In a typical show of the sad naivete of many Western Christian , Christian-run news sites and blogs are lamenting the suffering of Christians in the Middle East in the typical "Christians good Muslims bad" mode of speech.
A good discussion of this unfortunate Christian hobby follows, from professor Juan Cole's Informed Comment:
The press is full of stories this Christmas season about the negative effects on Middle Eastern Christians of the Arab upheavals of 2011. This “vale of tears” approach does profound injustice to the actual reality of the Arab Christians. The discourse of the persecution of a helpless Christian minority serves Orientalist purposes, intimating that the West has yet another hapless object of pity and reason to intervene in the Middle East, and blaming Muslims as a whole for intolerance instead of acknowledging cross-religious alliances.
The Egyptian revolution against Hosni Mubarak, for instance, was an ecumenical affair, with many of Egypt’s 8-million-strong Coptic Christians joining their Muslim compatriots in protests (Christians are about 10 percent of the Egyptian population). Christians no less than Muslims were fed up with Mubarak’s dictatorship. They were convinced that the regime fomented sectarian tensions so as to divide and rule. They were under disabilities imposed by the Mubarak state.
Christians in a Changing Arab World are Making their own Destinies [Informed Comment]
Christians are suffering in some parts of the Middle East, but again, the situation is far more complex than what even the intelligent Christians seem to realize, and it is largely self-inflicted, through popular Christian support for Bush and Israel:
Where Christians are in a truly difficult situation, as in Iraq, the proximate cause is actually American intervention, which was conducted in such a way as to heighten sectarian tensions. Christians were flourishing in Iraq in 2000 and 2001, and there was no al-Qaeda extremism. The instability provoked in Iraq by George W. Bush is far more important as an explanation of their difficulties than a supposed eternal and essential Muslim hostility to them (if that were the case, why are they better treated in some times, places and governmental systems?)
Chaldean Christians in northern Iraq have cancelled private Christmas celebrations this year, restricting themselves to church services. Alsumaria reports that Chaldean Archbishop Louis Sako said, “the continuous targeting of Christians in Mosul, incidents of Badinan of Kurdistan in addition to other situations in Iraq led Christians to cancel Christmas celebrations…” It isn’t just Arab Muslims who have tensions with Iraqi Christians, but also the Kurds, who are largely American allies.
Likewise, continued massive rightwing Israeli land and water theft in the Palestinian West Bank, and the separation barrier built by the Israelis that crowds in on Bethlehem, have hurt the Palestinian Christians, who are for the most part in solidarity with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The some 12 million Arab Christians (out of some 350 million Arabs) are active agents in their own fates. They make alliances with Muslim fundamentalist forces as well as with secularists, and sometimes switch alliances. They fight back against repression, as they did at Maspero in Cairo this year, risking death or injury. And the Christian West and its Jewish-nationalist allies can sometimes be their worst enemies, not sympathetic rescuers.
Christians in a Changing Arab World are Making their own Destinies [Informed Comment]
Instead of looking to themselves and realizing that their actions have consequences, and praying to God for forgiveness for their errors that have caused their Christian brothers so much suffering, many Christians take the ignoble and arrogant route of blaming Muslims for their naivete, racism against Muslim ethnicities, and general lack of Christian virtue as taught by Jesus.
