Matt Anderson spoke about the situation of Middle Eastern Christians during our annual conference. He frames the discussion by reviewing and critiquing a recent book by theologian Mitri Raheb, The Politics of Persecution: Middle Eastern Christians in an Age of Empire.
Matthew Anderson: I thought Mark had actually put me at the end of the conference after the crowd had mainly thinned out so I could do the least damage, but I’m glad to see so many of you are still here. I’m very grateful to Mark, the Institute on Religion & Democracy, and Providence Magazine for hosting this conference and giving me the opportunity to speak on such an important subject: Christian persecution in the Middle East.
Before we move into the substance of my remarks, I’d like to frame things by describing a tension I’ve encountered while teaching in university classrooms mainly around the city. Whenever we’re talking about something that touches on important or sensitive aspects of human experience, and certainly religious persecution is one of those, my sense is that we often find ourselves in a kind of tension. That tension is between intellectual impulses on one hand and activist impulses on the other.
The intellectual impulse reminds us that reality is complex and that we need to seek greater understanding of whatever the question at hand is if we’re going to treat it responsibly. The activist impulse reminds us that there’s an inescapable urgency to human life and that in many cases we have to act even while acknowledging the limits of our information. I try to encourage students to be aware of both impulses, respect them both, and, as much as possible, bring them into a healthy symbiotic relationship.
In ways, I think this tension is reflected in modern conversations about Christian persecution. There are organizations and individuals in the United States more inclined toward the activist impulse—they want to generate cultural, political, and financial momentum for helping persecuted Christians around the world. Likewise, there are organizations and individuals that prioritize understanding the sometimes-complicated realities that underlie and often surround Christian persecution. Thankfully, many modern organizations are increasingly realizing the importance of both sides and are working to bring together activism with serious scholarship, which is how I think it should be done.
I mention this because I think it’s true, and it’s helpful to identify these sometimes-competing impulses and begin the process of negotiating with them. But this framework also helps explain the focus of my talk today, which I hope will be a modest contribution to our intellectual understanding of the experience of Christians living in the Middle East. I could have gone in a lot of different directions in the few minutes we have—one common way of looking at some of these questions is to go through country-by-country surveys to highlight certain incidents that have been particularly egregious. All that’s valuable. I’m taking a different road, however, for the few minutes we have, and I hope you’ll find it meaningful.
What I want to do is engage a recent book that was written on this subject. Recently, the Reverend Mitri Raheb, an influential Palestinian theologian, published a book on these questions entitled The Politics of Persecution: Middle Eastern Christians in an Age of Empire, published by Baylor University Press. Mitri is a prolific and sometimes provocative scholar who has published widely on the Christian experience of Palestine and the Middle East. A Lutheran, he is the president of Dar al-Kalima University in Bethlehem in the West Bank. He also served as an editor for the recently published Rowman & Littlefield Handbook on Christianity in the Middle East, which is already becoming an important academic resource. If you’re looking to dive into a lot of the questions we touch on, that’s a really important resource.
I saw on Amazon it’s only $165, so thankfully, Georgetown’s library had electronic access to it, saving me from having to make that decision. What I want to do for a few minutes is discuss Dr. Raheb’s new book. Though my discussion won’t be comprehensive, I want to take you through some of his important arguments, and toward the end, I’ll broaden the conversation and hopefully cast a wider vision on these questions.
Despite being less than 200 pages, the book’s scope is ambitious as it attempts to present a narrative of Christian experience in the Middle East from the arrival of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798, which represents the beginning of the European colonial period in the region, all the way to the Arab Spring. Throughout the book, Mitri works to undermine some common narratives about the region. For example, that Christian persecution is mainly about a kind of eternal and inevitable hostility between a Muslim majority and a Christian minority. He argues that the challenges Middle Eastern Christians face relate more to geopolitical developments or are, in many respects, the same challenges that many others face in the region.
Toward the beginning of the book, Raheb begins with a historical case study in Lebanon in 1860. Around 10,000 Maronite Christians were killed by members of the Druze community. The Druze community is a syncretistic religious minority in the region with some influences from Shia Islam. According to Raheb, American and European diplomats described it as a massacre of “poor Christians” by “Muslim fanatics.”
