Mike Marqusee and a very dear (now departed) American (and also British-based) friend of mine shared a passion for cricket and knew each other quite well, I believe.

It was sad to read on your blog of Mike’s illness.

The fate of the Alevis is not pleasant to hear either.

I will decline that kind offer. Thanks all the same.

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I was not hoping to disprove the entire premise of your piece with a solitary counter-example. I just think it’s nice to show examples of tolerance amidst the madness; you know, something people of the region, and further a field, can learn from.

The vast majority of Jews in the Arab world left for Israel because the chance arose to escape centuries of discrimination against Jews in the Muslim-majority countries – and directly because of increased discrimination (up to and including pogroms) against the Jewish communities there, post WWII. Most left, having to leave behind all their worldly wealth. If you think that this was an example of “free” migration, I am afraid history rather disproves your position.

The West Bank may not be Israel, Hassan – but I suggest you take a closer look at the conditions under which the Christians of Palestine exist.

The 2008 US State Department report on religious freedom in the Palestinian Authority-administered (PA) areas includes these from Bethlehem, on the West Bank of the Jordan River:

The PA did not take sufficient action during the reporting period to remedy past harassment and intimidation of Christian residents of Bethlehem by the city’s Muslim majority. The PA judiciary failed to adjudicate numerous cases of seizures of Christian-owned land in the Bethlehem area by criminal gangs. PA officials appeared to have been complicit in property extortion of Palestinian Christian residents, as there were reports of PA security forces and judicial officials colluded with gang members in property extortion schemes. Several attacks against Christians in Bethlehem went unaddressed by the PA, but authorities investigated attacks against Muslims in the same area.

Meanwhile, in Hamas Islamist-controlled Gaza the situation is even worse:

Attacks on the Christian community in Gaza increased during the reporting period, and the press reported the Hamas regime did not arrest suspects in these attacks. There were numerous attacks during the reporting period in the Gaza Strip by Muslim extremist groups who went by variations of the name “Swords of Right,” “Swords of Justice,” and “Swords of Islam.” Some Gazan Christians stated that they believed they were under scrutiny for being different from their Muslim neighbors, and they raised concerns that no authority was willing or able to reign in extremist groups. During the reporting period, attackers sought to intimidate Christians into handing over deeds to property.

On May 31, 2008, unidentified militants attacked a guard at the Lighthouse Baptist School in Gaza City and stole a bus from the Holy Book Association. On May 16, 2008, unknown assailants detonated a bomb outside a Christian school in Gaza City causing no injuries. Hamas officials stated they were looking into the incident, and the case remained open at the end of the reporting period.

On February 21, 2008, armed militants forced their way into the Lighthouse Baptist School in Gaza City, assaulted a guard, and vandalized classrooms. On February 15, armed men broke into the YMCA compound in Gaza City and attacked the guards. They set off two bombs, one in the library damaging thousands of books.

On December 8, 2007, masked gunmen attempted but failed to abduct a guard at a church in Gaza City.

On October 6, 2007, Rami Khader Ayyad was abducted and killed by unknown men on his way home from work at the Baptist-affiliated Holy Bible Association in Gaza. His body was found on October 7 in a field in Gaza City. According to Palestinian sources, Ayyad received three death threats and owned a bookstore previously targeted by the Army of Islam. A relative of Ayyad told the press on October 8 that Ayyad was being pressured to convert to Islam and that the Holy Bible Association offices were attacked with an explosive device several months before.

http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2008/108484.htm

Unfortunately, your comment reads rather as if you are blaming the Jews for their own persecution!

I was merely implying that many Jews emigrated to Israel upon its creation. Hence the dwindling numbers in Muslim countries. Although I agree that anti-semitism was a factor, as I noted in my previous post.

You do not address the main issue of this thread – that the continued dispersal of Christians (and others) from the Middle East will lead to a situation where Islam occupies a very unwanted monopoly in the region (for the reasons given in the above-the-line post).

Indeed this will be a loss to a region. The loss of any well-entrenched community is a loss, especially one with such religious vitality.

It is interesting to note well, however, that your example of such harmony would appear to have come from an Arab community living in Israel – a country where the freedom to worship in peace and security is guaranteed its religious minorities. Unlike the conditions prevalent in most of the surrounding Muslim-majority states.

Without wishing to split hairs, I believe the example was of a village in the West Bank, which is (loosely) under the control of the Palestinian Authority. I did note, however, that such harmony is something that we could ALL learn from. Surrounding Muslim states certainly not excluded from that.

I would argue that the dwindling numbers of Jews in many Muslim-majority countries has more to do with the creation of Israel – ie a homeland – rather than a marked increase of Anti-Semitism. Or perhaps a combination of the 2

Unfortunately, your comment reads rather as if you are blaming the Jews for their own persecution!

