the Middle East as is Lebanon, and thus I will not deal with Eritrea in this paper. 2016 Annual Report, USCIRF, pp. 39-42.

6 Near the end of my paper, I will present some ideas for what we can do to help, both related to the hot-spots of Iraq and Syria, but also connected to the wider context of Christians in the Middle East.

Iraq has experienced the steepest proportionate decline of Christianity of any country in the Middle East in recent years. It is estimated that there were 1.5 million (just under 6% of population) Christians in Iraq at the time of the U.S. invasion in 2003, that number has probably declined to between 100,000 and 300,000 (less than 1 percent of the current population), and many of the latter are IDPs in the of northern Iraq (governed by the Kurdistan Regional Government, KRG).12 Indicative of the disproportionate suffering of

Christians in Iraq is the fact that of the two million Iraqi refugees produced by 2008, 1.2 million had ended up in Syria, 30% of whom were Christian (350,000), though Christians were then just

3% of the Iraqi population.13 Seventy percent of Iraqi Christians are Chaldean Catholics, and the

Church of the East (the Assyrian Orthodox) is the next largest group.

The vacuum created by the fall of Saddam and the descent of Iraq into sectarian violence and extremism had a devastating impact on Christian communities. On August 1, 2004, a coordinated assault on Sunday evening services (four in , one in , and one bomb failed to go off) killed six and injured sixty. Indeed, in 2004, there were 63 separate attacks on

Christian in Iraq.14 There was a time in the 1920s, when Christians and Jews were an important

12 “Hope for the Middle East: Impact and Significance of the Christian Presence in Syria and Iraq during the Current Crisis,” February 2016, p. 9. A publication produced by Open Doors, Served, Middle East Concern, and the University of East London. I have lowered the number of Christians remaining in Iraq from 500,000 to an upper estimate of 300,000 to take into account the recent continued flow of emigres out of Iraq. 13 Mindy Belz, They Say We Are Infidels: On the Run from ISIS with Persecuted Christians in the Middle East (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale, 2016), p. 158. 14 Belz, pp. 88-89. Unless otherwise indicated, details on attacks on Christians in Iraq and Syria are taken from Belz.

7 part of Baghdad’s population – 20% and 33% respectively. Indeed, when Iraq emerged as an independent state in 1932, Hebrew was one of the national languages of Iraq, and the first

Minister of Finance was a Jew. An estimated 110,000, or eighty percent of the Iraqi Jewish population had left for Israel by 1951. The post-war presence of Nazi sympathizers and the rise of Arab Nationalism played a major role in forcing the Jews to flee. Only thirty-five Jews remained in Baghdad by 2004.15 And now the Christians are being driven out as well. This is a significant blow against pluralism and diversity to see first the Jews, and then the Christians, driven out of Iraq.

The violence against Christians in Iraq has only gone from bad to worse. A brutal attack on Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad was carried out in October 2010. Fifty-eight were killed, 75 wounded. By this point, late 2010, since the U.S. invasion seven years before, 54 churches had been attacked, over a thousand Christians killed, and Iraq’s Christian population had plummeted by two thirds to half a million. Chaldean Louis Sako warned: “It’s a hemorrhage; Iraq could be emptied of Christians.”16

The most spectacular ISIL victory was the taking of Mosul, in June 2014 – Iraq’s second largest city. An estimated 30,000 Christians were forced to flee Mosul and perhaps another

150,000 were chased out of the Nineveh Plain, many ending up in and other parts of the

Kurdistan Region.17

The barbarity of ISIL is most pronounced in its brutalization of women. have particularly suffered from repeated raped and sex trafficking, but Christian and Kurdish girls and

15 Belz, pp. 88-89, 132, 134. 16 Belz, p. 178. 17 Belz, p. 265. According to 2016 Annual Report, USCIRF, the Iraq Defense Minister, Khaled- al-Obeidi reported that ISIL killed 2000, mainly in the Nineveh Plain, and forced approximately 125,000 Christians to flee, mainly to the Kurdistan Regional Government, p. 101.

8 women have been victimized as well. ISIL has not even pretended that it is not engaged in these offenses against humanity. In ISIL’s glossy English magazine Dabiq, it is asserted that “it is permissible to have sexual intercourse with the female captive,” and “it is permissible to buy, sell, or give as a gift female captives and slaves, for they are merely property…” Victims are as young as 12.18 A Yezidi who was trafficked to Syria managed to gain access to a phone and sent this desperate message: “If you know where we are, please bomb us. There is no life after this I’m going to kill myself anyway – some have killed themselves this morning.” She had been raped 30 times, and it was not yet noon.19

Such evil goes so far beyond what can be accounted by normal geo-political explanations that the word “diabolical” does not seem too extreme to describe it. One is reminded of the words of St. Paul:

For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12)

Genocide involves more than the attempt to wipe out individual groups, but includes the attempt to destroy any record that they ever existed at all. By early 2016, it is estimated that ISIL had destroyed over 100 religious and historical sites under its control. Perhaps the oldest site they pulverized was the historic Monastery of St. Elijah (Dair Mar Elia), built near the end of the sixth century south of Mosul.20

18 Belz, p. 272. Further arguments from ISIL justifying the reintroduction of slavery based on their interpretations of Islamic law can be found in Dabiq, Issue 4, “The Revival of Slavery: Before the Hour,” pp. 14-18 http://media.clarionproject.org/files/islamic-state/islamic-state-isis- magazine-Issue-4-the-failed-crusade.pdf This same source warns the “Crusaders”: “We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women…”, p. 17. 19 Belz, p. 271. 20 A January 20, 2014, AP story included in US News & World Report. http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2016-01-20/only-on-ap-oldest-christian-monastery- in-iraq-is-razed

9 Finally, with respect to Iraq, though most of the most egregious attacks on Christians and other religious communities have come from ISIL, some persecution also has come at the hands of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), officially recognized by Prime Minister al-Abadi as part of the security forces of Iraq. The PMF has received more than a billion dollars from the government and has been an effective fighting force against ISIL.

In fact, the PMF is an umbrella of more than forty militias, most, but not all of whom, are

Shia. They are viewed as more effective than the and receive support from Iran.

Human Rights Watch has charged that some, such as the Badr Brigades, League of the

Righteous, etc., are guilty of carrying out major human rights violations. 21

The Popular Mobilization Forces has also been extremely heavy-handed with Sunnis and the smaller religious communities. According to the International Religious Freedom’s 2016

Annual Report:

At the end of December 2016, PMF [Popular Mobilization Forces] groups were reported to be harassing Christian women who did not wear the Islamic headscarf. Christians in Baghdad said that PMF hung posters on churches and monasteries in Christian neighborhoods urging women to cover their hair and that some Christians received threats that they should not celebrate Christmas…22

In 2011, before the Syrian Civil War began, Syrian Christians numbered 2 million, representing almost 10% of the Syrian population of 21.5 million. Prior to World War II,

Christians had composed 20% of the population, so a decline was certainly already underway before the civil war even began. Although it has been difficult to get reliable data, by early 2016, there were some estimates that between 20% to two-thirds of Syrian Christians had left since the

21 Renad Monsour, “The Popularity of the Hashd [PMF] in Iraq,” February 1, 2016, Carnegie Middle East Center. http://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/62638; “Popular Mobilization Forces,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Mobilization_Forces 22 2016 Annual Report, USCIRF, pp. 101-02. It should be noted that though the USCIRF views Iraq as a “country of particular concern” (CPC), the US State Department does not. (p. 99)

10 war began. At a press conference at the UN headquarters in Geneva on March 16, 2016, Antoine

Audo, the Chaldean Bishop of Aleppo, reported that Syria’s Christian population had dropped from 1.5 million to 500,000. He noted that Aleppo had been particularly hard hit by fighting and the persecution by extremists, resulting in its Christian population plunging from 160,000 to

40,000, most of whom were in government-controlled areas. The three main cathedrals were almost entirely destroyed.23 Obviously, it is difficult to know precisely how many Christians have fled, but there is no question that the decline has been substantial.

