The Risks of Regime Change for Middle Eastern Christians

The Risks of Regime Change
Middle Eastern Christians might end up more repressed under democracy than under dictators.
by Derek Hoffmann | Christianity Today Magazine

Recent U.S. Iraq policy has moved from toppling a genocidal autocrat to seeking to create a pluralist, prosperous Arab democracy and inducing neighboring regimes to replicate it. The mainstream media discuss what this might mean for the region at large, but what about for Christians in the Middle East? What does this policy portend for them? If one were to perform a risk analysis for churches as one does for corporations—something I do for a living—what would be the inherent risks for churches, particularly evangelical churches, in the Middle East at this time?

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/004/13.84.html

(just like walking down the street in Western Japan and realizing you are the only Caucasian there - and everybody is staring at you). And, those countries are particularly tolerant of religious diversity. They are not the US - or even France.

Copts in Egypt, Xians in Iraq, those accused of blasphemy in Pakistan. Palestine's Xian population's shrunk--even Bethlehem has lost half or more of its Xian population in the last couple of decades.

Granted, Jordan a few years back finally allowed a school to open--or announced they would, a rather different proposition--to train Xian ministers. That would make it unique in the Arab world, I think. I read this when I was living in LA, so that was 1999 or before.

Theoretical Islam may be tolerant, as long as the Xians know their place in the proper order of things. This is unlike theoretical Xianity, where there is no proper order of things that Xians expect to live in. Like Xianity, Islam on the ground ranges from tolerant to massively intolerant.

Iraqi Xians are going to have it rougher. Much rougher.

Christians have lived peacefully in Muslim countries for centuries. But current politics make their positions more difficult.

The most recent crop of US "missionaries" hasn't helped much.

you may want to check out the "Sykes-Picot Agreement" between England and France which created Lebanon. Typical British "Balance of Power" and "We have no friends- Only Interests" politics.

There is a particularly good discussion of the agreement in A Century Of War : Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order by F. William Engdahl, although any good, lengthly, boring, footnoted academic study of the "diplomacy" of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire will have an in-depth discussion of the Sykes-Picot Agreement.

The world has changed a lot since Menocal's The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain.

Just as a recent Arab News editorial tried to make it sound like Islam really disapproved of slavery and drove it out of existence fairly quickly, so the amount of tolerance directed towards people of the book tends to be a bit overstated.

Sometimes Xians have lived well in Muslims countries; sometimes so-so, just mildly oppressed; and sometimes they were on the receiving end of pogroms. Typically the former, although there have almost always been communal restrictions written into the law, and it's just that the law wasn't enforced. But it was more frequently enforced when Xians were too prosperous, too uppity, or violated some obscure aspect of Shari'a and the local imams got their nappies knotted. Xians have sometimes bought into the "things were always great" myth, even reinterpreting the lowering of church doors from being compulsory to being voluntary, and meaning not humiliation, but humility.

Just a few days ago there was another spontaneous outpouring of tolerance in Pakistan, when after Asr prayers an imam led his congregation to attack Xians in a church as they were praying. Seems they had built a church in a primarily Xian village, and 100 meters wasn't quite far enough from the mosque; it's noted that none of the families there objected (because, had they objected the church could not have been built). Such violence is certainly not the norm, but it happens, and should be neither overstated nor whitewashed.

Should have been

"Christians are minorities in Muslim Countries
(just like walking down the street in Western Japan and realizing you are the only Caucasian there - and everybody is staring at you). And, those countries are NOT particularly tolerant of religious diversity. They are not the US - or even France.

The "NOT" got left out.