Fitzgerald: The phenomenon of the "islamochristian"

How bout the Zogby brothers. Both Erudite, well spoken. After listening to the non-pollester blather on, I assumed he was Islamic, but Zogby didn't sound so. I read recently he was "Maronite descent" . . . like Miss Daisy was of 'german extraction.' I've never heard him say an encouraging word about Israel, but never fails to jump to the defence of the Arab point of view(no matter what the issue).

http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?sortBy=1&threadID=282&edition=1&ttl=20051227193700&#paginator

This is a BBC Have your Say asking "Are you a Christian living in the Middle East? How does your faith affect your way of life and that of your family and friends? Send us your comments and experiences."

Some assure the reader that everything about living among Muslim Arabs is hunky dory, for Christian, Jew and Muslim alike, but the most highly recommended comments speak movingly of persecution and fear.

woke at 3 a.m. this morning..flipped on the telly
to a PBS station..show came on:"Three Religions,One God",,some muslim cleric launches into how well the Jews cooperated with the muslims in the Iberian peninsula ..how the Jews spoke arabic and how the muslims brought philosophy to the Jews(who had none)..Aristotle etc...one big happy family..
..the title shot showed the upward step-wise 'evolution' to islam;


sorry,,allah is no god of mine!

Hugh,
there are historical reports of Arab tribes that settled in the conquered countries not only around the time of conquest but in a process that continued for centuries. Tribes that settled in Israel included the Jarrah and the Judham, and others, kindly confiscating estates and urban houses from Jews and Christians.
There was a mass migration of the Arab Beni Hilal tribe across North Africa from Egypt to Algeria, destroying remnants of civilization on their way. The numbers reported for the Beni Hilal migration and a parallel migration of another tribe [maybe Beni Sulaym? - I forget the name] go up to one million. This was several hundred years after Muhammad. Ibn Khaldun by the way, is pretty frank about the destruction wrought by these migrating nomads. His comments can be found even in the Charles Issawi digest of Ibn Khaldun, called "An Arab Philosophy of History"

Hmmm. I met a M.D., an Egyptian Copt living in the United States, that meets the characteristics as described in this article. Although a naturalized American, he's an Arab first. We all know what that means...

I realize it is a minor part of your otherwise excellent essay. But I have a hard time believing that Maronite Christians are descended from the Phonecians. My history for that epoch is a litte shaky, but were the Phoenicians even around in the 7th cent Levant at the time of the Muslim conquest? Was Punic spoken there? Did the Phoenicians survive hundreds of years of Hellenization and absorption from the wider Aramaic and Greek speaking peoples? Moreover, there were already large groups of Christian Arabs deep within Syria and according to some historians even in the Bekaa valley. The Byzantines and Persians both had Arab confederates fighting for them on the marches, they as you know were the Ghassanids and Lahkamides both were Christian and both had dozens of smaller Christian Arab tribes as allies. Its among the former where I believe we might find the true origins of the Maronites.

About the Phoenicians -- what happened to them? Did they disappear? If they did not disappear, they remained (those that had not travelled as far as Carthage, even as far as Cadiz, olim Gades), most of them, sea-faring people based in what is present-day Lebanon. So what happened to them? What became of them? Something had to have happened. Why should it not have been they, the original inhabitants of the area, whose descendants living in the same area accepted Christianity in the 6th century, and were the original Maronites whose descendants -- those who did not over the centuries convert to Islam as a way of escaping an otherwise often intolerable fate -- are alive today.

It is far crazier to make those people believe that just because they speak Arabic they are "Arabs" (as crazy as if people in The Deccan or in Bechuanaland or in Hong Kong, having learned English and taken to using it, were forced to think of themselves as "Englishmen").

If the Phoenicians did not die out, but remained where they had lived, and though they were a sea-faring people, most of them must have remained where they came from -- Phoenicia (I still remember when we were all taught, in those antediluvian schooldays, about the Phoenicians and their alphabet, and the rich purples of Sidon and of Tyre), then it makes sense to call the Maronites the likely descendants of Phoenicians.