The largest Christian group of the eleven officially recognized Christian entities in Syria is the Greek Orthodox. Most Christians self-identify as Arab (that is, Arabic-speaking), but there are also and Assyrians in various parts of the country.

It has been the rise of ISIL beginning in mid-2013 which has particularly endangered the

Christian communities of Syria. Before the rise of ISIL, however, the city of Homs had already fallen during the civil war and every church had been destroyed, though perhaps not always because the churches were specifically targeted as “Christian.” Although most analysts believe that Christians are perceived to be very vulnerable if the Assad government falls, it should be noted that Christians perceived to be disloyal have been targeted by the government. Fifty to

63% of Christian places of worship have been targeted by the government, according to the 2016 annual report of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, and since 2011, 50

Christians have been killed and over 450 detained by government forces. This includes some

23 Humanitarian organizations suggested the 20% figure, while the European Parliament in October 2015 estimated 40%. “Hope for the Middle East,” Open Doors, p. 8. “Bishop: Two Thirds of Syrian Christians have been Killed or Driven Away,” March 16, 2016, Breitbart, http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/03/16/aleppo-bishop-two-thirds-of-syrian- christians-have-been-killed-or-driven-away/.

11 involved in human rights activities.24 In general, Christians in Syria are weak pawns in the power politics of Syria, and have aligned variously in attempts to remain safe or to do what they consider to be right. Thus, some Syrian Christians have not supported Assad, while probably most have felt safer with Assad in control than if other Muslim or Islamists were. But there is no doubt that if ISIL takes over or even simply the Sunni majority, Christians will certainly be in great jeopardy – much like the Christians of Iraq were in the chaos, anarchy, and descent into sectarian violence which followed the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Sadly, before the civil war, Aleppo, Syria’s largest city (larger than the capital

Damascus), had been the destination of many of the Iraqi refugees. Indeed, Aleppo had long been a destination of those fleeing calamity. During the period of the Armenian genocide in 1915 in the Ottoman Empire, Aleppo’s Armenian population swelled from three hundred families to over 400,000.25 And, now, Aleppo is right in crosshairs of the most devastating bombardment and humanitarian crisis of the Syrian civil war.

The taking of the northern Syrian city of Raqqa in March 2013 by the Islamist militant group al-Nusra was a clear sign of a gathering storm for Christians. Raqqa would become Abu

Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Caliphate capital of ISIL. Of the 200,000 in Raqqa, 3,000 were Christian.

Many Christians fled, others were taken captive, while others were executed if considered to be supporters of the Assad regime. Some churches were turned into mosques, while others became holding cells. It was in the city square in Raqqa where crosses were erected and victims hung crucifixion-style, perhaps already dead. A UN fact-finding mission reported that children were

“killed or publicly executed, crucified, beheaded, and stoned to death.” Girls as young as 12

24 2016 Annual Report, USCIRF, pp. 120-21. 25 Belz, p. 159.

12 were seized to be brutalized sexually.26 Bishop Audo has confirmed that in Christian villages, young children have been beheaded and dismembered.27

Before we turn to the question of whether Christianity is likely to survive in the Middle

East, it is important for us to be reminded of two important facts. First, Christianity in the Middle

East is “ancient” and indigenous in its origins, and not primarily a product of modern missionary activity. And, second, even if we could rescue and resettle all Christians from the Middle East

(particularly from Iraq and Syria, where their plight at present is particularly precarious), it would be a tragedy for the Middle East AND the world for Christians and other religious communities to cease to be part of the rich cultural tapestry which has been the Middle East.

Christianity is “Ancient” in the Middle East

The ancient Christian communities of in the Middle East have existed from the first century, and were well-established throughout the region by the second century.

The first chapter Acts, at the time of Jesus’ ascension into heaven, the disciples were told:

“…you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1:8).

Chapter 2, tells of the Day of Pentecost, fifty days after the resurrection – the day considered the foundation of the Christian Church – when 3,000 believed and were baptized.

Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. 7 And they were amazed and wondered, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another,

26 Belz, pp. 198-99. 27 Belz, p. 201.

13 “What does this mean?” But others mocking said, “They are filled with new wine.” (Acts 2:5-13)

Parthians were from the northern portion of present day Iran (including the Kurdish regions of Iraq and Iran); the Medes were from the western and northwestern parts of Iran;

Elamites from Iran, as well as well as southern Iraq; and Cappadocia, Pontus, and Phrygia are all part of modern-day Turkey.

A Syrian document dating to the sixth century, the Chronicle of Arbela, records that a bishop presided over (a district in which Arbela, or modern Erbil, is located) in 100

AD, and the names of the bishops noted are clearly Jewish names, indicating that the church was led by converted Jews. It should be remembered that at the time of Jesus, most Jews did not live in the Holy Land; at least a million lived in – modern Iraq.28

From Suha Rassam’s ,29 we know that according to church historian

Eusebius (d. 339), two of the original 12 apostles (Thomas and Thaddaeus or Jude), and their disciples) were instrumental in bringing the Christian faith to Mesopotamia. Some believe

Christianity arrived in Mesopotamia from Edessa (modern day Turkey). Others believe that

Arbela (modern day Erbil, where many of the current Iraqi IDPs are located, and some Syrian

Refugees as well) was a key early center of Christianity in Mesopotamia.

Rassam also reports that Christianity came to southern Mesopotamia by sea, arriving early in Babylon (Baghdad area today), and then moving to Adiabene (near Erbil) and Nisibis

(southern Turkey today, composed of a population of , Assyrians, and ).

28 Belz, pp. 310, 84. 29 Suha Rassam. Christianity in Iraq (New Edition. Leominster, Australia: Gracewing, 2010), pp. 25-30.

14 We know that Tatian, born in land of Assyrians (perhaps near Erbil), traveled to Rome in second half of second century, was converted from paganism, and became a disciple of the

Christian apologist Justyn . (Tatian wrote important philosophical and theological works in Greek and Syriac.)

Ironically, Christians from the persecuted sought refuge in Adiabene

(within Kurdistan today).

Kirkuk, Nisibis, Seleucia-Ctesiphon (30 km south of Baghdad, and capital of the Persian empire) were all major Christian centers in the early period of the Church. Indeed, by the beginning of the fourth century there was a large, well-structured Christian Church in the Persian

Empire.

Not only were the first Christians from Mesopotamia,30 from the very time of Pentecost and the birth of the Christian Church, but Mesopotamia became a major sending point for

Christianity to points further east. Medical doctor Suha Rassam and historian of Iraqi

Christianity, and a native of Mosul, has noted:

…for five hundred years between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, the dioceses of the had rivaled the scope of the Church, earning it the title of the “Third Branch of Christianity.” This legacy is still felt today: The Mongolian script is derived from Syriac, which was the liturgical language of the Syriac-speaking churches, uniting its disparate dioceses that stretched from Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, as well as to India, Arabia and the gulf.31

30 Roughly the area watered by the and rivers, including parts of modern Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, Iran, and Turkey. 31 Rassam, xvii-xviii.

15 Ironically, not only was Christianity present in Iraq from the very beginning of the

Christian Church, there were actually more followers of Christ in Mesopotamia in 600 AD, just

37 years before Muslim Arabs arrived, than there were in the other Western Christian churches.32

To listen to a Catholic or Orthodox Mass in Assyrian regions today is to hear a language extremely close to that spoken by Jesus.

Assyrian Christian culture was a vibrant part of the Arabic culture of the Muslims.

