THE CLOSING OF THE CHRISTIAN WOMB
By Spengler
Asia Times Online
Aug 11, 2009
A century ago, Christians dominated the intellectual and commercial
life of the Levant, comprising more than one-fifth of the 13 million
people of Turkey, the region’s ruling power, and most of the population
of Lebanon. Ancient communities flourished in what is now Iraq and
Syria. But starting with the Armenian genocide in 1914 and continuing
through the massacre and expulsion of Anatolian Greeks in 1922-1923,
the Turks killed three to four million Christians in Turkey and the
Ottoman provinces. Thus began a century of Muslim violence that nearly
has eradicated Christian communities in the cradle of their religion.
It may seem odd to blame the Jews for the misery of Middle East
Christians, but many Christian Arabs do so – less because they are
Christians than because they are Arabs. The Christian religion is
flourishing inside the Jewish side. Only 50,000 Christian Arabs
remain in the West Bank territories, and their numbers continue to
erode. Hebrew-speaking Christians, mainly immigrants from Eastern
Europe or the Philippines, make up a prospective Christian congregation
of perhaps 300,000 in the State of Israel, double the number of a
decade ago.
The brief flourishing and slow decline of Christian Arab life is one
of the last century’s stranger stories. Until the Turks killed the
Armenians and expelled the Greeks, Orthodoxy dominated Levantine. The
victorious allies carved out Lebanon in 1926 with a Christian majority,
mostly Maronites in communion with Rome. Under the Ottomans, Levantine
commerce had been Greek or Jewish, but with the ruin of the Ottomans
and the founding of Lebanon, Arab Christians had their moment in
the sun. Beirut became the banking center and playground for Arab
oil states.
The French designed Lebanon’s constitution on the strength of a 1932
census showing a Christian majority, guaranteeing a slight Christian
advantage in political representation. With the Christian population
at barely 30% of the total and 23% of the population under 20 –
Lebanon’s government refuses to take a census – Lebanon long since
has lost its viability. The closing of the Christian womb has ensured
eventual Muslim dominance.
Precise data are unobtainable, for demographics is politics in
Lebanon, but Lebanon’s Christians became as infertile as their European
counterparts. Muslims, particularly the impoverished and marginalized
Shi’ites, had more babies. In 1971, the Shi’ite fertility rate was
3.8 babies per female, against only 2 for Maronite Christians, or
just below replacement. Precise data are not available, but Christian
fertility is well below replacement today.
Even before the 1975 Lebanese Civil War, infertility undermined the
position of Lebanon’s Christians . The civil war itself arose from
the demographic shift towards Muslims, who saw the Christian-leaning
constitution as unfair. Christianity in the Levant ultimately failed
for the same reason that it failed in Europe: populations that are
nominally Christian did not trouble to reproduce.
Lebanon was a Catholic project from the outset, and the Vatican’s
thinking about the region is colored nostalgia for a dying
Christian community and a searing sense of regret for what might
have been. If only the State of Israel hadn’t spoiled everything,
many Arab Christians think, the Christian minority would have wielded
enormous influence in the Arab world. It is true that in many Arab
countries, Christians comprised a disproportionate share of merchants
and intellectuals. But the same was true of the 130,000 Jews of Iraq
before 1947, who owned half the businesses in Baghdad.
Contrary to the Arab narrative, the peak of Arab Christian influence
occurred a generation after the founding of the State of Israel,
when Boutros Boutros-Ghali became Egypt’s foreign minister in 1977,
and Tariq Aziz became Foreign Minister of Iraq in 1983. In fact,
the founding of the State of Israel propelled Christian Arabs
into leadership positions in Arab governments. The Arab monarchies
installed by the British in Egypt, Jordan and Iraq failed miserably
in their efforts to crush the new Jewish State in the 1947-1948 War
of Independence. Young military officers replaced the old colonial
regimes with nationalist governments, starting with Gamal Abdel
Nasser’s 1952 coup in Egypt.
Nationalism opened the door of political leadership to Arab
Christians. The Syrian Christian Michel Aflaq founded the Ba’ath
party which later took power in Syria and Iraq. The rise of secular
Arab movements with strong Christian influence was a response to the
Arab failure to prevent the founding of the State of Israel. After the
Turkish destruction of Orthodox Christian populations in the Levant,
the Arab Christian elite – for centuries graced by not a single name
the world remembers – saw its chance to shine. Lebanon, previously a
backwater, and the pugnacious Maronite population, a marginal group
except for their ties to France, improbably emerged as the focal
point of Levantine Christianity.
