One of my favourite blogs is The Spitoon. It is a blog written by British Muslims who are opposed to Islamism and political Islam in all its forms, and confront the right-wing Islamic identity politicians in the UK about their ideology and separatism.
But I found this post really interesting, and sad. About the decline of Christianity in the middle-east.
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For With G-d Nothing Shall Be ImpossibleAbout 15 million Christians continue to live in the Middle East, the biggest non-Muslim minority left in the Muslim-majority countries of the region. Yet every year, more and more leave their homelands for overseas;
pressurised into flight by systematic economic and social discrimination on the basis of their faith.Of course, the Christians of the Middle East have not been alone in this. Starting with the sometimes sizeable Jewish minorities of the Arab world, religious minorities have been more or less forced out of the region since the end of World War II. Together with the Jews, Zoroastrians, Mandeans, Bahai, Yazidis, and other, smaller groups have all left the region that gave birth to all the monotheistic faiths. Those that remain have often been reduced to what one Christian commentator has called an underground, "catacomb" faith, recalling the persecuted faith of the Early Church.
Nina Shea, in a recent article, comments:
Within our lifetime, the Middle East could be wholly Islamicized for the first time in history. Without the experience of living alongside Christians and other non-Muslims at home, what would prepare it to peacefully coexist with the West? This religious polarization would undoubtedly have geopolitical significance.She echoes the views of the Lebanese Catholic scholar, Habib Malik (son of the late Charles Malik, one of the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights):
"The existence of settled, stable, prosperous, and reasonably free and secure native Christian communities in the Middle East has served in many instances as a factor encouraging Islamic openness and moderation, creating an environment of pluralism that fosters acknowledgment of the different other. . . . In Lebanon, before the outbreak of war in 1975, Muslim communities lived with their Christian counterparts in a free atmosphere of mutual respect. The fruits of this coexistence are evident today, even after so many conflicts, among educated classes of Lebanese Sunnis and Shiites, who stand out in the broader Arab Islamic context as full-fledged examples of modernity in every way. Islamic moderation is strengthened when Muslims live with confident co-national adherents of communities that respect women, do not condone suicide bombing or religious domination, are compatible with liberal democracy, defend personal and group rights, and are comfortable with many features of secular life"
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Please do read the whole article here:
http://www.spittoon.org/archives/4333It talks about how without a sizeable minority to moderate the view of Islam, to be a living example of the need for diversity and difference, Islam in the middle-east will turn even more intolerant, and will have less of an incentive to reform itself to accomodate other cultures or religions.
Topic: The end of Christianity as a living culture in the middle-east