The new Muslim leaders relied on Christian expertise in medicine, the sciences, and translation from the very beginning of their time in the region.33 From the middle of the eighth century to the middle of the thirteenth century. Arabic-speaking Christians translated much from Greek,

Syriac, and Coptic, and serious Islamic scholars are aware of and appreciate these contributions.34

In the early 1920s, following the demise of the Ottoman Empire, Christians were prominent leaders of society and culture. “In the 1980s, about 35% of the Iraqi qualified professionals were Christians,” clear evidence that Christian influence was far out of proportion to their absolute numbers or percentage of the population.”35

Why Islam and the World Needs a Christian Presence in the Middle East

The survival, and thriving, of Christian culture in the Middle East, and the similar survival and thriving of other religious traditions – Yezidi, Jewish, etc. – is critically important to

32 Ara Bedlian, “Christians in Iraq: Decreased Numbers and Immigration Challenges,” in Sa’ad Salloum’s Minorities in Iraq: Memory, Identity and Challenges (Baghdad-Beirut: Masarat, 2014), p. 59 33 Bedlian, p. 59. 34 Sidney H. Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 1. 35 Bedlian, p. 60.

16 the rich culture of diversity which the Middle East represents at its best. We see this in the Old

City of Jerusalem today, but it has and can exist elsewhere in the Middle East as well.

Why this is important has everything to do with what we believe about the human person and about the sacred task that each human being is endowed with to explore matters of transcendence. In the Christian tradition we believe this follows necessarily from being created in the “image and likeness” of God, and this reality obligates each human being both to seek that which is true and transcendent, AND, with humility and discipline, also to respect every other person’s quest for the true and transcendent.

The humility required to live at peace with those who differ with us, who look different, or think differently, is essential to vibrant, diverse societies. Societies ought to be united in their common respect for religious freedom or freedom of conscience.

In the American context, of course, we have the first sixteen words of the First

Amendment (1791), which guarantee both freedom of worship and free exercise of religion:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

But six years before, in 1785, James Madison in the “Remonstrance Against Religious

Assessment,” protested an attempt in Virginia to subsidize Christian religion, penned an eloquent apology for religious freedom and a pluralistic society which insists on the legitimacy and importance of diversity – both for theological and practical reasons.

… we hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, "that religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence." The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. (Section 1)

Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to

17 those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us. If this freedom be abused, it is an offence against God, not against man: To God, therefore, not to man, must an account of it be rendered. (Section 4)

This is not just an American notion, but one which is inscribed brilliantly in Article 18 of the UN

Declaration of Human Rights (1948):

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Madison’s notion that it is an offense against God to interfere with someone else’s exercise of religious freedom is complemented by his assertion that it is an offense also against man, and thus, also, an offense against a healthy and free society of human beings. If history teaches us anything, it is that when pluralism and diversity are not allowed to exist, the humility and tolerance which is required for human beings to live in peace with each other is destroyed, and there will be no peace. Intolerant, monistic societies not only have no peace within, but they invariably seek to impose their will on others.

A Middle East which loses its ability to embrace the rich diversity of its peoples, cultures, and religions not only stifles the freedom of its own people, but will inevitably become a threat to others. In short, what happens in the Middle East invariably will and is impacting us all.

If there is a portion of the world where intolerance reigns supreme, where there are not political and societal commitments and structures which nurture and defend diversity, those hostile political and military entities such as ISIL will certainly threaten the rest of the world, and, indeed, this is the declared intention of ISIL. (Recent terrorist attacks in Canada, Australia,

France, the US etc. provide stark evidence of this reality.)

To be sure, the human desire to survive and escape danger should not be dismissed by those not in harm’s way. And we should therefore be willing to help those who feel they must

18 flee. But we must also do what we can to make it possible for people to stay in their homelands, or near their homelands, assuming this is what they want and are willing to do.

No place on earth is as dangerous at this moment in time as is Aleppo, Syria, and yet the

Chaldean Bishop Audo of Aleppo has insisted that it is crucial for as many Christians as possible to remain in Syria:

It’s important for us as Christians to be alive in the original lands of our fathers in the Middle East. Not only for us but for the church in the world… We have a long history of living together with Muslim people.…it is very important to have Christian-Arab presence. If we lose it, I am convinced it will be a big loss for Islam, too.36

Muslim and Christian alike warn of the consequences of Christians and other religious communities being forced out of the Middle East.

Sa’ad Salloum, a well-known Iraqi academic, has written:

The risk of extinction and one-way migration threaten not only minorities but also, by extension, Iraq’s identity, prosperity and existence. It points to the cultural bankruptcy of Iraq that will impoverish and deprive the country of its sources of strength. It is the cultural desertification of Iraq that seeks to turn Iraqi identity into a blind, empty mon- identity. Thus, not only are minorities in danger but the ‘majority is as well.’”37

Ara Bedlian, an historian of the Church in the East, asserts:

The ongoing immigration of Christians represents a threat to the Iraq identity. It threatens to change the country’s cultural and religious diversity into a one-colored model, hence breaking with the pluralistic history which has distinguished Iraq from the Arabian peninsula which has been monocular since 14 centuries. This is a risk of changing into a “barren monocular identity” [footnote to a 2011 lecture by Sa’ad Salloum, a Muslim scholar] that would cut Iraq off its Christian roots. Christianity entered Iraq around the middle of the first century AD. The Bible tells us about persons from Mesopotamia who were living in Jerusalem when Peter, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ, delivered his speech (Apostles 2:9).

36 Cited in Belz, pp. 202-03. 37 Sa’ad Salloum, Minorities in Iraq: Memory, Identity and Challenges (Baghdad-Beirut: Masarat, 2014), p. 9. The front of book indicates that the book was supported by UNAMI (the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq). There is a footnote in the original indicating where the notion “Majority in Danger,” the subtitle of the section, is taken from: “An expression used by Father Dr. Yousif Toma during an interview with the author on January 6, 2012.”

19 A professor of history at American University in Beirut in the 1990s, Kamal Salibi has made a compelling argument as to why Christians need to stay in the Middle East.

Each time a Christian goes, no other Christian comes to fill his place, and that is very bad thing for the Arab world. It is the Christian Arabs who keep the Arab world "Arab" rather than "Muslim." It is the Christian Arabs who show that Arabs and Muslims are two different things, that not all Muslims are Arabs and not all Arabs are Muslims. You see, many Muslims regard Arab history as having little meaning by itself, outside the context of Islam. In that sense we are the Arab world's guarantee of secularism.38

Clearly, what Salibi means by "secularism" is not "anti-religious," which some "secularists" seem to understand by the term, but "pluralism" – where a variety of religious and non-religious worldviews co-exist in peace side by side, something which Christian theology believes follows logically from being created in the “image and likeness” of God.

“Will Christianity Survive in the Middle East?” – An Ever-Present Question

To consider such a question requires both an historical and a spiritual or theological perspective.

Fears of Christianity disappearing from the Middle East are, after all, nothing new. It ought to be remembered that humanly-speaking, Christianity taking root in the Roman Empire seemed quite impossible. If some prophet had predicted that by the early fourth century, the persecution would not only end, but be replaced by ascendency of the new faith, that would have seemed quite incredible. At least in the case of the Roman Empire, there seems to have been considerable truth in Tertullian's assertion that "the blood of is the seed of the church."

But no sooner had ascendency been secured than the Roman Empire was conquered by

Germanic barbarians. Where was God's providential care then? Those with the short-view of history, who had forgotten the message of the Cross that all is not as it seems, can be forgiven for

38 Dalrymple, p. 214.

20 lapsing into despair. It will be remembered that Augustine wrote his masterpiece The City of

God, in part as a response to the early sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410, partly to fend off the accusations that Christians somehow brought on this tragedy, but also to explain to Christians why they should still maintain Christian hope even when they seemed to be on the threshold of catastrophic defeat. The Saint's faith in the ultimate victory of the City of God over the City of

Man radiated forth, but for the time being, there was no question that evil was apparently triumphing.