Many of them have been bullied into ignoring that lineage, made to feel embarrassed about it by the circumambient Arabs. In the same way, many Israelis, and others who know better, hesitate to forthrightly use the toponyms "Judea" and "Samaria" (as if it is illegitimate to use the placenames that were used in the Western world for 2000 years, and that were good enough for, inter alia, Jesus and the Disciples), and find themselves employing that ridiculous term (ridiculous historically, ridiculous geographically) "the West Bank."

I think the Maronites were descended from those who descended from the Phoenicians. I am prepared to learn otherwise. But I am not prepared to be satisfied with the idea that the "Phoenicians just died out." When I say that the Maronites were descended (or in the main descended) from Phoenicians, I don't mean the very Phoenicians, but of people who had changed, over time, but who were descended, further back, from the Phoenicians we learn about in school.

I am perfectly willing to believe that those Phoenicians went through various metamorphoses, including hellenization, prior to accepting Christianity, and that later on the Maronites in the area, over many centuries, also welcomed in their midst other Christians, speaking Aramaic or other tongues, who found refuge, as Maronites did in the mountains of the Lebanon, and some of these may have converted to Maronite Christianity.

But when I hear Muslim Arabs mocking Lebanese Maronite claims to be descended from the Phoenicians I always wonder -- what are they mocking? Why is this considered so preposterous by them? And why do the rest of us so readily concede the point -- which not only should not be conceded, but I think the Muslim mockery should be turned back on those who in the last fifty years have managed to force the world to believe that the Middle East and North Africa is that preposterously ill-named construct, the "Arab World."

No it isn't.

About the Phoenicians -- what happened to them? Did they disappear? If they did not disappear, they remained (those that had not travelled as far as Carthage, even as far as Cadiz, olim Gades), most of them, sea-faring people based in what is present-day Lebanon. So what happened to them? What became of them? Something had to have happened. Why should it not have been they, the original inhabitants of the area, whose descendants living in the same area accepted Christianity in the 6th century, and were the original Maronites whose descendants -- those who did not over the centuries convert to Islam as a way of escaping an otherwise often intolerable fate -- are alive today.

It is far crazier to make those people believe that just because they speak Arabic they are "Arabs" (as crazy as if people in The Deccan or in Bechuanaland or in Hong Kong, having learned English and taken to using it, were forced to think of themselves as "Englishmen").

If the Phoenicians did not die out, but remained where they had lived, and though they were a sea-faring people, most of them must have remained where they came from -- Phoenicia (I still remember when we were all taught, in those antediluvian schooldays, about the Phoenicians and their alphabet, and the rich purples of Sidon and of Tyre), then it makes sense to call the Maronites the likely descendants of Phoenicians.

Many of them have been bullied into ignoring that lineage, made to feel embarrassed about it by the circumambient Arabs. In the same way, many Israelis, and others who know better, hesitate to forthrightly use the toponyms "Judea" and "Samaria" (as if it is illegitimate to use the placenames that were used in the Western world for 2000 years, and that were good enough for, inter alia, Jesus and the Disciples), and find themselves employing that ridiculous term (ridiculous historically, ridiculous geographically) "the West Bank."

I think the Maronites were descended from those who descended from the Phoenicians. I am prepared to learn otherwise. But I am not prepared to be satisfied with the idea that the "Phoenicians just died out." When I say that the Maronites were descended (or in the main descended) from Phoenicians, I don't mean the very Phoenicians, but of people who had changed, over time, but who were descended, further back, from the Phoenicians we learn about in school.

I am perfectly willing to believe that those Phoenicians went through various metamorphoses, including hellenization, prior to accepting Christianity, and that later on the Maronites in the area, over many centuries, also welcomed in their midst other Christians, speaking Aramaic or other tongues, who found refuge, as Maronites did in the mountains of the Lebanon, and some of these may have converted to Maronite Christianity.

