Christians Disappearing From Iraq – article by Daniel Pipes. Pipes is the only writer covering this sort of story. Always interesting. But you have to wonder why he’s the only guy even mentioning things like this.
This seems all the more likely because Christians, due mainly to Islamist persecution and lower birth rates, are disappearing from the Middle East as a whole.
* Bethlehem and Nazareth, the most identifiably Christian towns on earth, enjoyed a Christian majority for nearly two millennia, but no more. In Jerusalem, the decline has been particularly steep: in 1922, Christians slightly outnumbered Muslims and today they make up less than 2% of the city’s population.
* In Turkey, Christians numbered 2 million in 1920 but now only a few thousand remain.
* In Syria, they represented about one-third of the population early last century; now they account for less than 10%.
* In Lebanon, they made up 55% of the population in 1932 and now under 30%.
* In Egypt, for the first time, Copts have been emigrating in significant numbers since the 1950s.
In 1997 William Dalrymple’s book “From the Holy Mountain” was published, wherein he retraced the journey of St. John Moschos from Turkey to Egypt, and along the way visited various Christian communities in the Middle East. Really gave one a clear idea how big the hegria of Christians from the ME has been, and the consequences of that migration both for those who remain and for the region as a whole.
I do not doubt that Christians are persecuted and harrassed in these Middle Eastern countries, but I would like to point out the role that demographics play in the numbers you cite.
When you use percentages of the population, keep in mind that the birthrates in Middle Eastern countries have skyrocketed since the advent of oil wealth and improved health care. I keep hearing the quote that 50% of Iranians are under the age of 21, and that is true for most Middle Eastern/Muslim countries. In a country like Lebanon, where the Christian population is still large, self-sustaining, and self-supporting, the harrassment and emmigration of Christians is overwhelmed by the birth rate differences in bringing about the demographic shift you describe.
[OK, I see you mention lower birth rates above, but you don’t mention the extent to which differing birthrates has a much larger effect than persecution.
But none of this is meant to excuse persecution at all. The intolerance of Middle Eastern Islam seems to be the reason we are having to fight this war on terrorism. It should be a Campaign for Tolerance, and we need to remove the Christian halo Bush puts over the war as it totally backfires in the minds of paranoid Muslims.]
As far as Jerusalem goes the main persecution has been by the Jews against the Arabs, whether Christian or Moslem. There is little evidence of Christians being discriminated against in Palestine, unlike in Egypt.
Two other points to bear in mind; the Cristians are often the better off (certainly true in Lebananon and Syria) and thus able to finance emigration; and once they have family in the West then it becomes easier for them to emigrate.
Secondly Islamic extremism was encouraged by US allied governments in order to contain communism. This was true of Sadat’s Egypt for example, and of course the Afghan mujahadeen were trained by the CIA. In other dictatorships supported by the US, such as the Sha’s Iran and Saddam’s Iraq, the fact that there were no other political parties meant that the mosques became the only focus of opposition to corrupt and tyrannical regimes; and not to forget that the Israeli government actively encouraged Hamas in the eighties in order to undermine the PLO
Most of the Christian populations from Syria, Turkey and Lebanon fled to Brazil in the early 20th century. Today Brazil has more Lebaneese ethnic people than Lebanon itself.