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There is a sliding scale among the various Christian groups in the Islamic world: a scale of fear (and absence of fear) that depends on such things as both absolute numbers, and numbers relative to Muslims who live in the same country, or who live in the same neighborhood, and on the ability of outside non-Muslim powers to bring pressure to bear.
This last was more important once. Its effects can be seen in the efforts to force the Ottoman government to treat non-Muslims better, even to treat them nearly as equal to Muslims -- and this was hard to do, for at the local level Muslims were unwilling to obey. And France, for a long while, was the protector of Maronites in Lebanon. In 1871, the French National Assembly simply passed the loi Crevier that conferred on Jews in Algeria the legal status of Frenchmen, and thus no longer to be treated, according to the Shari'a, as dhimmis. While Lord Cromer and his administration were in Egypt -- see "Memoirs of an Egyptian Official" by Lord Edward Cecil -- the status of non-Muslims improved dramatically. That improvement continued under the regime of Farouk until Nasser and his fellow colonels (Naguib, et al.) arrived on the scene to see Egyptian, Arab, Muslim (they all blended, they all overlapped) justice done.
On that sliding scale, the Maronites were the most self-confident, and some, not all, Greek Orthodox in Lebanon as well. Charles Malik, though born Greek Orthodox, seems to be the quintessential protector of Maronite interests. Christians in Syria, though protected -- out of self-interest -- by the Alawite dictatorship, are keenly aware that the absence of real persecution depends on the continuation of Alawite rule. Assyrians and Chaldeans kept their heads down, and never uttered a word against the rule of Saddam Hussein who, they knew, was their protector. Or rather, they were the unintended beneficiaries of Sadddam Hussein's attempt to curtail mosque-based or Islam-based opposition to his rule.
And the Copts can always cling to one or two members who have risen high -- there was Boutros Boutros Ghali, whose grandfather of the same name had served in an important post. They have tried to avoid Muslim fury ever since their British protectors left, and they have been left, alone, with Islam, which becomes more like full-bodied Islam every day.
The least "Christian" of Christians in the Middle East are the "islamochristians" who include so many of those "Palestinian" Arabs -- not so much the Gazan Arabs as the "West Bank" Arabs -- who, from Naim Ateek and Hanan Ashrawi, to Michel Sabbah and gun-running icon-stealing Archbishop Cappucci, have identified wholeheartedly with the Lesser Jihad against Israel. And they continue to do so despite the persecution of Arab Christians in both Gaza and in such centers as Bethlehem.
One wonders if, as with the Copts, the Assyrians and Chaldeans who may be permitted to settle here will, after a while, begin to express their resentment of those they call "the turbans" -- meaning the Shi'a, whom they have come to regard as the only threat, choosing to overlook what Sunni Muslims have shown themselves to be, choosing to pretend that if only Saddam Hussein were still in power, all manner of things should be well. One wonders also if they will go even farther, beginning to analyze Islam and the most uncertain, unsettled, and unpleasant position of Christians in Muslim-dominated lands. As for the "Palestinian" Arab islamochristians, they are the least likely to emerge, after years abroad, from the deep mental and emotional freeze of dhimmitude.
Those Christians who, because they speak and use Arabic, and may even possess Arab names, have been convinced that they too are Arabs, often take pride in that ethnic identity, that Arabness, that 'Uruba. They allow that identity to make them loyal, despite being "Christians," to Islam, and to accept the Muslim worldview, for Islam and Arabness are mutually reinforcing.
Compare them to Pakistani Christians, or Indonesian Christians. Once they have sloughed off Islam, and no longer have any ethnic identity that links them still to Islam, they show themselves to be far more critical of it, far less likely to adopt or persist in accepting the Muslim worldview, than do many Arab Christians whose "Arabness" brings Islam along with it -- just as islamization so often brought arabization, over 1350 years, to so many non-Arab and non-Muslim peoples of the Middle East and North Africa.
Posted by Hugh at September 8, 2008 11:00 AM
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Father Botros is a brave man of the Copt Cloth. His broadcasts, steeped in knowledge of both Bible and Koran, are watched regularly by Moslems throughout the Middle East. He speaks forthrightly, out of genuine concern for the non Christian, and speaks brave hope to the Christian. He is someone the Muslim clerics fear greatly. May his apostate tribe increase.