But when I hear Muslim Arabs mocking Lebanese Maronite claims to be descended from the Phoenicians I always wonder -- what are they mocking? Why is this considered so preposterous by them? And why do the rest of us so readily concede the point -- which not only should not be conceded, but I think the Muslim mockery should be turned back on those who in the last fifty years have managed to force the world to believe that the Middle East and North Africa is that preposterously ill-named construct, the "Arab World."

No it isn't.

It is easy to Christicise the "Islamochristians", but the fact is:
What have the Western Christians done for their brethren who suffer as minorities in overwhelmingly Muslim countries?

What happened to Lebanon, where Christians once were the majority, but now are a minority (and their state a mockery, a puppet of Syria), could happen to Israel tomorrow.

As soon as Israel is as deprived from help of its lobbies as the Christians were, Israel will fall owing to the sheer force of islamic pressure.

The Christian minorities in Islamic countries are the most helpless people in the world because the West has chosen to look the other way and worship their enemies for the oil they produce.

That God would bless the world with an alternate source of energy than oil, one that would free us all from the black death.

Let allah™ provide for his people when the worlds wealth no longer flows into the hands of thugs and dictators, let the prophet™ command the deserts to bloom and the rocks to flow with clear springs.

Im tired of having to endure the trumped-up concoction of superstitions and deceit which is islam™, merely because the world was cursed by having its main energy source located under the feet of muslim savages.

Wherever Islam goes, misery, mayhem and failed societies follow.

If the Arab lands had remained Christian, instead of being taken over by muslim butchers, today they (the Arab lands) would be the greatest, most accomplished, most peaceful societies on earth.

moderationist,

"If the Arab lands had remained Christian, instead of being taken over by muslim butchers, today they (the Arab lands) would be the greatest, most accomplished, most peaceful societies on earth."

Amen to that. Around the time Muhammad was having his visions in a cave, Christianity was making deep inroads into Arabia. There were Orthodox and Nestorian communities as far as Yeman, Bharain, Oman.(There was even a Nestorian community in Khandahar, future stronghold of the Taliban) I know we shouldn't dwell on the "what if's" But I can't help wondering how things could have turned out if someone had just quietly dispatched Muhammad.

Hugh,

Along with the majority of the Arabs originally being Christian, I had also heard from a colleague that there was an Arab Buddhist minority in the Palestine region, as well as Syria and other Arab countries at one time. Is this true?

I know that Buddhism was in Iran, Iraq and also made its way up to Turkey as well as Greece, but in Greece it was absorbed by Christianity, while in Turkey, Iraq and Iran it was wiped out by the Swords of Islam.

-Cheers
-Ayo Gorkhali

The Middle East is the cradle of Civilization and the homeland of ancient people who are industrious and love learning: The Copts, the Canaanites, the Babylonians, the Jews, generations of Greek expatriates living in the Hellenized centers in the region, etc. Such groups provided the West with the foundations of science, culture, philosophy, medicine and theology. In centers such as Alexandria, the work of the ancient Greeks and other near Easter cultures was collated and improved upon to the benefit of all mankind.

That fact that such peoples and races of genius living in an intellectually fertile land have fallen under the sword of the desert Bedouins and the darkness they brought to the World must be one of the worst disasters in world history. Imagine if all these near Eastern Centers remained under the influence of Hellenism, Christianity and Judaism what would be the state of mankind in both intellectual and scientific terms.

The Muslims have attacked, conquered, ruined, or locked in race for survival the entire ancient centers of learning for all of mankind, retarding the advance of humanity.

Imagine if Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia Persia, Greece, India were not devoured by Islam, or in the case of China, stressed by it, what would the state of the world be with all these magnificent civilizations working for the betterment of Mankind.

