Showing posts with label Eqypt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eqypt. Show all posts

Friday, August 16, 2013

Mideast Christians: an Endangered Species in their Ancestral Land

Mideast Christians: an Endangered Species in their Ancestral Land

Thursday, August 15, 2013 |  Noah Beck  Israel Today 
Egypt’s Christians are being targeted and scapegoated for the ousting of the Muslim Brotherhood. An Egyptian human rights activist tweeted that the Virgin Mary in Minya, one of the oldest churches in Egypt, built in the 4th century, was destroyed by fire yesterday. There have also been media reports about attacks on churches in the city of Suez and other villages. Jason Isaacson, Director of Government and International Affairs for the American Jewish Committee condemned these acts: "Organized violence against Egypt's Copts, the murder of innocents and destruction of churches, is outrageous and unforgivable."
As defenseless and abandoned as Mideast Christians seem today, it is worth remembering their historical roots, and recognizing just how much the plight of Middle East Christians has deteriorated. Over 2,000 years ago, Christianity was born as a religion and spread from Jerusalem to other parts of the Levant, including territories in modern Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt. The Christian faith flourished as one of the major religions in the Middle East until the Muslim conquests of the 7th century.
Despite Muslim domination of the region, Christians comprised an estimated 20% of the Middle East population until the early 20th century. Today, however, Christians make up a mere 2-5% of the Middle East and their numbers are fast dwindling. Writing in the Winter 2001 issue of Middle East Quarterly, scholar Daniel Pipes estimated that Middle East Christians would "likely drop to" half of their numbers "by the year 2020" because of declining birth rates, and a pattern of "exclusion and persecution" leading to emigration.
The "Arab Spring" has only worsened conditions for the indigenous Christians of the Middle East. Like the Kurds, Middle East Christians are a stateless minority, struggling to survive in the world's toughest neighborhood. But the Kurds at least have enjoyed partial autonomy in Iraqi Kurdistan since 1991 and most of them are Sunni Muslim, making it easier for them to survive in the Muslim-dominated Middle East. Christians, on the other hand, are a religious minority that controls no territory and is entirely subject to the whims of their hosts. These host countries – with the exception of Israel – offer a grim future to Middle East Christians.
Home to one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, Egypt also has the largest Christian population in the Middle East, totaling 8-12 million people. But because Christian Copts make up only about 10-15% of Egypt's estimated 80 million people, they have for decades lived in fear as second-class citizens, subjected to attacks on churches, villages, homes, and shops; mob killings; and the abduction and forced Islamic conversion of Christian women compelled to marry Muslim men. Such abuse took place under the staunchly secular regime of Hosni Mubarak, but grew much worse under the rule of Mohammed Morsi, the jailed Muslim Brotherhood activist who succeeded Mubarak, and they are now being blamed for Morsi's ouster.
In Lebanon, Christians represent a bigger portion of the population, so their fate is for now less precarious than that of their Egyptian coreligionists, but their long-term prospects are worrisome. The Christian population is estimated to have dropped from over 50% (according to a 1932 census) to about 40%. Over the last few years, the de facto governing power in Lebanon has become Hezbollah, the radical and heavily-armed Shiite movement sponsored by Iran. With all of the spillover violence and instability produced by the Syrian civil war and Hezbollah's open involvement in it, and/or the next war that Hezbollah decides to start with Israel, the emigration of Christians out of Lebanon will probably only increase in the coming years, leaving those who stay increasingly vulnerable.
In Syria, 2.5 million Christians comprised about 10% of the population and enjoyed some protection under the secular and often brutal regimes of the Assad dynasty. But as jihadi groups fighting Assad extend their territorial control, the past protection of Christians is often the cause of their current persecution by resentful Sunnis who revile the Assad regime and seek to impose Sharia law wherever they can. Christians have been regularly targeted and killed by rebels, and the sectarian chaos and violence that will likely prevail in Assad's wake will only increase the number of Christians fleeing Syria.
In Iraq, the bloody aftermath of the 2003 invasion demonstrated how dangerous life can become for a Christian minority when a multicultural society in the Middle East explodes into sectarian violence. By 2008, half of the 800,000 Iraqi Christians were estimated to have left, rendering those remaining even more insecure. In 2010, Salafist extremists attacked a Baghdad church during Sunday Mass, killing or wounding nearly the whole congregation. Such incidents turn any communal gathering into a potential massacre, forcing Christians across the Middle East to ask the ultimate question of faith: "Am I prepared to die for Christian worship?"
The so-called "Arab Spring" threatens to exacerbate matters in much of the Middle East, as Islamists now either control the government or influence it enough to persecute Christians with impunity. As new Islamist regimes in the Middle East condone religious intolerance and introduce Sharia and blasphemy laws, the long-term trend for Christians in their ancestral lands will only grow bleaker.
The one bright spot is the state of Israel – "the only place in the Middle East [where] Christians are really safe," according to the Vicar of St George's Church in Baghdad, Canon Andrew White. Home to Christianity's holiest sites and to a colorful array of Christian denominations, Israel has the only growing Christian community in the Middle East.
Because Israel is the only non-Muslim state in all of the Middle East and North Africa, it represents a small victory for religious minorities in the region, and serves as the last protector of freedom and security for Jews, Christians, Bahai, Druze, and others. Without Israel, how much more vulnerable would Christians in the Middle East become?
Noah Beck is the author of The Last Israelis, an apocalyptic novel about Iranian nukes and an Israeli submarine with a diverse crew, including a Christian Israeli.

