Faith
Under Fire...
Christians face wave of persecution, losing freedoms in Arab
Spring movement
By Oren Dorell and Sarah Lynch, USA TODAY
Mina Bouls worships with other Coptic Christian Deacons at St.
George Coptic Orthodox Church in Philadelphia on Orthodox
Christmas Eve.
Sunlight pours in through a window. Outside, visitors come to look
upon the spot where Egypt's Christians — most known as Copts — say
the Holy Family found refuge after fleeing Bethlehem and assassins
sent by King Herod to murder the baby Jesus.
Once crowded with Christians, Cairo's Coptic quarter where Samia
lives with her husband, Mounir, and two children is home to fewer
than 50 Christian families.
"We know many Christians have left," says Mounir Ramsis, speaking
not only about this quarter but about all of Egypt. "But we love
this country and will stay until death."
The Arab Spring uprisings that have toppled secular dictatorships
in the Middle East and North Africa have unleashed long-suppressed
freedoms that have allowed Islamic parties to gain a share of
political power they have been denied for decades. Their rise is
creating near panic among ancient Christian communities that dot
the Muslim world and predate Islam by centuries.
•In Tunisia, where the regime of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali
was ousted last year after 32 years in power, the dominant
political party, Ennahda, has worried Tunis's 22,000 Catholics by
vowing to tilt the country's yet-to-be-written constitution toward
sharia, or the detailed and often harsh system of Muslim
theocratic laws.
•In Libya, Christians are uneasy as the powerful head of the
Tripoli Military Council, Abdul Hakim Belhaj, who once led an
Islamic militia with links to al-Qaeda, has said he plans to run
for office in elections scheduled for April.
•In Afghanistan, no new building permits have been issued for
churches, and the last church open to the public was demolished
over the summer. In Iraq, the Christian community has decreased by
two-thirds since 2003 amid bombings of churches and assassinations
of priests.
•And Christians in Syria, where Muslims have risen up against
President Bashar Assad, have been subjected to murder, rape and
kidnappings in Damascus and rebellious towns, according to
Christian rights groups, including Open Doors, which helps
Christians facing persecution.
Many had hoped for better in an Arab movement that proponents said
was about replacing tyrannies with democracies.
"The outlook is grim," says John Eibner, CEO of the
California-based human rights group Christian Solidarity
International.
"If the current trajectory continues, it's reasonable to think
that within a generation these (Christian) communities will not
look like functioning communities," Eibner says. "They'll look
more like the once-flourishing Jewish communities" across the Arab
world that are all but gone.
Nowhere is the irony more profound than in Egypt, where an
estimated 8 million Christians live with more than 70 million
Muslims.
Christians demonstrated alongside Muslims early last year to oust
Hosni Mubarak. Before Mubarak's overthrow, Christians had suffered
from years of church burnings and murders at the hands of radical
Muslims who want an Islamic state free of religious minorities.
And after the ouster, the military regime that has been running
the country has refused to make any arrests in attacks on
Christians.
Mina Bouls, 25, a Copt who fled to Philadelphia, recalls cowering
with his mother in 1997 as a mob stoned the family home and
chanted anti-Christian slogans. But the difference then was that
Mubarak ordered the military to protect Christian communities and
jail extremists, Bouls says.
In October, Copts organized a protest in downtown Cairo over the
authorities' failure to investigate attacks, including the bombing
of a church in Alexandria on New Year's Day 2011 that killed 20
people. The military attacked the demonstrators and 17 Christians
were run down and killed by military vehicles, according to Human
Rights Watch.
Bouls wants to bring his family to the United States because he
says he is petrified by the new society forming in Egypt. The
first free elections in decades held in the past two months handed
power not to moderates but to members of the Muslim Brotherhood
and radical Salafi candidates, who combined took nearly 70% of
seats.
"If people try to rule the country with the Koran, with sharia
law, that means they look to us as second-class people," Bouls
says.
Small share of population
Christianity has existed in Egypt since the second century. The
Muslim Brotherhood, a political movement that seeks a nation run
according to Koranic law, has said Egypt would respect the rights
of religious minorities to worship and dress as they please.
Muslim Brotherhood executive member Abd Al-Rahman Al-Barr says
Israel is to blame for clashes between Coptic protestors and
security forces.
The Salafis, Muslim fundamentalists who want a complete
application of sharia law that generally denies equal rights to
women and religious minorities, also say Copts are safe in Egypt.