"the majority of the Arabs originally being Christian..."
-- from a posting above

No, the Arabs of Arabia, the Arab peninsula, Al-Jazirat, were pagans. The Arabs who had settled within Mesopotamia and what is now Jordan and southern Syria, and who needed a belief-system to justify, and promote, their own aggression, may have been a mixture. But the word "Arab" needs defining. Should the word be applied, as many "Arabs" have always wished it to be applied, to all those who are islamized and who use Arabic as their main language? What about those who use Arabic because it has become the language of the rulers -- did those English who had to use Norman French if they wished to rise high after 1066 (and, bien entendu, all that) cease to be English because they might comprehend such a phrase from the law cases as "Le utility del chose excusera le noisomeness del stink"? (A phrase expressing the justification for some nuisances, such as the local abattoir).

I would not presume to say what proportion of those Arabs, already living in Mesopotamia, Syria, etc. (and of course not riding out of the Arabian desert, sword in one hand, Qur'an in the other), had accepted some form of Christianity. Clearly whoever composed the Qur'an, and from the Qur'an teased out the Hadith and the Sira (unless you wish to accept the Received Muslim View of Events, and I suspect you don't), knew something about both Christianity and Judaism, and later on there may be detected admixtures of Zoroastrianism. Untangling all of this is something that Patricia Crone, Michael Cook (in his less guarded moments), Hawting, and many others (just check the collections of Ibn Warraq: "What the Koran Really Says" and "The Origins of the Koran" and "In Quest of the Historical Muhammad" and the forthcoming "Which Koran?" for examples of modern scholarship, by non-Muslims. For that is the only kind, alas, that can be trusted not to be full of apologetics.

My point about the Maronites is not that they were Arab Christians who stayed Christians, but they were Christians who ultimately had to accept the use of Arabic, and many took Arab names (though the number of "Giselles" and "Brigittes" and "Emiles" and "Charles" shows how eager they were, when protected by the French, to have certified French, Frank, Frangish first names, whatever last name had over the centuries been imposed by the forces of islamization (resisted) and arabization (not resisted quite enough).

Fred M. Donner's "The Early Islamic Conquests" is a good study on how far Christianity had penetrated among the Arabs of Syria, Arabia and Mesopotamia. I also believe that most of these Christian Arabs were quite faithful to their religion which vexed some of the earlier Muslims, for instance at the battle of Yarmuk almost one third of the Byzantine order of battle were Ghassanide Arabs under their king Jabalah, and most military historians now argue they didn't go over to the side of the Muslims during that clash.
Many of them eventually retreated into Anatolia along with the last Bzyantine units. A descendant of Jabalah's reputedly became a future Byzantine Emperor.

I believe even if there had not been an Islamic conquest, these war-like Christian tribes would have eventually dominated Syria and Mesopotamia. But of course that would have been far more preferable than how events actually unfolded.

Some more general observations from Lebanese Christians
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4504566.stm

have_mercy, that was a beautiful post. And yes, it is a shame what happened to the industrious Middle East.

Does Fred Donner, in his discussion of the Christian Arabs of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Arabia, define "Arabs" as those who came, or are recent descendants of those who arrived, from the Arabian Peninsula? And does he follow Muslim sources on seventh-century Arabia, or does he, in the manner of Wansbrough, Crone, Cook, and all the most significant Western students of that period, refuse to follow the Received Muslim Narrative? If he does not refuse, then he is most likely, for example, to assume both that Mecca existed and was on a major trade route (see Cook) and that the historical Muhammad existed, and that things happened more or less along the lines of the story that the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira supply. If he is not content with the Muslim narrative (just as German and English scholars in the 19th century decided in their studies of Christianity and Judaism not to accept the Received Narratives of the True Believers), then he may consider that the obvious bits and pieces of Christianity that were reworked for Islam came from Christians not in Arabia, but further north, in present-day Syria, Jordan, or Iraq. Once one simply abandons the felt need to follow the guidelines of the Faith, useful scholarship becomes possible.