The Germans were converted, however, and we know now that thanks to the monasteries the “Dark Ages” were not as “dark” as they appeared, and civilization and Christian truth not only survived but thrived.

And while civilization and Christianity were under duress and seemingly in retreat in the

West with the final fall of Rome in 476, Christianity in the East was doing quite well, centered as it was in Constantinople. Yet by 578, when a monk by the name of John Moschos left his desert monastery of St Theodosius near Bethlehem on a pilgrimage which would take him to holy sites in what is now Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Egypt, there were ominous signs that

Christianity might be on the verge of being stamped out throughout the Middle East. He recorded his fascinating observations in The Spiritual Meadow.

Over 1400 hundred years later, in the mid-1990s, William Dalrymple retraced the steps of John Moschos, in his own remarkable travelogue through the Middle East entitled From the

Holy Mountain. Dalrymple notes that his predecessor witnessed "horrifying, almost apocalyptic" destruction. John Moschos' own monastery was burned to the ground in 614 by a Persian army,

21 and hundreds of defenseless monks were slaughtered. Jerusalem soon fell as well, and many who survived were carted off as slaves to what is now Iraq, near Baghdad.39

And this was before the rise of Islam and its triumphant campaign to conquer the

Christian Middle East, with Jerusalem falling in 638. Dark days to be sure for those worried about the survival of Christianity in the Holy Land.

Constantinople, the stronghold of Christianity in the East, the most magnificent city in

Europe, finally itself succumbed to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. But the arrival of the Ottomans did not signal the destruction of everything Christian. On the contrary, the great city became even greater, and there was considerable ethnic and religious tolerance. At a time when Europe was burning heretics, the seventeenth-century Huguenot M. de la Motraye noted that there was

"no country on earth where the exercise of all Religions is more free and less subject to being troubled, than Turkey."40 But, alas, religious intolerance in the Ottoman Empire mushroomed in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, in 1800, half of Istanbul remained Christian.

Sadly, however, the great diversity which was Turkey and Istanbul is no more. Now

99.8% of modern-day Turkey is made up of Muslims (75% Turkish, 18% Kurdish). The Jews have gone to Israel, and Greek, Armenian, and Assyrian Christians have been killed or have fled, in part because of early twentieth-century genocide. 41 Prof. Israel Charney, President of the

International Association of Genocide Scholars, reported in 2007:

It is believed that in Turkey between 1913 and 1922, under the successive regimes of the Young Turks and of Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), more than 3.5 million Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Christians were massacred in a state-organized and state-sponsored campaign

39 William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East (New York: Henry Holt and Co, 1997), pp. 13-14. 40 Cited in Dalrymple, p. 28. 41 For Dalrymple's observations on visiting Istanbul, see pp. 28-33. Current demographic facts taken CIA World Factbook, “Turkey,” September 28, 2016. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/tu.html

22 of destruction and genocide, aiming at wiping out from the emerging Turkish Republic its native Christian populations. This Christian Holocaust is viewed as the precursor to the Jewish Holocaust in WWII. To this day, the Turkish government ostensibly denies having committed this genocide.42

It is utterly chilling to read the accounts of what happened to Christians early in the twentieth century at the end of the Ottoman Empire for they were every bit as bad as anything that has been happening under ISIL, though they were on a much more massive scale.

As mentioned previously, the Christian population in Turkey today is well less than one percent, and the government of Turkey, a candidate for membership in the European Union, will not even allow the Orthodox Church to provide training for its priests in Turkey.43 For those who have eyes to see, history is certainly not one long, inevitable march towards “the good.”

As for Christianity in the Holy Lands, the heartland of Jews and Christians, if one considers the entire area of what was Palestine before the founding of the State of Israel in 1948

(including the West Bank and Gaza), the number of Palestinian or in the West

Bank and Jerusalem has dropped precipitously from 10% of the population in 1920 to less than

1%. In 1922, over half the population of the Old City of Jerusalem was Christian, but today only a small fraction of that number remains.

However, the number of Christian citizens in Israel has more than quadrupled to 160,000 since the founding of Israel in 1948 to today.44 Three-quarters of Israeli Christian citizens are

Arab and one-quarter are Russian, though the latter are mainly inactive Christians with a Russian

Orthodox background. In contrast to Israeli Christian Arabs, however, Christian Arabs living in

42 http://www.genocidetext.net/iags_resolution_supporting_documentation.htm 43 See U.S. State Department’s 2015 International Religious Freedom Report, Turkey. http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/religiousfreedom/index.htm?year=2015&dlid=256251 44 Dalrymple, 363. The current number of Christian citizens of Israel comes from “Snapshot of Israeli Demographics,” American Israel Education Foundation Briefing Book, unpublished, 2016, p. 28.

23 the Occupied Territories, have been far more likely to emigrate. There are approximately 50,000

Arab Christians left in the Occupied Territories – the West Bank and Gaza. This includes 10,000 who live in East Jerusalem, and 1,300 or less who live in Gaza. There are 5,000 to 12,000

Messianic Jews.

Ironically, according to the Israeli Ministry of Interior, there are 227,000 often illegal migrants in Israel. More than half of these migrants are Christian, or from Christian backgrounds

(from Russia, the Philippines, Eritrea, and Sudan). Thus, there are 325,000 non-Jewish Christians living in the Israel and the Occupied territories of whom roughly half are citizens of Israel (75% of whom are Arab). Of the other half, 70% are migrants are from Russia, the Philippines, Eritrea, and Sudan, and 30% are Arab Christians mainly in the West Bank.45

In contrast to the rest of the Middle East, it has not been primarily religious persecution in Palestine which has resulted in major (although there have been some attacks on Christian and Muslim sites by Haredi Judaism -- the ultra-Orthodox, and there is some hostility from radical Muslims in places like Gaza, but rather the larger geopolitical factors associated with the Arab/Jewish conflict intimately connected to the founding of the State of

Israel. Most Palestinians today live outside of Palestine.46

45 I am very grateful Fr. David Neuhaus, Latin Patriarchal Vicar for Hebrew Speaking Catholics in Israel and Coordinator of the Pastoral among Migrants and Asylum Seekers in Israel, who provided me with much of the statistical data in this paragraph. I met with him in Tel Aviv on March 17, 2016, and soon after he provided me with additional information. The website entitled Saint James Vicariate for Hebrew Speaking Catholics in Israel contains information on the migrants in Israel. http://www.catholic.co.il/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12926:how-many- migrants-in-israel&catid=58&Itemid=122&lang=en

46 Dalrymple, pp. 316-17, and “Declining Palestinian Population Fears its Churches are Turning into Museums,” Haaretz, October 7, 2010.

24 The largest number of Christians in the Middle East reside in Egypt – 10-15% of a population of 89 million. The great majority of the Christians are Copts.47 A full discussion of the situation for Egypt’s Christians through the transitions since Tahrir Square on January 25,

2011 and the removal of long-time President and authoritarian ruler Hosni Mubarak is beyond the scope of this paper, but we will return later to mention the importance of supporting the

Christian presence in Egypt.