A closer look at the situation reveals much more complexity. Among other factors, the Maronites and the Druze had landed on different sides of the conflict between the Ottoman Empire and the opposing Egyptian forces under the leadership of Muhammad Ali’s son, Ibrahim Pasha. During the same period, the British, French, Ottomans, and Egyptians were all claiming to represent certain religious and ethnic groups in Lebanon, increasing sectarian tensions. Raheb notes that a Protestant Christian from Lebanon, Bustros Al Bustani, even represented the tragic events of 1860 in his writings as a civil war rather than a one-sided massacre of Christians by Muslims. For Raheb, this case study is useful in understanding the role of foreign intervention in escalating sectarian tensions and the dramatically different ways the same event can be interpreted.
Throughout the book, Raheb highlights successive geopolitical developments that impacted the place of Christians in the Middle East. I’ll just run through some of his primary arguments about these developments. Some are fairly detailed and presume a grasp of modern Middle Eastern history, but I hope you can follow and get the basic ideas. I should be clear that I’m trying to represent Raheb’s arguments. I’ll offer a few of my own comments toward the end. So what are the geopolitical developments he describes that have relevance to the story of Christians in the Middle East?
First, the crumbling Ottoman Empire and the prospect of European domination and World War I were important factors in creating the conditions of the Armenian genocide. Raheb is clear about what happened during the genocide. He writes that while the European powers were fighting each other in the spring of 1915, the Turkish authorities began deporting Armenian Christians to the Middle East. Their properties were confiscated, Armenian women were violated, and in the end, between 800,000 and 1.5 million Armenians were killed, as well as many Assyrian and Greek Christians. Over 90 percent of the Christians who had lived in Turkey were killed or deported. The book does not minimize this tragedy but underlines that it should be understood within the context of a crumbling empire in a global military conflict.
Second, after World War I, the two major colonial powers operating in the region, Britain and France, often implemented policies that highlighted sectarian identities. For example, in Syria, the French divided the country into four districts: two with Sunni majorities, one Alawite district, and one Druze district. In addition, Britain and France justified their colonial presence by claiming to protect Christians and other religious minorities. Many in the West became increasingly comfortable with the political rhetoric of protecting minorities as a way of explaining the presence of Western powers in the Middle East.
Third, in the case of Israel-Palestine, Raheb notes that the percentage of Christians in Palestine dropped from 8% to 2.8% after the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 and the first Israel-Arab war. Raheb argues further that the voice of Palestinian Christians has been largely marginalized within Western discourse since that time.
Fourth, the rise of Pan-Arabism, or Arab nationalism, in the 1940s and 1950s, emphasized a common Arab identity and heritage but also had unexpected consequences for Christians. Arab nationalism homogenized the Middle East, making it less diverse. Assyrian, Greek, and Armenian Christians had to work harder to be recognized in an Arab nationalist environment. After the war of 1948, Jewish populations in almost all Arab countries were forced to flee to Israel, making the region more monolithic, which was not positive for minorities.
Fifth, Arab nationalism was accompanied by socialist economic policies, including nationalization, which involved Arab governments taking over private entities, institutions, and land. Many citizens lost resources to the government, but Arab Christians, who often had closer relationships with Western companies and projects, were impacted disproportionately by these policies.
Sixth, like many other scholars, Raheb sees the defeat of the Arab states in the 1967 war with Israel as a transitional moment in modern Middle Eastern history. In the aftermath of this defeat, the region began to turn away from the more secular orientation of Arab nationalism toward Islamic and Islamist conceptions of identity. Around the same time, the Saudi monarchy, powered by oil wealth, began promoting its strict and intolerant vision of Islam. In 1979, the Iranian revolution further demonstrated the political power of resurgent Islam. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 elicited modern jihadist movements across the region. In Raheb’s account, the 1970s were a transitional decade that returned Islam and questions of religious identity to the center of politics and culture.
As a seventh geopolitical development, these developments set the stage for regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran over the last four decades. This rivalry has continued to intensify politically and religiously and has frequently manifested in proxy conflicts around the region. For example, in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria, all of which have made life harder for minorities.
