In Syria recently at an inter-faith gathering (it was all in Arabic so it couldn’t annoy me), I received a mild ticking-off from a Maronite bishop. He explained that Muslim-Christian relations were good in Syria but that, as elsewhere in the Middle East, they were affected by what went on in the West.
Whenever Europe did something to upset the Islamic world, which isn’t very difficult, Middle Eastern Christians got it in the neck. He castigated me for Pope Benedict’s comment at Regensburg and for the activities of the Danish cartoonists, both of which led to unpleasantness (he didn’t go into details), and gave me a gentle rap on the knuckles (well, my arm).
This rather annoyed me, to be honest, since (a) I’m not the Pope, (b) I’m not a Danish cartoonist and (c) as far as I’m concerned we Europeans can say what we damn well like about any religion, ours included, without the threat of violence. What the bishop was saying is that Christians in Muslim countries are basically hostages and every time we showed disrespect they would pay the price.
Actually the Syrian Christians have it pretty good, so long as the Assad family keep control of things, but the situation in Iraq and Egypt is grim. This weekend there were bombs outside six churches in Iraq, according to the Assyrian International News Agency, which brings the number of church bombings in that country since “liberation” to over 60. As I’ve said before, the Iraqi Christians are doomed if the US pulls out, and probably doomed anyway in the long run.
In Egypt the minority Copts continue to suffer - another church was burned down over the weekend - although if you work in the Christian press these stories of Egyptian anti-Christian violence become deadening after a while.
In the long term, Christians have no future in the Middle East. If extremists don’t get them, then the effects of economic incompetence, plus the lure of the West, will push them out. Still, as Cranmer reports, Britain seems to be doing its best to keep the faith alive in its cradle by refusing point blank to accept Christian refugees from the Islamic world.
Hany Ayoub Mansour, his wife Samah and children Nardin, 10, Karin, seven, three-year-old twins Bishoy and Anastasia, and one-year-old Angela, were seized by armed immigration officers in a dawn swoop on their home.
Now a Christian family will shortly find itself on a plane to Egypt to face an uncertain future. They do not know whether they will be subject to further persecution by extremists, but this is of no concern to Her Majesty’s Government.
Yet it is strange that when a Muslim terrorist faces deportation, concerns that the criminal might face ill treatment on arrival in his native country are sufficient to halt all deportation proceedings.
Human Rights, you see. Some groups seem to have more of them. Cranmer sincerely wishes the Mansour family well, and prays that they will not suffer a repeat of the persecution that drove them to the UK in the first place. But the situation for Copts is increasingly fraught; indeed, they are being systematically ‘cleansed’.
This might seem strange after my posts criticising immigration, but I think it’s probably in our best interests to allow in Middle Eastern Christians, who are a disproportionately middle-class, professional minority whose religion ensures their loyalty to this country. But our immigration policymakers don’t think that way.
As the Arab saying goes: “Better to be the Englishman’s enemy than his friend. If you’re his enemy, he will try to buy you. If you’re his friend, he will most certainly sell you."