In contrast to Egypt, where most Christians in the Middle East live, Christians number only about 300,000 in Iran, or about .3% of a population of 80 million overwhelmingly Shia

Muslims. According to the 2016 Annual Report of the International Religious Freedom

Commission:

The government of Iran continues to engage in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom, including prolonged detention, torture, and executions based primarily or exclusively upon the religion of the accused.48

It is difficult to fathom, but it has been estimated that 120,000 people have been executed in Iran for their political or religious beliefs since 1981, and 2,500 hanged since Rouhani assumed power in in 2013. In one of the harshest places to be Christians in the world, where to convert from Islam is a capital offense for men and a life-time prison sentence for women, there is major growth in the evangelical churches. In fact, Operation World in 2015 listed Iran as having the fasting growing evangelical growth rate in the world. The religious persecution is a direct violation of Article 23 of the Iranian constitution: “the investigation of an individual’s belief is forbidden and no one may be molested or taken to task simply for holding certain

47 2016 Annual Report, USCIRF, p. 91. 48 2016 Annual Report, p. 91.

25 beliefs.”49 According to Operation World, out of an estimated 385,000 Christians in Iran,

118,000 are evangelicals.50

Though Lebanon still has the highest percent of Christians of the population of any

Middle Eastern country (about 38%), Christians are emigrating. Dalrymple concludes his travelogue almost twenty years ago with this sober assessment:

Christianity is an Eastern religion which grew firmly rooted in the intellectual ferment of the Middle East. John Moschos saw that plant begin to wither in the hot winds of change that scoured the Levant of his day [second half of sixth century]. On my journey in his footsteps I have seen the very last stalks in the process of being uprooted. It has been a continuous process, lasting nearly one and a half millennia.51

A challenge for Lebanon is that the fragile balance between Shia and Sunni in the country before the Syrian civil war is being dramatically impacted by the arrival of between one and two million mainly Sunni Syrian refugees fleeing the fighting in their homeland.

Though not without problems of civil and political liberties, the Hashemite Kingdom of

Jordan, under King Abdullah II, is a ray of hope for Christians in the Middle East. The King has repeatedly called on Jordanians to respect what he asserts has been a long history of religious tolerance in the country. Ninety-seven percent of the population of 8.1 million (2015) are Sunni

Muslim, and Christians represent 2.2 percent of the population.

It is important not to focus solely on the positive rhetoric of the King, but to also be aware of political trends within the country. That is, Islamist parties are now participating in

49 Carey Lodge, “Which Country Has the Fastest-Growing Church in the World?,” September 20, 2016, Christianity Today. http://www.christiantoday.com/article/which.country.has.the.fastest.growing.church.in.the.world /95924.htm 50 “Iran,” Operation World, http://www.operationworld.org/iran 51 Dalrymple, 453-54.

26 elections, and may be reemerging with more influence.52 The Muslim Brotherhood entities, and there are more than one, are staying away from inflammatory rhetoric, and here as elsewhere in the Middle East the question will be whether observed changes in style by the Muslim

Brotherhood represent a genuine moderating of positions or simply a tactical retreat from rhetoric which for the time being is not deemed useful to them.

The Wall Street Journal has summarized the results of the September 2016 elections to the Jordanian parliament as follows:

The Muslim Brotherhood won seats in… Jordanian parliamentary elections, a mostly symbolic victory that revives the movement’s presence in the country’s legislature for the first time in nearly a decade.

The Islamic Action Front, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, won eight seats and its political supporters took another seven, making for an alliance of 15 out of the 130 lawmakers in the lower house of Jordan’s parliament.53

Returning to a focus on where Christianity is more endangered at the present time, our contemporary angst about whether Christianity will survive in the Middle East has particularly intensified because of the rise of ISIL, the fall of Mosul in northern Iraq in 2014, and the horrifying images of beheadings and the rapes of Christian and Yezidi girls and women. In fact, the signs of something going very wrong pre-date ISIL, and are directly connected to the rise of

Islamic fundamentalism. Consider the contemporary pilgrim William Dalyrmple's assessment two decades ago:

After centuries of generally peaceful co-existence with their Muslim neighbours, things are suddenly becoming difficult for the last Christians of the Middle East. Almost

52 Helpful background on the rather complicated political situation in Jordan can be found in “Will Jordan’s Brotherhood Make Breakthrough in Upcoming Elections?,” September 1, 2016, Al-Monitor, The Pulse of the Middle East. http://www.al- monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/09/jordan-legislative-elections-muslim-brotherhood.html 53 Suha Ma’ayeh and Rory Jines, “Muslim Brotherhood Regains Foothold in Jordan’s Parliament,” September 22, 2016, The Wall Street Journal. http://www.wsj.com/articles/muslim- brotherhood-regains-foothold-in--parliament-1474580029

27 everywhere in the Levant, for a variety of reasons – partly because of economic pressure, but more often due to discrimination and in some cases outright persecution – the Christians are leaving. Today they are a small minority of fourteen million struggling to keep afloat amid 180 million non-Christians, with their number shrinking annually through emigration. In the last twenty years at least two million have left the Middle East to make new lives for themselves in Europe, Australia and America.54

The terrible sufferings of Aleppo in Syria have been much in the news lately. And, yet, twenty years ago, when Dalrymple visited, in the footsteps of John Moschos fourteen hundred years before, there were also danger signs. Aleppo was a great place of refuge for Armenian,

Greek, Armenian, and Assyrian Christian victims of the Ottoman genocide in the Turkish

Empire in 1915. Unfortunately, with the founding of modern Syria in 1946, anti-Christian feelings rose as a more militant form of Islam gained strength. The threat was significant enough to occasion 250,000 Christians to leave Syria in the 1960s (including 125,000 from Aleppo alone who emigrated to Soviet ). Even twenty years ago, the seeds of the contemporary Syrian

Christian troubles were beginning to sprout.

Following the 1970 coup of Hafiz Assad (an Alawite – considered a Muslim heretic by the Sunnis), came a bit more protection for Christians and other religious communities in the short-term, but if the Assad regime, led by the current president, Bashar (the son of Hafiz), were to pass from the scene, the Christian population and other religious communities could be even more vulnerable than they are at present. Just as Christians in Iraq suffered from the plunge into sectarian violence following the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, with the vast majority fleeing the country or becoming IDPs, something is happening as a result of the chaos in Syria and will most likely intensify with the arrival of any post-Assad government.

54 Dalrymple, 19.

28 What Can We Do in the West to be of Help?

For Christians and non-Christians alike, there are very negative consequences for the

Middle East and the world if historic minorities such as Christians are purged from the landscape.

The Religious Freedom Research Project at Georgetown, out of which has emerged the separate and independent Religious Freedom Institute with which I am now associated, has impressively documented a clear and unmistakable connection between the existence of religious freedom and the existence of peace, societal harmony and cooperation, economic stability and growth, poverty alleviation, the dignity and equality of women, social stability and mobility, and a myriad of other social goods.55

I would like to make several concrete suggestions as to how we can address the tragic problems of Christians and other religious communities in the Middle East.

First, we must not succumb to the understandable temptation to throw up our hands in despair, and give up, as if nothing we can do will make a difference. We are all quite well aware of how the best of intentions in foreign policy often do not necessarily yield what is intended. And while we should never be naïve in assuming that simply overthrowing an oppressive regime will automatically guarantee an improvement, nor should the difficulty of a task be used as an excuse for inaction, pretending that “we might make things worse.” Such an assertion can be but a smokescreen to hide a lack of courage, will, and the commitment to do that which ought to be done to come to the aid of fellow human beings who are being rushed to their

55 See here the themes investigated by the Religious Freedom Project at Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs: https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/rfp/themes

29 deaths and brutalized. To fail to act can allow a bad situation to become much worse. The point is to act, but to do so with care, intelligence, and perseverance.

Second, though the use of force to turn back ISIL is not all that will be required, it will almost certainly be an important initial part of what is required. For Christians, the Just

War tradition can certainly provide sufficient justification for the appropriate and proportionate use of force.56

Third, individually and as a nation we should certainly help both refugees and IDPs, and to help them to the fullest extent possible in their homelands or as close to their homelands as possible.

