Who wants to be a dhimmi and pay the jiziyah?
Christians try to emigrate from Islamic world; others want them to stay and play martyr
After all, as one Muslim opines, Christians fleeing the Muslim world is simply bad PR for Muslims. “Christian Middle East exodus worries churches,” by Carol Glatz for the Catholic News Service, JW
VATICAN CITY — The need to find ways to stop the slow, yet steady departure of Christians from the Middle East has come into greater focus recently.
Pope Benedict urged the dwindling Arab Christian minority to patiently persist in its struggle to survive and hold onto its religious and cultural identity when he met with bishops from Iraq, Iran and Turkey who were in Rome to report on their dioceses early this year.
And he will have many public occasions to reach out and appeal directly to Christians with his proposed visit to the Holy Land May 8-15.
The Christian exodus has become so severe that Iraqi bishops called on the pope to convene a regional synod to address the problem.
In the meantime, conferences were held in Detroit, Lebanon and Rome in February to underline the important role Christians play in Muslim-majority nations.
The Rome gathering organized by the Sant’Egidio Community brought together Christian and Muslim scholars and religious leaders from the Middle East to discuss the value and contribution of the Eastern Christian churches in Arab nations.
One element that emerged from the meeting is that Christians don’t belong in the Middle East only because they’ve been there since the time of Jesus and are legitimate citizens of Arab nations.
The Christian culture and mindset contributes to the building of a more peaceful, democratic nation, many people said.
Some said a strong Christian presence could help moderate Muslims counter the rising wave of Islamic extremism sweeping across the region.
Mohammed Sammak, political adviser to Lebanon’s grand mufti, said, “The fewer Christians there are, the more (Islamic) fundamentalism rises,” fills the void and gains the upper hand.
Or, more sequentially, the more Islamic fundamentalism, the fewer Christians there are.
“That is why as a Muslim, I am opposed” to Christians emigrating.
For Christians to disappear from the Middle East would be like “pulling out the threads of a cloth” so that the whole social fabric risks unraveling and dying, Sammak said.
Another danger, he said, is that if Muslim-majority nations do nothing to protect and encourage their Christian minorities to stay, then North American and European countries will think that Islam does not accept or respect Christianity.
If people living abroad see Muslims are unable to live with Christians even when they share the same culture, language and citizenship, he said, “then they’ll think, ‘So how can we Europeans live with Muslims.’”
Good observation. In other words, Christians should stay in the Middle East — and continue suffering persecution, discrimination, and humiliation — all so Muslims don’t look bad in the eyes of the world at large.
Tensions and restrictions against Muslims living in or emigrating to Europe will increase as tensions and violence against Christians continue in the Middle East and vice versa, Sammak predicted.[...]
Archbishop Sleiman told reporters that while economic and political problems are major reasons for leaving, Christians in countries like Iraq and the Palestinian territories leave out of “fear of Islamic fundamentalism and being legally discriminated against” in an Islamic republic or under Shariah, the religiously based law of Islam…
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
From what I have heard, it is the traditional Christian populations which are leaving while newer evangelical movements are spreading like wild fire. Whether this is the case remains to be proven. Covert house churches are harder to enumerate than Christian refugees.
I understand why some would stay – the hope of saving some. If they have children they should get out to save them instead.
THESE are the immigrants from the ummah who should be let into the West, not those fiends that torment these people.
Jobs in the middle east now go in the main to muslims replacing ‘christians’ or westerners and any Christian found worshiping in a group in another person’s home is immediately deported and that includes saudi arabia and from places such as Qatar.
The Vatican is not very much help here, at least prior Popes. But, this Pope has not changed the wording of the Catechism in the Catholic Church either.
They have this flakey thing about the muslims being monotheistic which leaves open the muslims to interpret that as they wish with no one telling them, at the highest levels, that they interpretation is just hogwash. This leaves them to say that their god is the same as the God of Israel. Which means that they are indeed a shoot of Judaism and Christianity. It isn’t nowhere close to being what they claim.
Here is the deal though. Change the wording to take out that and just say to respect them as human beings and I would bet that they would go on a riot and killing spree as they usually do. When muslims don’t get their way – we all know how they behave!
Unless the Pope could make the change quietly.
I don’t know – this continual thinking that anyone can talk to muslims is downright stupid. Talk to them and they will behave only if you totally agree with them. Otherwise they cannot handle it.
I really don’t hold out too much hope for these Christians. Unless someone helped them out and we have a current administration that is more concerned with kissing muslim tail than anyone elses. Well, I almost forgot – a good commie thug’s tail will be alright for them too. Get old Madeline Albright out there – she will kiss ‘em up for us.
A very difficult problem,
if those lands were 100% Muslim it would a mass attack easier.
On the other hand, why should the Christian natives have to leave heir homelands to the invaders, and where on earth is “the Christian world”?