1 - Articles, 1 - Christians in the arabic world, 2 - Background

002 - The TRAGEDY OF ARAB CHRISTIANS

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Corriere della Sera – pag. 11 – 06.12-1985

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I would like to recall the precarious situation of Arab Christians in the Middle East. The Arabic-speaking countries are predominantly Muslim, with a total of 120 million inhabitants, 12 million of whom are Christians, in a minority in all countries, except Lebanon. In the Arab world Lebanon is the only country in which a Christian enjoys all the rights of a citizen for the same amount of a Muslim. This is the reason why Christians in the Middle East look to Lebanon as a country of refuge in the event of heightened discrimination and where Lebanese, especially Christians, are determined to safeguard their identity. Following the partition of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War, the various confessions lived together peacefully. In the last 30 to 40 years this coexistence has been exploited by international elements outside the control of the Lebanese themselves, culminating in the events that everyone knows and with the latent danger that the only refuge of Arab Christians might disappear. They are now refugees in their own country, “aware” of being Christians. In the last 18 months, 125,000 Christians scattered among the various regions with a Muslim majority (Chouf and South) have been forced to abandon everything and take refuge in safer territory or emigrate abroad. Why does almost no one speak of this silent tragedy?

Giuseppe Samir Eid

Free web translation from the original in Italian

The published articles intend to provide the tools for a social inclusion of the migratory flow, shed light on human rights and the condition of life of Christians in the Islamic world from which the author come from. Knowledge of the other, of cultural and religious differences are primary ingredients to create peace in the hearts of men everywhere, a prerequisite for a peaceful coexistence and convinced citizenship in the territory.

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1 - Articles, 1 - Christians in the arabic world, 2 - Background

004 - THE STATE OF THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST

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Popoli – 01/1994

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The existence of Christians in Arab countries with a Muslim majority is becoming increasingly difficult, between the process of forced Islamization and emigration to the West. It is necessary to draw the attention of the West to these two themes: the presence and Christian and Muslim coexistence from the point of view of the Christian minority in Islamic countries; the Islamic presence in Europe from the point of view of a Middle Eastern Christian.
The two issues at first sight may seem complementary, in fact, at the second point, we will address the situation of Muslim immigrants in Italy, a country of Christian orientation, while in the first point the reality of Christians in the Middle East with a Muslim majority will be presented. In dealing with these topics it is fundamental to keep in mind two conflicting elements which are not complementary: the first is that the Muslim presence in Italy is very recent, in fact it dates back to a few decades; the second is that the presence of Christians in Middle Eastern countries dates back to the birth of Christianity, and besides being very ancient, it took place before the arrival of the Muslims. The natives of the Middle East are Christians; only around 638-641 Muslim immigrants arrived and settled thanks to the reception of Christians.
The assimilation of this historical dimension allows us to understand some Middle Eastern situations that would otherwise be incomprehensible from a European point of view. Until one understands the importance of the historical dimension for the identity of Middle Eastern peoples, nothing will be understood about the Middle East.
Immediately after the second world war the population on the northern shore of the Mediterranean basin was about twice that of the southern basin, North Africa and the Middle East; today after 50 years, the proportion has become 1: 1. The graphic demo development accompanied by a growing gap in terms of development, exposes the richest and oldest population to a “peaceful” invasion by culturally distant peoples ; a professor at the University of Cairo has quantified the gap spanning over the centuries.

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1 - Articles, 1 - Christians in the arabic world, 6 - know each other, cohabit, converse

006 - THE CHRISTIAN CONTRIBUTION TO THE ARAB CIVILIZATION

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Popoli – 05/1994

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Treated as foreigners at home, discriminated against in their rights, Christian minorities in Muslim countries are regaining awareness of their rich contribution to the construction of Arab civilization, which cannot be identified with Islam at all.
According to the Koran, men are divided into three categories: Muslims, people of the book ( both Jews and Christians), and others.
In the Middle East, Christian Arabs have often been wrongly assimilated to the West by their Muslim fellow citizens. The harmful consequences to which this erroneous identification between Christianity and the West in the Arab countries are obvious.
One of the causes of this phenomenon can be found in the fact that in these areas, in the last 150 years, a large part of the economy has been in the hands of local Christian and Jewish minorities, and during this period foreigners emigrated to the Middle East from the West.
“With the advent of independence, the indigenous middle class moved to neighborhoods that were previously inhabited mainly by Europeans, and immigrants from the countryside headed for those neighborhoods that they left free, or in new neighborhoods. In both cases There was a change in habits and ways of life: the middle class began to live in a way that was formerly typical of foreign residents, and rural immigrants adopted the way of life of the urban poorer classes. they lived mostly as Europeans did, in houses of the same type and dressed in clothes of the same type … “(Albert Hourani, History of the Arab peoples, Arnoldo Mondadori, 1991, p. 383).

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1 - Articles, 1 - Christians in the arabic world, 2 - Background, 5 - Political Islam, centers of worship, prescriptions

011 - RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN ISLAM

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Ed. La Scuola – 12-1996

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  1. Religious Freedom

The concept of religious freedom, unlike that of tolerance, implies equal rights for each citizen. “Any discriminatory treatment motivated by different religious convictions violates human rights. The position of the citizen before the law must not be privileged by the belonging to a specific religious confession “. (7)

The recognition of human rights is a recent acquisition in the Catholic Church. The reliefs expressed in this regard by Pope Pius IX culminated in the document Syllabus Errorum of the last century. But we had to wait for Vatican II for a universal formulation on the subject.

On the Islamic side, as we will see later, religion still predominates over the rights of citizens, even if some weak voice is raised calling for a separation between faith and law. Islamic documents containing declarations of equality and freedom pose serious limitations and discrimination for those who are not Muslims. It should also be kept in mind that the Islamic world is not at all monolithic; indeed, it has within it a great variety of positions: from the fundamentalist minority (Salafeya) to that which demands more freedom and greater acceptance of the modern world. In the middle there is a vast spectrum of “Orthodox” Muslims. Consequently, the application by the courts of the statements contained in the constitutions and international treaties signed by the respective governments is anything but uniform.

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