Posted by: Jewel Atkins![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at September 8, 2008 1:10 PM
The "loi Crevier" to which Hugh refers is the Décret Crémieux or Cremieux decree.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolphe_Crémieux#Cremieux_decree
A handsome street in Jerusalem's German Colony neighborhood is named after this outstanding man.
at September 8, 2008 3:12 PM
Of course you are right. Why I wrote "Crevier" instead of "Cremieux" is a mystery to me. I must seek professional help.
Posted by: Hugh at September 8, 2008 3:38 PM
In Jerusalem there is a place called the German Colony. There is a place called French Hill. Is there a French Colony, or a German Hill? Is there a Russian Hill, as in San Francisco? There is an American Colony Hotel, but is there a part of Jerusalem that is called "the American Colony"?I'd like to be set straight on all of this.
These toponymic remainders and reminders of a place's once-peopled past are, I assume in the case of Jerusalem, connected to different groups of clergy and of pilgrims. But there are also, in other cities, place-names that may recall a purely commercial presence. For example, in the case of other "German colonies," there is the . Nemetskaya Sloboda (German "Liberty" -- whose trading residents were free from local jurisdiction, as in Elizabethan London's "Liberty of the Clink") in Moscow, close to the Kremlin, the area where,once upon a time, German-speaking traders and merchants established themselves. In Venice there was the fundaco or funduk of the Turkish traders, which "Turks" may have been given an expansive interpretation (I don't know) and included non-Turkish inhabitants of the Ottoman domains. Mpr do these places necessarily go back centuries. In Shanghai the Bund still reminds visitors of the Germans who were once resident in Shanghai, that early-twentieth-century creation, in its not-very-long-ago earliest days.
Posted by: Hugh at September 8, 2008 5:27 PM
There are at least two stories concerning the origin of the name of Jerusalem's French Hill. One is that it is named after a British officer, Field Marshal John French. The Hebrew Wikipedia site states that he may be buried in the British Military Cemetery on Mt. Scopus. The other version is that at one time the French Monastery of St. Anne stood on the hill.
There are three "German Colonies" in Israel, all founded by a German Templar Society in the 19th century. The German Colony in Haifa, at the foot of the Bahai Temple, was founded in 1868 by Christoph Hoffman and Georg David Hardegg of Wurtemberg, Germany. Similar settlements were founded in Jerusalem and just outside Jaffa in what is now Tel Aviv. The area and buildings of the Tel Aviv settlement, also known as Sharona, were taken over by the British military in 1939 and the area eventually came to be the Israeli Ministry of Defense headquarters. Outstanding period buildings, mostly restored, remain in all three colonies.
The British, noting the Axis sympathies of the Templar colonists, did what could be done in those days: They declared them enemy aliens and whisked them away, some back to Germany and others to Australia.
The American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem, longtime watering hole of local UN officials and sundry others (incl. yr. hmble scribe), was the principal building of an "American Colony" established in 1881 by members of a Christian utopian society led by Anna and Horatio Spafford. Their tale is quite remarkable; the Library of Congress offers an excellent treatment of their efforts at http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/americancolony/amcolony-home.html.
I'm told that former British prime minister Tony Blair, in his role as Quartet Envoy, has taken an entire floor of the American Colony Hotel.
There's also a "Russian Compound" in Jerusalem, it too dating from the mid-19th century. Built by the czars as a pilgrims' hostel, replete with mini-cathedral, the compound served first the British Mandatory Forces and then the Israeli law enforcement system, housing a police station, a small lock-up (local version of the Clink, I suppose) and, until a grand edifice was built near the Knesset about 15 years ago, the Israeli Supreme Court.
Title to this property remains nominally with Russia, but the question is, Which Russia? The Romanoffs have been out of the picture for some 90 years, Anastasia is nowhere to be found (multiple claimants to the contrary), and the communist regime is no more. The Russian government has been agitating for the property's return, in which mission it may succeed. I believe a similar compound and/or cathedral on France's Mediterranean coast met that fate.
Posted by: Paul at September 9, 2008 4:24 PM
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