"Even if there are Salafi leaders who proclaim Copts to be
heretics, this does not mean that (the Copts) must be subjected to
any religious or (legal) sanctions," says Imad Abd Al-Ghafour,
head of the al-Nour party that won 25% so far in parliamentary
elections.
Abanob Magdi lives near Egypt's largest pyramid and says he is not
optimistic about what lies ahead. "I saw on TV the other day a
Salafi saying that if they get in power, beaches will be divided
for men and women and women will have to be veiled," Magdi says as
he walks through Coptic Cairo with friends.
Christians account for 4% of the people of the Middle East and
North Africa. Despite being the birthplace of Christianity, the
region now has the fewest number of Christians (13 million) and
the smallest share of its population that is Christian of any
other major geographic region, according to the Pew Center on
Religion and Public Life.
The future of minorities in the emerging democracies of the Middle
East "is a huge issue most vividly seen in Egypt and the Copts,"
says California Rep. Howard Berman, ranking Democrat on the House
Foreign Affairs Committee. "It's on our agenda as we figure out
how to help these countries," and their treatment of Christians
and other minorities is a "red line" that will affect future aid.
President Obama has said Christians must have the right to worship
freely, and he has spoken on behalf of persecuted individuals such
as pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, who was sentenced to death in Iran
for converting himself and others to Christianity, says Joshua
Dubois, director of the White House Office for Faith-Based and
Neighborhood Partnerships.
Some say stronger action is needed. Eibner wants Obama to urge the
United Nations secretary-general to declare a genocide warning for
Christians across the Middle East and a policy for preserving
religious pluralism in the region.
Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, Republican chairman of the human
rights subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, says
the Obama Administration "has been AWOL" on the issue. Smith says
Obama should designate Egypt "a country of particular concern,"
which allows the State Department to impose sanctions. He could
also make $1.3 billion in annual U.S. aid to the Egyptian military
conditional on fair treatment of minorities, Smith says.
Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., warns that threatening to withhold
U.S. aid could prompt a "backlash" in the region. "These
situations are delicate but the case has to be made and the
president has to make it," he says.
Historian Habib Malik of Lebanese American University in Byblos,
Lebanon, says Western nations can improve the situation by
shifting from promoting democratic rule to emphasizing "minority
rights, checks and balances, freedoms and the substance side of
democracy."
Growing wave of restrictions
Some Middle Eastern countries remain relatively safe for
Christians, says Carl Moeller, president of Open Doors. Jordan
accepted thousands of Iraqi refugees, including Christians, who
are allowed to practice their faith. Armenian Christians in Iran,
while monitored by the government, can worship unhindered, though
conversion is illegal, Moeller says.
But Christians in Tunisia, where the Arab Spring movement began,
have faced a growing number of restrictions since the dictatorship
fell, he says.
"Foreign Christians have been called into the police in Tunisia,
(and) they've had their phones tapped," he says. "There's
definitely growing restrictions on Christians in Tunisia."
In Syria, where Christians have lived since the Apostle Peter
established the first church in now-Turkish city of Antioch 2,000
years ago, cities that are strongholds of the Muslim Brotherhood
have risen up against Bashar al-Assad. Christians make up more
than 2 million of the country's 22 million people, and they fear
that the uprising will bring Islamists to power, rights groups
say.
In Afghanistan, Western nations that are spending billions of
dollars on reconstruction and maintaining security have failed to
get the government to protect Christians.
One of Jesus's own apostles, St. Thomas, brought Christianity to
Afghanistan in the first century, and today there are 8,000
Christians there. But the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan does not
recognize Afghan citizens as being Christians, and converting to
Christianity is illegal.
Not a single public church remains. The last Christian church was
destroyed by its landowner in March after the Afghan courts
refused to uphold the legality of the congregation's lease.
In Iraq, after the United States ousted Iraq military dictator
Saddam Hussein in 2003, the Christian population has gone from 1.5
million to a half million today. The exodus came amid 60 church
bombings and the deaths of 900 Christians, says William Warda,
chairman of the Hammurabi Human Rights Organization in Baghdad.
"We consider that genocide," he says.
Malik says Western nations must stand up for the rights of
Christians, who he says may be cleansed from lands where
democratic elections are used to oppress minorities rather than
empower them.
Malik says it must be done "in a way that is not misperceived on
the other end." However, "the West should not be cowed."