Fourth, we should support the bipartisan “Iraq and Syria Genocide Relief and

Accountability Act of 2016” (HR 5961, introduced by Congressman Chris Smith on September

8, 2016). The Act would ensure that there is “accountability for perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes” – essential for justice and to enable displaced survivors to return to their homes, would give a special Priority Two (P-2) designation to those survivors of genocide in order to expedite their quest for being admitted to the US as refugees if that is their desire, and it would direct the Secretary of State and the USAID Administrator to identify

“Assistance needs of genocide survivors or other persecuted religious and ethnic groups,” and ensure that those needs are met by funding entities, including faith-based ones that are effectively providing aid to survivors.

In essence, the Act would ensure that the March 2016 designation of genocide against

Christians, Yazidis, and other religious communities results in the kind of tangible help that such

56 See an example of such an application of Just War theory in Paul D. Miller, “What a Just War Against the Islamic State Looks Like,” January 21, 2016, Providence. https://providencemag.com/2016/01/what-just-war-against-the-islamic-state-looks-like/

30 a designation ought to trigger. The Administration has admitted very few Syrian Christians as refugees and has provided little assistance to genocide-surviving Christian refugees or IDPs. This

Act would address this deficiency.

It should be noted that what HR 5961 would require by law gives teeth to the excellent resolution introduced by Congressman David Trott on September 24, 2015, H. Res. 440:

“Calling for urgent international action on behalf of Iraqi and Syrian civilians facing a dire humanitarian crisis and severe persecution because of their faith or ethnicity in the Nineveh Plain region of Iraq and Khabor, Kobane, and Aleppo regions of Syria.”

Fifth, it is imperative that the US work with Iraq to create the necessary political and societal conditions which will allow Christian IDPs and other religious communities to return to the Nineveh Plain and live in peace and security. There has been considerable debate about establishing a “safe haven” of some sort, or at least a new province or provinces in the Nineveh Plain, that would enable the safety and security of smaller religious groups. On

September 9, 2016, Cong. Jeff Fortenberry introduced H. Con. Res. 152 calling for support internationally and in Iraq for the recognition of “a province in the Nineveh Plain region, consistent with lawful expressions of self-determination by its indigenous peoples.” On

September 26, 2016, the Iraqi Parliament voted to not change the present borders of the Nineveh province, rejecting the proposal of some to divide existing districts into several provinces.57 It is not clear that what the Iraqi Parliament rejected in late September is the province envisioned in

H. Con. Res. 152. What is clear is that considerably more work will be required to get everybody

57 Baxtiyar Goran, “Iraqi Parliament Stands Against New Provinces for Ezidis and Christians,” September 26, 2016, Kurdistan 24, http://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/5496bb9a-227e-4672-887c- 958eba5f56f2/Iraqi-parliament-stands-against-new-provinces-for-Ezidis-and-Christians

31 on the same page and move forward together, whatever the particulars of the consensus. It is imperative that the central government of Iraq, the Kurdistan Regional Government, and all of the peoples of the Nineveh Plain -- including the smaller, vulnerable minority religious communities -- need to agree on a political structure which provides the necessary protection for all who live on the Nineveh Plain.

Even if Mosul is liberated in the last months of 2016, many IDPs in Kurdistan will not feel safe returning to their previous homes until and unless the international community, the

KRG, the government of Iraq, and the peoples of the Nineveh Plain can together agree on what is needed to ensure the security of those who return to their former homes.

The U.S. must leverage its support to the Iraqi government and KRG to ensure they are creating the conditions that will enable displaced Christians and other religious communities to return: conditions like a robust national reconciliation process, involving smaller religious communities in budgeting and reconstruction decisions, prioritizing the protection of vulnerable religious communities in policing and broader security, and insisting on accountability for perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The U.S. should also ensure that it is prioritizing these sectors in its assistance to civil society groups.

The long, difficult task must be to promote an Iraq, indeed an entire Middle East, in which it is possible to be part of a small and secure religious community, enjoy full religious freedom, and be free to participate fully in economic and social life.

The ultimate goal must be that all of Iraq, and Syria, and the entire Middle East -- majorities and minorities alike -- are both free and secure. This is going to require the hard work of stabilization, and beyond getting the proper legal and political framework in place, securing the support of societies and cultures such that there is broad support for Article 18 of the UN

32 Declaration of Human Rights. This will require political and inter-religious consensus as to how best to order stable and prosperous societies – societies geared to the respect and protection of the most vulnerable groups within a society and state.

Sixth, in pursuit of securing the survival of Christianity in the Middle East, it is imperative that we not just attend to the acute crises which engulf Syria and Iraq, seeking an end to the fighting and the establishment of political and societal environments supportive of religious freedom. We must also focus on those parts of the Middle East which have fairly large Christian populations and have political and cultural environments which offer relative support for or toleration of the continued presence of Christians in the region. Tolerance is never enough, of course, but it can be an important beginning.

There needs to be a major initiative to strengthen the position of Christians in

Egypt. The el-Sisi government at least often says the right things, though it often does not follow through as well as it ought. There should be a major effort to work with key figures at Al Azhar

University – the foremost Sunni University in the world – and there are scholars there with whom one can work to promote a humane and positive agenda.

Also, major attention should be accorded to the Lebanese situation. Before the 2011 civil war in Syria, there was a fragile balance between the 38% Christians and the 61% Muslim community (roughly divided between Sunnis and the Shias).58 But the arrival of 1-2 million

Sunnis is threatening the delicate demographic and religious balance of Lebanon, and the sooner the Syrian conflict can be brought to an end, and the great majority of these Sunni refugees are able to move back to Syria, the better.

58“Mapping the Global Muslim Population,” October 2009, Pew Research Center, http://www.pewforum.org/2013/11/07/many-sunnis-and-shias-worry-about-religious-conflict/

33 We should support H. Res. 852: “Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives on the challenges posed to long-term stability in Lebanon by the conflict in Syria" and its Senate counterpart (S. Res. 553). These resolutions recognize that the “security and stability in Lebanon, a pluralistic democracy in the Middle East, is in the interests of the United States and its allies in the region,” that Lebanon has more refugees as a percentage of its population than anywhere else in the world, that the influx of refugees is destabilizing, and it calls for a recognition of the importance of foreign assistance to Lebanon, encourages coordination between the U.S.

Secretary of State and the UN High Commissioner for Humanitarian Affairs to ensure that refugees in Lebanon are supported to prevent destabilization of Lebanon, and calls on the U.S. to support negotiations to end the conflict in Syria allowing “the return of millions of Syrian refugees from Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and other countries around the world.”59

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of promoting the stabilization of Lebanon as a way to safeguard what can and should be a Middle East model of Christians and Muslims living together peaceably in a pluralistic democracy – one which respects religious freedom and human rights.

We should work closely with King Abdullah II of Jordan – the one Muslim leader in the region who has repeatedly emphasized the importance of Christians remaining in the Middle

East.

Seventh, we should learn from history – both in terms of what mistakes to avoid, but as a reminder that the present is not a necessary predictor of the future. Muslim and

Christians have lived together much more peaceably, and even positively, than one would think

59 The texts of H. Res. 852 and S. Res. 553 can be found at https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th- congress/house-resolution/852 and https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate- resolution/553

34 possible given the rhetoric and actions of Islamist extremism today – destructive forces which have been at work particularly since the eighteenth century. In short, there will be no adequate or permanent solution which does not involve a partnership with Muslims. Much is going to depend on whether Muslims, the great majority of whom live outside the Middle East, can do whatever is necessary to not only distance themselves from violent, extremist interpretations of

Islam, but to defeat them on the ground and within the hearts and minds of the young.

I am actually very hopeful that the Muslim world will spew ISIL, or the so-called

“Islamic State,” out of its mouth and make absolutely clear to the world and its own followers that ISIL is an abomination to Islam. Indeed, there is evidence that this is beginning to occur.