But Arab nationalism failed just as miserably as did the monarchies
invented by the British after the Turks were thrown out. Having
rolled the dice with Arab nationalism, Arab Christians were left
with diminished leverage and declining numbers on the ground in
the advent of political Islam. Both in politics and demographics,
the Arab Christians largely had themselves to blame. Understandably,
they find it more palatable to blame the Jews.
A case in point is Father Samir Khalid Samir, a Jesuit of Egyptian
Arab origin who prominently advises Pope Benedict XVI on Islam. I
reviewed his fine book 111 Questions on Islam last March [1]. Samir
is circulating what he calls a "Decalogue for Peace", leaked August
9 on the website of veteran Vatican analyst Sandro Magister [2].
According to Samir: The problem goes back to the creation of the
state of Israel and the partition of Palestine in 1948 decided by
the superpowers without taking into account the population already
present in the (Holy) Land. There resides the real root of all the
wars that followed. To repair a serious injustice committed in Europe
against a third of the world Jewish population, Europe (supported
by the superpowers) decided to commit a new injustice against the
Palestinian population, who are innocent of the martyrdom of the
Jews. The original decision-making was shaped largely as reparation
by the superpowers for doing little or nothing to end a systematically
organized persecution against the European Jews as a ‘race’.
Samir’s plan includes international troops on Israel’s borders,
recognition of the Palestinian right of return, an international
commission to decide the future of Jerusalem – in short, what
the Israelis would consider the end of their sovereignty and the
liquidation of the Jewish State. That a prominent Vatican Islam expert
would take such a stance speaks volumes about the power of nostalgia.
There is not a single fact in place in Samir’s presentation.
Leave aside the fact that the League of Nations in 1922 confirmed the
object of the British mandate to establish a homeland for Jewish people
in Palestine, and that preparations for the Jewish State were complete
before World War II. Leave aside also the pope’s Biblical belief
that the Jews are in the Land of Israel because God has commanded
them to be there. The fact is that most Israelis, contrary to Samir,
descend not from the Jews driven out of Europe by the Holocaust,
but rather from Jews driven out of Arab countries after 1947.
There were 600,000 Jews in Israel on the day of its founding; an
additional 700,000 were expelled from Arab lands, including Iraq,
where the Jews had lived for 1,000 years prior to the arrival of the
Arabs. By expelling the Jews, the Arab countries created a population
concentration in Israel that made possible the country’s emergence as
a regional superpower. The results were an exchange of populations of
roughly equal numbers, Palestinians leaving the new State of Israel
and Jewish refugees arriving from Arab countries.
The whole point of partition in 1948 was "taking into account the
population already present" by creating an Arab Palestinian state
alongside a Jewish State, contrary to Samir. Had the Arabs agreed
to partition, Arabs might have surrounded and eventually absorbed a
tiny refugee state. It was the not the superpowers, but rather the
surrounding Arab states who did not take into account the interests
of the local population, but gambled on crushing the Jewish State in
its cradle.
All of this is outrageously wrong, but it is hard to have a rational
argument with someone who has an existential problem. It is hard
to offer solace to Arab Christians. Their elite misplayed its hand
seeking influence through Arab nationalism, and now stands to lose
everything to political Islam. As a culture, the Arabs are in
profound crisis – their most celebrated poet, the Syrian "Adonis",
calls them "extinct" – and their decline weighs doubly upon the
dwindling Christina minority. It is worth contrasting "Adonis’"
gloomy assessment of Arab culture with Samir’s eccentric cheerfulness;
I summarized the Syrian writer’s views in a 2007 essay Are the Arabs
already extinct?. Nonetheless, Samir still speaks of a grand revival
of Arab Christianity. As he told an Italian newspaper on the eve of
the pope’s departure to Israel last May: Previously, the Nahdah,
the Arab renaissance that took place between the 19th century and
the first part of the 20th century was essentially produced by
the Christians. Now once again, a century later, the same thing
is happening, although the Christians are in the minority in Arab
countries. Today the "new" elements in Arab thinking are coming from
Lebanon, where the interaction between Christians and Muslims is the
most lively. Here there are five Catholic universities, in addition
to the Islamic and state institutions. … Today, the cultural impact
of the Christians in the Middle East takes place through the means
of communication … Many Muslims, including authoritative leaders,
in both Lebanon and Jordan, but also in Saudi Arabia, have stated
this publicly: we do not want the Christians to leave our countries,
because they are an essential part of our societies.
