Reporter Gregory Katz has a fine, detailed series in the Houston Chronicle detailing the anti-Christian religio-ethnic cleansing that's been taking place gradually, even silently, in the Middle East. He specifically profiles events in Lebanon, Bethlehem, and Egypt. Fascinating, disturbing reading.
The flight of Lebanese Christians is one symptom of a larger malady: the wholesale departure of Christians from the Middle East.This silent exodus is reshaping the region's cultural mosaic, eating away at its diversity by slowly removing Christians from the birthplace of Jesus Christ. Their voice is being muted as Islam becomes more strident.
The Islamic holy book, the Quran, preaches respect for other religions, but the growing popularity of radical Islam, which casts Christians and Jews as infidels, has convinced many Christians they will soon be unwelcome, said Anthony O'Mahony, a London professor who has written several books on Christianity in the Middle East.
"We may be seeing the end of a historic Christian presence," he said. "Islam has profoundly displaced the indigenous religions, Christianity and Judaism. We're seeing another stage of the Islamicization of the region. You start to see the Middle East purely in Muslim terms, dominating the whole region."
Precise figures are elusive, in part because governments in the region do not carry out sensitive surveys listing religious affiliation, but historians believe that at least 2 million of the region's Christians have left the Middle East in the past 30 years. Sharp declines have been observed in Lebanon and the West Bank over the past three decades.
Compare and contrast the West's general lack of either awareness or concern about this long-term forced exodus of millions of Christians by Islamists with the dramatic military response of the U.S. and NATO to the ethnic cleansing of Muslim Kosovars by the Serbs.
Posted by Alan at December 26, 2006 11:16 AM