There is a sixteen-page, detailed “Open Letter” from global Muslim scholars and leaders to the self-proclaimed leader of the “Islamic State,” Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, utterly rejecting

ISIL and giving detailed theological reasons for that repudiation. The Executive Summary includes 24 key affirmations, among which are the following:

#6 It is forbidden in Islam to kill the innocent.

#7 It is forbidden in Islam to kill emissaries, ambassadors, and diplomats; hence it is forbidden to kill journalists or aid workers.

#8 Jihad in Islam is defensive war. It is not permissible without the right cause, the right purpose and without the right rules of conduct.

#10 It is forbidden in Islam to harm or mistreat – in any way – Christians or any “People of the Scripture.”

#11 It is obligatory to consider Yazidis as People of the Scripture.

#12 The reintroduction of slavery is forbidden in Islam. It was abolished by universal consensus.

#13 It is forbidden in Islam to force people to convert.

#14 It is forbidden in Islam to deny women their rights.

35 #15 It is forbidden in Islam to deny children their rights.

#17 It is forbidden in Islam to torture people.

#18 It is forbidden in Islam to disfigure the dead.

#19 It is forbidden in Islam to attribute evil acts to God.

#22 It is forbidden in Islam to declare a caliphate without consensus from all Muslims.60

The conclusion of the “Open Letter” includes this remarkable passage from Ali ibn Abi

Talib, the 4th Caliph (seventh century) and a companion of the Prophet Mohammed, which warns the faithful to be wary of future extremism, and then the “Open Letter” explicitly compares each point mentioned in this citation to ISIL or the “Islamic State”:

When you see the black flags, remain where you are and do not move your hands or your feet. Thereafter there shall appear a feeble insignificant folk. Their hearts will be like fragments of iron. They will have the state. They will fulfil neither covenant nor agreement. They will call to the truth, but they will not be people of the truth. Their names will be parental attributions, and their aliases will be derived from towns. Their hair will be free-flowing like that of women. This situation will remain until they differ among themselves. Thereafter, God will bring forth the Truth through whomever He wills.

Signatures are still being collected, but as of early October 2016, there were 126 signatories from throughout the world. Seventy-two, or 56% of the signatories, live in the Middle

East or North Africa, and there are many names from Egypt.61 This is immensely encouraging.

Although sometimes youth, whatever their religion or culture, ignore their elders, nevertheless, now the hard work must be carried out to ensure that young Muslims, throughout the world, are

60 Open Letter to Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi and to the fighters and followers of the self-declared http://lettertobaghdadi.com/14/english-v14.pdf 61 Here is the list of countries from which the 126 signatories come: Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Yemen, Malaysia, Portugal, Israel, the U.S.,Tunisia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Saudi Arabia, , the UAE, Morocco, Bulgaria, Sweden, Belgium, UK, Palestine, Nigeria, Germany, Gambia, Iraq, India, Sudan, , Canada, Iraq, Lebanon, Iceland, Kosovo, Pakistan, Mauritania, Syria, Uzbekistan, Netherlands, Argentina, and Chad.

36 aware of this repudiation of ISIL, and more importantly, understand clearly that what ISIL embodies, in fact, is a perversion of Islam.

According to Pew Research Center, population growth of Muslims is the highest of any religious group (a Muslim woman has on average 3.1 children compared to 2.3 per woman for all other groups combined), and the median age of Muslims at 23 is the lowest of any religious group (2010) – “seven years younger than the median age of non-Muslims.”62 In short, impacting the direction of global Islam absolutely depends on reaching the young. It will partially depend on all-out, credible engagement of all forms of social media by fellow Muslims. The hearts and minds of Muslims must be reached here.

Transforming public condemnations of Islamist ideology into concrete change will also require addressing:

• the content of school curriculum in schools in Muslim-majority settings,

• the texts of what is delivered in Friday sermons,

• the rescinding of blasphemy laws and all laws which reduce non-Muslims to second-

class citizens,

• the strengthening of families so that youth are less alienated, isolated, and vulnerable

to the propaganda of ISIL or other Islamist groups, and

• exposing members of ISIL and other terrorist groups as murderers, rapists,

pedophiles, and kidnappers, rather than as the heroes and martyrs they claim to be on

their way heaven.

62 “Muslims and Islam: Key Findings in the U.S. and Around the World,” July 22, 2016, Pew Research Center. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/22/muslims-and-islam-key- findings-in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world/

37 Obviously, it is faithful Muslims who uniquely and with credibility can address the perversions and misrepresentations of their own Faith. However, non-Muslims, religious and non-religious alike, have the obligation to lock arms with Muslims and all peoples of good will to support the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and particularly Article 18, which so eloquently defines and defends religious freedom. Non-Muslims also have the obligation to defend faithful

Muslims against those who would distort a proper understanding of their faith, whether the distortion comes from those who pass themselves off as Muslims or from those who are non-

Muslim.

Our collective responsibility is to create and nurture the political, societal, and spiritual conditions for pluralism and religious freedom to exist. This is not some sort of “pie in the sky,”

“wishy-washy, inter-faith dialogue,” where Christians and Muslims who no longer believe in their own traditions abandon the quest for truth; on the contrary, it centers on the challenge and necessity of agreeing on ground rules for the quest for truth which are both practical, and from the Christian, and from the Muslim standpoint as well, theologically warranted and mandated.

Mandated because Christians really believe, and hopefully Muslims can join us in this belief, that all human beings are created in the “image and likeness” of God, that we all have the right, indeed the duty to God, to seek truth but without compelling others to agree with our conclusions, for God created others free as well.

The terrain ideologically and politically which must be traversed and retaken is not easy, but the task is imperative to undertake, and we can succeed if we work together, and understand the importance of taking even small steps in the right direction.

Concluding Thoughts From a Christian Perspective

38 We have been engaged in this presentation in a frustratingly brief and incomplete journey through the history of Christianity in the Middle East and we have considered several ideas for what we collectively and individually might do to impact the situation to promote peace, and to secure a future in the Middle East for Christians and other religious communities. That positive future depends on living out the conviction that the good of all, majorities and small religious communities alike, is advanced when religious freedom and respect for all is secured by political, societal, and cultural constructs and beliefs which presume that human beings are indeed created in the “image and likeness” of God.

The point of this recital of history – some ancient, some relatively recent – has been three-fold.

First, it has served as a reminder that Christianity has always been in danger in the

Middle East, and elsewhere for that matter; it exists within the ebb and flow of history.

Second, it has served as a reminder that the sort of hostility which exists between an extreme and violent understanding of Islam and Christianity which plagues us today is not inevitable or typical of the relationship which has existed between Islam and Christianity in the past. This is tremendously important to understand as we look to the future, for if we lose hope in the possibility of Islam and Christianity co-existing in peace, we condemn the region, and the world, to military conflict. And that would be a tragedy, for one of the lessons of history is that the way things are is not the way they must be. That is good news when we want things to change. But there is a flip side, of course. The way things are, if we consider them good or relatively good, is not how they necessarily will remain. Keeping a good present, or escaping from a present which we find oppressive or frightening, requires historical awareness, spiritual

39 insight, courage, and discipline. We always live at such a crossroads in our personal and collective lives.63

But there is a third point to this look back at history in light of the present – something which serious Christians dare not forget. The Church always has and always will survive and be victorious over persecution. But being "victorious" does not always mean escaping death and suffering in the short-term. For believing Christians death is never the end, which is why the symbol of the cross or crucifix is so powerful, though we are all ever tempted to forget its meaning, as when Peter protested to Jesus when Jesus prophesized that painful things lay ahead for him. Peter's response is what ours so often is: "Surely not, Lord!" And then we must be reminded anew of what the Lord said on this occasion, a week before his arrest and crucifixion:

“The hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified. 24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 If any one serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there shall my servant be also; if any one serves me, the Father will honor him. (John 12:23-26)

We are astounded at the senseless cruelty and inhumanity which could cause the twenty- one Christians to suffer being beheaded on the shores of the Mediterranean in February 2015.