Raheb also highlights the impact of direct military intervention in the region on Christians. Of the 1.4 million Christians in Iraq in 2003, there are around 250,000 living there today, an enormous drop in the Christian population. The destabilization of Iraq after the American invasion helped create a context for the rise of jihadist movements like the Islamic State and lethal assaults on the minorities of the region, including Christians.
That’s a lot of information. I think that was eight or nine geopolitical factors. While my discussion today has not been comprehensive, I hope it gives you a sense of some of the central arguments made in the book. One of the primary reasons Raheb wrote this book is to offer another perspective on the Christians of the Middle East. Rather than portraying them as cowering minorities waiting for aid from the West, he argues that the Christian story in the modern Middle East is about their resilience and creativity in responding to successive waves of regional tectonic shifts. Whether from the reconfigurations after World War I to European colonialism, Arab nationalism, the place of Israel, Islamic resurgence, the Saudi-Iran rivalry, or direct American military intervention and civil war.
I will offer a couple of comments on these ideas. In many respects, this is an important book that provides a fuller and more complex picture of the Christian story in the modern Middle East. The book effectively critiques and challenges simplistic accounts of that story. At the same time, I do have concerns with the book, especially regarding its concluding chapter. While Raheb offers sharp critiques of Western engagement and perception of the Middle East throughout, the rhetoric escalates dramatically in the conclusion. The first lines of his epilogue assert the following: “Christian persecution is a Western construct that says more about the West than about the Christians of the Middle East. It’s a perception rather than an actual description and the politics that underlie it should not be underestimated.” According to Raheb, the Western discourse about Christian persecution in the Middle East serves to make the West feel superior as a civilized continent. Additionally, the discourse serves domestic political agendas in the United States and is an important tool in American foreign policy.
These are sharp words. My initial reaction after reading the book and then reading the epilogue was that it felt almost like a non-sequitur. For a couple of reasons: First, I felt that nothing of substance that had been argued previously in the book about these geopolitical developments was necessarily mutually exclusive to the idea that Christians are persecuted in the Middle East. Many of these developments, to my mind, explain aspects of what’s happened with Christianity in the Middle East, but they don’t exclude the idea that there are significant phenomena that could be classified as persecution. As far as his critiques of what Christians or Westerners are doing with this discourse, I think even if we can acknowledge that this discourse has certain domestic political ramifications and that it plays a role in American foreign policy, which at times could be better used, that doesn’t obscure the fact that there is a lot of evidence that there is Christian persecution in the Middle East.
It’s hard to know exactly how to respond to this, but I would say that the geopolitical developments Raheb describes create a context in which life is difficult for Christians in the Middle East and in which, in certain situations, real bouts of Christian persecution can flare up. So again, we don’t need to look at these as mutually exclusive. I would also point out that despite Raheb being a Palestinian theologian living in the region and committed to it, his views arguably do not represent many Christian leaders in the Middle East. I’ve met very few Christians, having lived for multiple years in Jordan and Egypt, that would feel comfortable with the conclusion of this book. That makes me wonder what exactly is going on here. Part of me feels like Raheb got sucked into this polarized American political moment we live in and decided to take some shots in a domestic American political context.
We all recognize that we’ve been living in a polarized political moment, and suddenly people are fighting about all kinds of things in serious ways. Part of me feels like the end of the book is a non-sequitur. At the end of the day, the demographic trends are clear in the Middle East. Even Raheb notes that during the Ottoman Empire, close to 20% of the region’s population identified as Christian, dropping to 10% by the early 20th century, and now down to 2% or 3% today. That’s a massive demographic loss, and certainly, persecution plays a role in that. We can acknowledge, as Raheb tries to argue, that many of the difficult circumstances Christians face economically and politically are shared by others in the region, but there has been a huge series of dramatic attacks against Christians in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt, which I’m most familiar with, over the last two decades.
In conclusion, I think Raheb gives us important information. He provides a wider narrative and lens on the experience of Christians in the Middle East, but I don’t think it should be taken as representative of all Arab Christians and their views. That’s an important point. One thing you’ll have to negotiate when involved in this conversation is the diverse perspectives people in the region bring. A Palestinian perspective is not an Egyptian perspective, which is not an Algerian perspective, which is not a Lebanese perspective.