By the late 1940s, conditions of the Arab Jews in many Muslim countries were rapidly worsening through a combination of growing Arab nationalism due to European occupation; Nazi influence in the Axis controlled parts of North Africa; and the conflict in the British Mandate of Palestine. The situation came to a head after 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Many Arab states instituted formal discriminatory laws against their Jewish populations. Within a few decades, most Jews fled Muslim lands, most for the newly created Jewish state, but others went to France, the United States, Great Britain and other Commonwealth nations. In 1945 there were between 758,000 and 866,000 Jews living in communities throughout the Arab world. Today, there are fewer than 8,000. In some Arab states, such as Libya which was once around 3 percent Jewish, the Jewish community no longer exists; in other Arab countries, only a few hundred Jews remain. The largest communities of Jews in a Muslim land exist in the non-Arab countries of Iran and Turkey; both, however, are much smaller than they historically have been.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_under_Muslim_rule

You do not address the main issue of this thread – that the continued dispersal of Christians (and others) from the Middle East will lead to a situation where Islam occupies a very unwanted monopoly in the region (for the reasons given in the above-the-line post).

Whilst it is heartening to learn of anecdotal accounts of cases of inter communal harmony in some communities in the Middle East, these are neither the general experience of many religious minorities in that region, nor do they disprove the main issues of the original piece.

It is interesting to note well, however, that your example of such harmony would appear to have come from an Arab community living in Israel – a country where the freedom to worship in peace and security is guaranteed its religious minorities. Unlike the conditions prevalent in most of the surrounding Muslim-majority states.

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An economically, religiously and morally weak society will usually seek to blame the ‘other’, and the existence of pockets of Christians/Druze/Jews etc in the Muslim world present a very convenient ‘other’ to demonise. Examples abound, of Europeans doing much the same during their own tumultuous history. Whilst the Europeans have (for the most part) become beacons of tolerance and justice, much of the world is still plagued with emnity and mistrust – one only has to look at the persecution of Gujrati Muslims in the late nineties, or the recently ceased hostilities in Ireland to know that religious difference can bring out the worst, and best in people.

Anywho, I would like to end on a slightly more optimistic note. I recently attended a talk in which the Bishop of East Anglia told of his travels to the holy land, where he was accompanied by a Muslim sheikh. The 2 travelled to a small village (the name escapes me) in the west bank, with sizeable Muslim and Orthdox Christian communities. On the occasion of a Muslim wedding, the Muslims would proceed to the mosque to carry out the nikkah. During this time, the orthodox christians would busy themselves with preparing the wedding feast and decorating the wedding hall. Upon finishing with the religious ceremony, the 2 communities would celebrate the wedding together. The roles were reverse whenever there was a Christian wedding in the village. This was, I thought, a wonderful example of community cohesion. Indeed, it is a modern-day example we could all learn from.

http://www.orthodoxsyrianchurch.com/index.php/history?showall=1

You are quite correct, of course. The Sikh faith is a monotheistic faith not born in Western Asia. Apologies.

I did some research, a few years back, on the history of India’s (and in the main Kerala’s) Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church. The Indian Orthodox Church (as it is popularly known) is an Oriental Orthodox Church (along with the Coptic, Syrian, Armenian, Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Churches) of great antiquity. One of the main in-print texts on the early history of the Oriental Orthodox communion is a product of one of its scholars, in fact.

A good enough overview is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Orthodox_Church

The Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church had a problematic relationship with the Jesuits during the Portuguese occupation of Goa. The Jesuits had developed some experience of working with Oriental Orthodox Churches in their penetration of Abyssinia in the early 17th Century.

However, the basic Jesuit intention of converting the locals from their Oriental Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism soon bought the Jesuits into conflict with the local Orthodox Churches in both Ethiopia and Goa. In Ethiopia it eventually led to the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Empire. In Portuguese-occupied Goa, it led to considerable repression of and division within the local Oriental Orthodox Church.

On a related note, the following article also makes some points which are directly associated with your own article’s basic premise. Hopefully you should find it interesting reading.

“Christianity and Islam in Mughal India”:

Part 1: http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/6912
Part 2: http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/6961

One small-but-significant quibble:

the region that gave birth to all the monotheistic faiths.

Not all of them — Sikhism is also a monotheistic faith, but obviously does not originate in that region.

Neverthless, the message of the article is timely and much-needed, and the following quotes within the main article…..

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.

…..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. . . . . Islamic moderation is strengthened when Muslims live with confident co-national adherents of communities…..

…..are absolutely spot-on (present-day and historical India also provides numerous examples confirming this). These observations also apply equally to members of other religions, and are similarly applicable to racial/ethnic issues.

I hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of cross-posting this one.