It sounds a bit like Mortimer Duke in the 1983 comedy Trading
Places, shouting, "Now, you listen to me! I want trading reopened
right now. Get those brokers back in here! Turn those machines back
on!" Samir hopes that Arab Christians will provide the leaven to lift
up Arab society in general; on the contrary, as Arab society sags,
it squeezes the Arab Christians out. Sadly, it is may be too late for
Lebanon’s Christians. "The process began at the turn of the century and
it has intensified in recent years … There are 12 million Christians
in the Middle East. If the current trend continues, there will be fewer
than 6 million by 2025," Hilal Khashan, political science chair at the
American University of Beirut told the Beirut Star on June 10, 2007.
By way of tacit acknowledgement, the Vatican treads lightly with
Tehran because the Lebanese Christians are hostages to Hezbollah,
the Iranian-controlled Shi’ite militia. The Christian leader Michael
Aoun has attempted to form a political bloc between Hezbollah and
the Maronite parties. The Christians simply are outgunned, and the
Maronites would lose in a military confrontation with Hezbollah.
The propitiatory stance towards Iran on the part of some Vatican
diplomats is symptomatic of a different problem. As the center of
gravity of the Church shifts towards the Global South, the Church
inevitably will absorb some of the political sentiments that prevail
in the Global South, including hostility towards the "colonialist"
industrial world. The anti-Israeli sentiments that prevail among Third
World diplomats already reverberate in the Vatican’s diplomatic corps.
The Pope feels a deep pastoral responsibility to Middle Eastern
Christians. On March 25, the Holy See expressed "profound concern"
about Middle Eastern Christians in the Middle East in the wake of the
Israeli incursion into Gaza. Cardinal Leonardo Sandri and Archbishop
Antonio Maria emphasized the pastoral function of the pope’s visit,
noting that he "constantly comforts Christians, and all the inhabitants
of the Holy Land, with special words and gestures, coupled with his
desire to make a pilgrimage in the historical footsteps of Jesus
… The wounds opened by violence make the problem of emigration
more acute, inexorably depriving the Christian minority of its
best resources for the future … The land that was the cradle of
Christianity risks ending up without Christians."
There is little risk, however, that the Holy Land will end up
without Christians. Although Arab Christians are indeed leaving areas
controlled by Muslims, Christians are immigrating to Israel itself,
where the Christian community has doubled in size in the past 15
years. Some estimates put the number of Christians in Israel at
nearly 300,000, twice the official count. To Israel’s 120,000 Arab
Christians and 30,000 others must be added Christian immigrants from
Eastern European, as well as many Filipinos and others who came as
guest workers and have settled in Israel.
Hebrew-speaking Catholic services are held in Israel’s largest
cities, and Eastern European immigrants have formed new Orthodox
congregations. The new Hebrew-speaking Christian communities still
are small but they promise a new kind of root for Christianity in
the region.
The retirement in 2008 of Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, a vocal
critic of the Jewish State, was symbolic of the generational change
that shifted the balance of Christian life to Hebrew-speaking
Israelis. Patriarch Sabbah belonged to an older generation that
blamed Israel for the disruption of Christian life in the Holy
Land. In some respects Israel’s Christian Arab population is well
integrated into Israeli society; its children have a higher rate of
university matriculation than Israeli Jews. Nonetheless, Christian
Arabs tend to share the concerns of Arabs generally. More recent
Christian immigrants, though, learn Hebrew and see the world through
Israeli eyes.
A vibrant Christian presence in the birthplace of Christianity benefits
the world community. In its own interest, the State of Israel should
foster a Christian presence, as a living link between the Jewish
state and Christians around the world. In their short-sightedness,
successive Israeli governments have not given enough attention to
Christian concerns, particularly regarding the holy places. Residual
antagonism towards Christians among Israel’s ultra-orthodox community
represents another obstacle. Prime Minister Netanyahu made the wise
gesture of meeting the pope in Nazareth during his May visit to the
Holy Land.
Nonetheless, the diversity of Israel’s Christian population is a
positive sign for the long-term viability of Christian congregations
in the Middle East. Increasingly, they will speak Hebrew more than
Arabic. In the long term, the State of Israel will be viable if
its inhabitants bear children and stand their ground, unlike the
unfortunate Christians of Lebanon.
[1] See "Fr Samir’s 111 Questions on Islam", published in First Things
on April 30, 2009.
[2] See Fr Samir: "A Decalogue for Peace in the Middle East" by
Sandro Magister.
Spengler is channeled by David P Goldman, associate editor of First
Things.
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