I was talking with a Syrian Orthodox priest earlier this week. He was from the city of Homs in Syria, which, as those who follow the news know, was bombed to smithereens in the Syrian civil war. We were talking about another Syrian priest. He said, “Listen, I want you to know I grew up with that man, and I like him; we’re brothers and friends and everything, but you’re going to hear a different perspective from him.” Both of them grew up in Homs. Both were Syrian Orthodox priests. That kind of diversity needs to be negotiated as well. Finally, there’s too much raw evidence and data that, when analyzed properly, suggests very painful circumstances that can be described as persecution for Christians in the Middle East. The idea that it’s simply a Western construct is a serious overstatement that I can only object to. I think I’ll stop there and hopefully, I’ve raised a few questions. That’s the end of my talk.
Q&A
Question: Thank you for your talk. My name is Dan, and for a short time, I had the privilege of living in Galilee, so this subject is close to my heart. Probably a little bit generalized and kind of a two-part question, but the two most vibrant communities I’ve encountered in the Middle East are the Copts and the Maronites. They seem to have a very different general history of enduring to this point. The Copts seem to be more lower-class, more enduring of suffering, while the Maronites seem to be more feisty at times in their relations with Muslims. What unites them in their survival, and what are their differences? Also, this would be a whole other question, but how have the Copts endured so vibrantly while all the other North African churches were snuffed out quicker than the Copts?
Answer: Right, those are both great questions. Part of the difference between Maronites and Copts would have to do with the political situation in Lebanon, where Maronites have had significantly more political authority than the Copts have ever had. That explains some of their feistiness, as you describe it. The Coptic Church—I know the Coptic Church better than the Maronite Church. For example, I don’t know to what degree monasticism is as important a component of Maronite Christianity as it is in Coptic Christianity. Monasticism is its own kind of politics as well—it’s not just a spiritual practice, but also about where a church is looking. There’s been a revival in the Coptic Church in the 20th century of these concepts, and I think it’s true to say that the monasteries of Coptic Christianity are at their heart. I don’t know if that’s the case with the Maronites.
You mentioned North Africa, right. I don’t have an easy answer to that question. Part of it would come down to understanding something about the Islamic conquests and more about the impact of the Greco-Roman period on North Africa. We know there were famous Christian theologians from North Africa. I think it’s an open question I’m not equipped to answer, but part of it could be the ancient nature of Egyptian civilization and the Coptic use of symbols and languages from that. Perhaps there’s some story there about the longevity of a culture, but I don’t have a lot of comparison as to why that body of Christians lasted while most others in North Africa didn’t. I’d have to look more deeply at that.
Question: Hi, my name is Katherine. I’m from Liberty University, and I know several Islamic countries don’t allow conversion from Islam to Christianity, only from Christianity to Islam. All persecution is bad persecution, but is there any evidence that the persecution faced by converts is more severe than those born into Christianity?
Answer: Yes, that’s a great question. And yes, that’s an important point. Yes, converting to Christianity is a deeply controversial thing to do in virtually all Middle Eastern countries. I was speaking with a friend of mine recently who lived for 30 years in Lebanon and whose judgment I trust. He would say that Christians are not persecuted in Lebanon in any significant way, except if there’s a conversion from Islam to Christianity. That will provoke strong reactions. That gives you a sense of how a country like Lebanon, which is remarkably free in its political and even religious discourse, can still generate significant blowback around conversion. In Egypt, the situation is slanted so that if people want to convert to Islam, they can. To be fair, it does get complicated even for Christians converting to Islam.
There’s a famous story of a woman who was converting from Coptic Christianity to Islam in the 2000s and basically the Coptic Church stepped in and sequestered her in a monastery. And as far as we know she’s still living in the monastery. I’m not aware of any updates on our case but that’s an example of the Egyptian Government. This does look problematic and controversial but most of the time that conversion from Christianity to Islam is a lot easier.
Well, thank you so much for your time. I hope I’ve raised a few questions and laid a few ideas out there for you to consider. These are obviously incredibly important issues that I continue to wrestle with and continue to learn. These are complex questions and require a lot of effort and humility I think as one tries to put pieces together. But I very much appreciate your attention, and Mark thank you again for the opportunity.