But even more astounding was a clarion witness to Christian faith in the midst of such horror.

Here is a report of what happened on that beach:

Some were seen making their last prayers. As the blade came to their neck they all cried in unison “Ya Rabbi Yasou’” or “O My Lord Jesus.” according to a video and Christian experts familiar with the situation.

63 These insights are consistent with those which lie at the core of Ignatian spirituality. That is, during times of "consolation," when all is going well, we are instructed to remember that the night will come when we will need to remember the joys and comforts of this "good" time; during times of "desolation," when all looks quite bleak, we are urged to remember that dawn will, after all, come again, and in the meantime, before the dawn, we are reminded to recall those times of "consolation."

40 The caption by Islamic State noted that “these insisted to remain in unbelief” and embrace Islam.

“In other words, they were given the option to convert or die and everyone of them refused, even unto death,” said terrorism expert and author Walid Shoebat, a Palestinian American and self-declared former terrorist who converted to Christianity from Islam.64

Bishoy Kamel and Samuel Kamel were two brothers who were among the twenty-one executed on that awful day on that Libyan beach. In an interview broadcast throughout the

Middle East the following week, their remaining brother Beshir not only forgave his brothers' executioners, but thanked the Islamic State for allowing his brother’s final professions of faith to be broadcast – Ya Rabbi Yasou (My Lord Jesus) can be heard in the video. Within hours,

100,000 people on Facebook had watched that clip of forgiveness.65

One cannot help but recall that despite Peter’s initial denial of Christ, he and all but one of the early disciples were martyred. And there are many other martyrs as well, including Bishop

Polycarp of Smyrna (Izmir in Turkey today) in 160 AD – a disciple of the Apostle John. An eye- witness account records that Polycarp serenely accepted his death:

“Swear,” urged the Proconsul, “reproach Christ, and I will set you free.” “86 years have I have served him,” Polycarp declared, “and he has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my King and my Savior?”

Indeed, in the New Testament, and in the chronicles of Christian history, there is a consistent theme not just of faithfulness in the face of persecution, but of joy in the face of the

64 “21 Egypt Christians Praised Christ Before Beheadings,” February 19, 2015, Religious Freedom Coalition http://www.religiousfreedomcoalition.org/2015/02/19/21-egypt-christians- praised-christ-before-beheadings/ 65 From a report following the conference: "Under Caesar's Sword: An International Conference on Christian Response to Persecution," held at the Pontifical Urban University, Rome, December 10-12, 2015. The John Templeton Foundation funded the University of Notre Dame and the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University to “introduce the results of the world’s first systematic global investigation into the responses of Christian communities to the violation of their religious freedom.” http://ucs.nd.edu/rome-conference/

41 worst that human beings can do; there is a serene awareness that the apparent death of Friday will inevitably lead to the resurrection of Sunday, and in the wake of such testimony, many have and will come to faith. Saul of Tarsus was present at, and likely an accomplice to, the stoning of

Stephen, and would later, himself, die for the faith he had at first sought to destroy. For a

Christian things are never as they seem, and this is all the more reason to study history and to remind ourselves what we as Christians believe.

As the Apostle Paul so beautifully put it:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For thy sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39) For Christians, there are profound spiritual implications to what we learn about the nature of persecution both from history and in our own day– how it impacts our Faith, and how we should respond in the face of it. I strongly recommend Mindy Belz’s fine book which came out earlier this year: They Say We Are Infidels: On the Run from ISIS with Persecuted Christians in the Middle East. Despite the horrors which the author faithfully reports, she also recounts courage and joyful witness to Christian truth, and she reminds us of the words of St. Augustine in Encheridon: “For God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.”66

66 Cited in Belz, p. 296. The Augustine passage is to be found in Chapter 8, paragraph 27 of Encheridon. A particularly moving example of positive Christian witness in Iraq is the story of the American Jeremiah Small, evangelical Protestant teacher of English in Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdish Regional Government, Iraq – one hundred miles from Erbil. From 2005 to 2012, Jeremiah dedicated himself to his students who much loved him, displaying a vibrant Christian faith. In the classroom, he was gunned down by an Islamic radical. Jeremiah’s father came to Iraq and received the apology of the killer’s father and offered the forgiveness of Jeremiah’s family in response. See Belz, pp. 185-95.

42 One of the martyrs in 2007 in Mosul was Father of the Church of the

Holy Spirit. Before his death, Father Ganni wrote:

We empathize with Christ, who entered Jerusalem in full knowledge that the consequence of His love for mankind was the cross. Thus, while bullets smashed our church windows, we offered our suffering as sign of love for Christ. This is war, real war, but we hope to carry our cross to the very end with the help of Divine Grace.67

Nicodemus Daoud Sharaf, the Syriac Archbishop of Mosul – one of the last to leave

Mosul before it was overrun by ISIL in June 2014 – has said: “They take everything from us, but they cannot take the God from our hearts – they cannot.”68

The head of the Chaldean Church in Syria, Bishop Antoine Audo of Aleppo, has borne eloquent witness to his deep faith as to what the continuing presence of Christians means in the

Middle East cauldron of violence and danger:

…this is the church of Mesopotamia now for two thousand years. The call is to continue with a presence to give a taste of faith to Kurdish and Arabic peoples, and others. So I am doing my duty as a witness – praying, attending to the Eucharist, showing the presence of the Lord, and serving him with joy.69

The head monk of Mar Matti, a fourth-century monastery just 12 miles from Mosul, has insisted that as long as there are Christians in Iraq, “a shepherd cannot leave his sheep.”70

And so while we are obligated to do all we can to provide refuge to all who are compelled to abandon their homes either as refugees or IDPs, to protect as best we can all those who remain, and to do the long, hard work of building over decades the conditions which promote tolerance and stability, we also have an obligation to bear witness to the faithfulness and joy of those who are persecuted, whose fidelity to the faith does not occasioned despair but, by

67 Cited in Belz, pp.161-62. 68 Cited in Belz, p. 220. 69 Cited in Belz, p. 165. 70 Cited in Belz, p. 266.

43 the grace of God, faithful witness. The words of C.S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain ring true here:

Martyrdom always remains the supreme enacting and perfecting of Christianity. This great action has been initiated for us, done on our behalf, exemplified for our imitation, and inconceivably communicated to all believers by Christ on Calvary.71

The inevitably of the daily cross, the witness of history that persecution can occasion subsequent growth of the church, of course, is not a warrant for us to disband religious freedom organizations or groups which seek to help Christians and others in distress. On the contrary,

Scripture requires of us precisely that we organize and sacrifice to help:

Proverbs could not be more clear:

Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, “Behold, we did not know this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? (Proverbs 24:12)

The Apostle Paul is unequivocal as well as to our responsibilities to act:

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. (Galatians 6:9-10)

If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. (1 Corinthians 12:26) William Dalrymple’s concluded his often sober journey through the Middle East twenty years ago with this ominous sentence: “Darkness was drawing in, and behind me at the top of the hill a chill wind was howling through the tombs.”72 And surely, there have been times when we have all been tempted to despair, and yet, history and our faith teach us that despair and hopelessness are not Christian virtues. Dry bones do live again. The cross is a reminder that what

71 C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1962), p. 102. 72 Dalrymple, p. 454.

44 seems to be the end may well be a necessary path to Resurrection Sunday, and in the end we are simply called to be faithful, not to “win” in the short term.

I believe Christianity will survive, and God willing, Christianity will one day thrive again in the Middle East.

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