Monday, March 25, 2013

Israelis tell Israel Today what Passover means to them

Israelis tell Israel Today what Passover means to them

Monday, March 25, 2013 |  Israel Today Staff  
 
 
 
Around the world Jews, and not a few Christians, are preparing to celebrate the biblical festival of Pessach (Passover), the chief of the appointed times given by God to the nation of Israel.

Israel Today went out on the streets of Jerusalem to ask local residents what it means to them to be once again celebrating Passover as a free and sovereign nation restored to its biblical homeland.

Yossi Krisp: “It means liberty, it means freedom, it means family.”

Gal Yerushalmi: “It’s so important to celebrate this here in Israel. We are Jewish and this is our country, and we’re happy for this freedom.”

Beyla Potash: “Passover is the beginning of a nation.”

Yeshurun Luz: Passover means "liberation from the other nations, from being under the rule of other nations, and as a personal liberation from whatever holds me. It has been and it will be one of the most kept holidays of the Jewish people.”

Moshe: “It means remembering the miracles we had when we were slaves in Egypt.”

Israel Levin: “It doesn’t only represent something that happened a few thousand years ago; it represents something that is able to happen to us all the time. In every generation our enemy tries to destroy us and God saves us. But it's not only about national security, it’s also something that relates to each and every person; that there’s power for a person who yearns for freedom from his own personal things that hold them back.”

Moshe Frank: “No pizza… and no bagles!”

Adam Segal: “It’s a holiday of thanking God for our freedoms; spiritual freedom, physical freedom, freedom to develop as people, and freedom from oppression. One of the most important things according to Torah (Bible), is you’re supposed to teach your children that God is the one who took us out from the land of Egypt. And that develops an appreciation from generation to generation to connect with God and connect to the Jewish people, and to be eternally grateful for where we are and where God brought us."

Yisrael Dalayahu: “It means two things; we remember our ancestors who were delivered from Egypt, and we are waiting again to be delivered from all our problems and all our neighbors and the war to come.”

Sarah Goldman: “It represents for me the deep, strong love that God has for His people. That even when we were at the worst spiritual level that one could possibly be in, God came and took us out of Egypt. Not through the back door, but in front of everybody. It shows that He loves us and He cares for us. And even when all seems to fail, God always comes through.”

http://www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/tabid/178/nid/23757/Default.aspx?hp=article_title