Fred Donner begins his study at the time of Muhammad's death. He argues why the Muslim Arabs poured out of the Arabian pennisula at the time, and puts paid to the argument that it was population pressures and lack of resources. If memory serves, it has been years since I read the book, I believe he argued the Muslims coveting loot was the overiding factor in their conquest of the fertile cresent.

Wife is calling me for dinner, I'll continue later.

"why the Muslim Arabs poured out of the Arabian pennisula..."
-- from a posting above

It sounds, if your memory is accurate, that Donner accepts the schoolboy version of history. That Arabs had been filtering out of Arabia, into present-day Mesopotamia and southern Syria, and Jordan, for a long time, and settling in their own areas, in the midst of far larger, more advanced, more prosperous communities of Christians and Jews, rather than suddenly emerge from the desert (and again, there is no proof of the existence of Mecca in the seventh century, and no proof of the existence of Muhammad independent of the religious texts) with Qur'an and sword in hand. Donner does not strike me as someone who would, in the fashion of Wansbrough (or for that matter Ignaz Goldziher) simply refuse to accept the Muslim Narrative, and study things on his own, gathering and weighing all the evidence. It's beyond him.

No wonder he has declared himself mightily impressed with the "scholarship" of Rashid Khalidi. What can one expect of someone who works, or thinks, at that level?

Gorkhali,

The Buddhist culture made it as far West as Seistan in Eastern limits of the Persian region and Kalmykia (or Kalmukya), now in Russia, at the Northern shores of the Caspian sea.

Buddhism may have influenced cultures beyond those limits, because monks did travel spreading the Dharma. But I don't know of established ethnic groups or kingdoms further West.

If you find out something more about Budhist in Palestine, please let me know, I am also very interested.

Gorkhali, I am a Christian, but I admire the seriousness of Buddhism. Arun Shourie, in his book the "World of Fatwas", compares the imbecility of Muslim fiqh rules (like ...how far can one introduce the finger in the anus without losing the Ramzan fast..) with the lofty moral preoccupations of Buddhist thought in identifying desire with the cause of suffering...

Two worlds apart!

Interesting food for thoughts on provocative opinions above. Many arabic and berber jews in north africa adopted "sephardic" spanish and portagese names like Rodriguez ect. I've read that they wanted to adopt the 'high euro culture' of the Sephardic from Spain, but I wonder if also is like the French names that the Marionites took on so quickly.

Its interesting and sad that most well-read people have heard of the last sigh of the Moor in reference to Boabdil the last king of the Moors in Spain. After his capitulation legend says that he looked for the last time on Granada and sobbed for the fall of his kingdom. "When were woes ever equal to mine."
His mother is said to have mocked him, saying "Weep as a woman for what you couldn't defend as a man."(horrible woman)

I can sympathise with this man, even though I am quite happy with the results of the reconquest. every culture(well most) can relate to someone who has lost his/her homeland. The story is as old as history.

The same thing happened in Syria eight centuries before, just after the Muslim occupation. After the Christian defeat at Yarmuk, Jabala the Ghassanid king, could not accept the new order. In 638, with a large number of followers and thier families he crossed the frontier into Byzantine held Anatolia. He was never to forget his sunnier homeland and , as an educated Arab, inevitably put his feelings to verse:

"Oh would that my mother no son ever bore
Nor my name had in history found place.
How I yearn for the land of my fathers of yor,
Damascus, the home of my race."

Why do we remember the former and not the latter?

biorabbi,

I guess it was the influence of the Jesuits and French education why many Maronite Catholics adopted French first names. Another intersting tidbid of useless information is the theory that a few of the Maronites are of Frankish origin. For instance the Maronite name "Franjia" means Frank in Arabic.

One wonders why these last names were adopted, were they Franks who stayed on and found refuge in the Mount Lebanon region, after the Muslim destruction of the last Crusader state? Or was it the result of Arab Christian solders(turkopoles) in the service of the Crusaders who changed their names.

I have an old issue of Time where a West Bank Palestinian claims that his tribe is descended from Crusaders. Its interesting stuff.