Author: By Robert Fisk
Publication: The Independent
Date: May 6, 2001
The road to Damascus may have been
the highlight of the Pope's latest pilgrimage to the Middle East yesterday,
but the so-called "Holy Land" is ever less Christian as the region's dwindling
number of followers of Jesus Christ stage a mass exodus to the West. Religious
scholars estimate that up to 10 million Christians have abandoned their
homes in the largely Muslim world of the Middle East over the past 15 years,
leaving at best 15 million Christians in the lands from which
their faith sprang.
In a speech that appeared to favour
the Arabs and is bound to anger the Israelis, the Pope said it was time
to ban "the acquisition of territory by force" and supported "respect for
the resolutions of the UN and the Geneva Conventions". But however much
the Catholic Church trumpets the Pope's visit to the Omayad mosque and
the resting place of John the Baptist, nothing can obscure the decision
of the Christian population to head for a new economic life in America,
Australia and northern Europe.
Iraq's 6 per cent Christian minority
has dwindled to 2.5 per cent since the 1991 Gulf War, Egypt's 12 per cent
Copts have fallen to 8 per cent in perhaps five years and Jordan's Christian
community has halved in a decade and a half; a tragedy of unprecedented
proportions for Christian leaders who remain in the Middle East.
As general secretary of the Middle
East Council of Churches in Beirut, Dr Riad Jarjour has repeatedly warned
Christian denominations of falling numbers in the region. "Christians should
stay in the land where Christ was born," he says. "Their main reason for
going is economic but I don't believe many of them are leaving for
better homes. Their departure is a tragedy for us." Christian communities
believe the Muslim population of the Middle East now numbers 125 million.
In a world where many Christians
subconsciously believe their religion is "Western" rather than Eastern
American clichés about the "Christian West" and the "Muslim
East" have seen to that the ghosts of past horrors have always reappeared
to haunt relations between Muslims and Christians. Pope Urban II's bloody
Crusade ended in Jerusalem in 1099 as European knights rode their horses
through literal rivers of Muslim and Jewish blood.
Turkey's genocide of its Armenian
community in 1915 left the bones of one and a half million Christians across
Anatolia and what is now northern Syria. Although Armenians still demand
recognition of their Holocaust, Catholics prefer to exercise discretion
over their 88-year-old tenure of the "Holy Land" which ended when Salahadin
al-Ayubi whose magnificent tomb lies in the Omayad mosque to be visited
by the Pope defeated the Crusaders in what is now the occupied West
Bank.
But Dr Jarjour insists somewhat
defensively that the present-day Christian exodus is primarily economic.
"I wouldn't say at all that there is a religious factor except in some
cases like Turkey where Christians have been a little pressured recently,"
Dr Jarjour says. "The participation of Christians in public life, in civil
society, in government positions, gives them a greater sense of security
to stay and not to leave. In the last few years, we have, it's true, been
witnessing some alienation of Christians in certain populations this
makes the younger Christian generation concerned about their future."
Dr Jarjour, a Protestant, is too
discreet to say that Egypt is strongly criticised for alienating its Coptic
population. At least one former senior interior ministry official in Cairo
has told The Independent on Sunday that Muslims control the department
which gives and frequently withholds consent for the building
of churches. In Saudi Arabia, the mere holding of Christian prayers in
a private house can lead to brutal punishment and deportation a fact
equally discreetly overlooked by the kingdom's friends in the US
although Kuwait has a noble record of protecting and encouraging its small
Christian community.
Gulf War sanctions are regarded
as the primary cause of Iraq's Christian exodus while the latest Palestinian-Israeli
conflict is prompting Catholic and Greek Orthodox families to leave. The
homes of dozens of Christians at Beit Jalla in the occupied West Bank have
been shelled by Israeli tanks after Palestinian gunmen have fired into
Jewish homes built on confiscated Arab land at Gilo.
A 1993 study conducted by Bernard
Sabella on the causes of their exodus from the Middle East concluded that
the rate of Christian emigration was twice that of the general population;
but the same study noted that of 750,000 Palestinians exiled from their
homes by the Israelis in 1948, between 50,000 and 60,000 were Christians
who went on to America and Australia. The Lebanese civil war in which
Muslim Palestinians fought against the Christian Maronites provoked
another Christian exodus, perhaps as many as 250,000, towards the West.
Most have not returned.
