Christians in W Asia fleeing persecution

As families gathered to celebrate the lighting of a tall Christmas tree in Azizeh Square in government-held western Aleppo, shivering civilians carrying meagre possessions and clinging children prepared for evacuation from the devastated eastern parts of the city occupied by jihadis and besieged by the Syrian army and allies. Christians were among the throng singing Christmas carols in the west.

An estimated 40,000 Christians, including 7,000 Armenians, remain among the 1-1.2 million Syrians in western Aleppo. The city has been divided since insurgents seized the east in 2012. Of the pre-war total of 1.1 million Christians in Syria, more than 600,000 have fled their ho-mes and about 1,000 have died.

Early this month, Palestinian Christians living in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus 2,000 years ago, lit a 15-metre-high tree in Manger Square with the aim of drawing pilgrims, the lifeblood of the town’s economy. This year, hotels are fully booked for the holidays although the little town is surrounded by Israel’s West Bank wall, limiting access. Once a Christian town, Bethlehem now has a Muslim majority. Christians left for the West and Muslims moved in from neighbouring villages squeezed by Israeli colonies.

Before the 2003 US occupation of Iraq, its Christian population was 1.5 million. Two-thirds have left the country along with members of other minority communities, including Sunnis who have fled persecution by the Shia fundamentalist-dominated government.

The largest Christian exodus was from Mosul, seized in June 2014 by Islamic State (IS). Most Christians escaped into the northern Kurdish autonomous region. Those who stayed paid heavy taxes and faced persecution and death alongside Muslims who refused to accept the cult’s diktat.

On December 11, an IS suicide bomber struck the Coptic church of St Peter and St Paul in central Cairo, killing 26 in the congregation. Egypt’s Copts, nine million strong, are West Asia’s largest Christian community and the largest Christian minority. The attack was the worst since 2011 when 23 died in the bombing of a church in the port city of Alexandria. The Coptic church, like the other churches indigenous to the region, dates back to the first century when the Romans ruled.

Lebanon is regarded as West Asia’s sole “Christian country” because Christians amount to 40% of the population, the highest rate in the region. During Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war, many Christians fled the country while those who lived in mixed villages or districts took refuge in the Christian heartland in Mount Lebanon. Since the war ended, many who went abroad have returned, resumed their jobs and businesses and assumed major roles in politics. 

The French bequeathed independent Lebanon a sectarian political system in which presidents and army chiefs are always Catholic Maronites, the prime ministers Sunnis, and the speakers of parliament Shias. The two main parliamentary blocs consist of Sunni-Christian and Shia-Christian alliances. Newly elected President Michel Aoun is allied with the Shia Hizbollah movement.

Array of churches
While the Coptic church is Egypt’s dominant faith, Palesti-ne, Syria and Iraq host an array of churches. Some are in communion with Rome and others have formed Arab, Armenian and Assyrian Orthodox churches loosely associated with the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches, while smaller churches have doctrinal differences that distinguish their identities.

The main Western Christian churches have rallied to the defe-nce of Palestinian Christians and criticised Israel for discrimination and land expropriation, but have not extended support to Syrian and Iraqi Christians, possibly because Western Catholics and Protestants look down on the multiplicity of ancient Eastern Christians who have refused to convert to Western rites.

Ever since Russia intervened in the Syrian civil war in Septem-ber 2015, Moscow has reasserted itself as the protector of West Asia’s Orthodox and other Christian denominations. This was welcomed by Syrian Orthodox Patriarch Ignatios Emhrem II who stated, “Russia  has given hope to the people of Syria.”

Although some Syrian Christians have joined the insurgency, their leaders and the majority in the community have backed secular President Bashar al-Assad. Most anti-government fighters have been absorbed by radical Muslim fundamentalists who, in some areas, have forcibly converted, beheaded and crucified Christians or compelled them to flee their homes, towns, and villages.

Iraqi Christians have also been cold-shouldered by the West, perhaps because they supported secular President Saddam Hussein, demonised like Assad and toppled by the US. In both countries, Christians joined the rival wings of the ruling Baath party, which was co-founded by Michel Aflaq, a Syrian Christian.

In the West, there could also be lingering hostility toward Arab Christians since pan-Arab independence movements emerging in the mid-20th century — the Baath, Arab Nationalists, Syrian Social Nationalists, and Arab Communists — were established and led by Christians. They espoused secularism and feared the Muslim Brotherhood and its spawn, the most recent and extreme being al-Qaeda and IS.     
In spite of being shunned by the West and despised by Western churches, Arab Christians are seen by Muslim militants as the vanguard of a new Christian Crusade to invade and colonise West Asian holy lands.