The Arab Christians: From the Eastern Question to the Recent Political Situation of the Minorities

1. Preliminary Remarks

In the last few years we have seen a renewal of interest in the study of Arab Christianity, and such an interest was undoubtedly due to a large number of reasons, linked both to recent political events and to an increase in specialized academic research on the Middle East and its problems.

As far as recent events are concerned, a few of them have obviously cast Arab Christianity in a bad light. The first of these is the Lebanese War, a conflict with strong religious overtones. Since the early 1970s, attention has been drawn to the involvement of Lebanese Christians, mainly Maronites, grouped together in political parties or in militias, in a succession of clashes and acts of violence which were to mark the country for over fifteen years. Once the beacon of Arab Christianity and a place where Christians have traditionally held leading political positions, this country was to meet a tragic destiny, which was to have a considerable effect on the situation of Christians and their position within the national community. Similarly a lesser known war, in southern Sudan, is a fleeting reminder of the tragic fate met by the non-Arab Christian population of this Arab country. The emergence of Islam has also drawn attention to the new climate which has begun to form in several countries. More specifically, the harassment frequently suffered by the Egyptian Copts, particularly in Northern Egypt, underlines the difficult situation of this community, which has been an integral part of the country for almost two thousand years. Other causes for concern, the most important being the immigration of Christians from the Arab countries to Europe, the Americas, or Australia, raise serious questions about the future presence of Christians on Arab soil. The question of the status of Jerusalem, currently the subject of talks between Israel and the Palestinians, includes the problem of the Christian Palestinians in the city, whose number (now about 10,000) is continuing to fall.

However, while highly topical events arouse periodic interest among the general public, academic interest in Arab Christians is more constant. Apart from purely religious studies on the organization and liturgical life of the Middle Eastern Churches, studies of Arab Christians focus on three main fields. The first of these is history, particularly ancient history, beginning from the birth of the Christian communities in the Near and Middle East to their councils and schisms, but also the history of their relations with the West, beginning with their first contacts with the outside world, from the Capitulations to the twentieth century. A second branch of study examines the different Arab Christian communities from the point of view of their status; this includes their social status, within the field of the sociology of minorities, but especially their legal status, 1 to which some authors are now trying to draw attention, representing Christians under threat of a return to the status of dhimmi . 2 The last field of study is the one which opened up at the beginning of this century in the wake of the creation of the Arab national States. In each newly created national State (except for Lebanon), Christians were then called on, like their Muslim fellow citizens, to participate in a new state order, dominated by a Muslim majority. Studies in this field aim to identify the 'strategy' (this is the rather emphatic, exaggerated term for the study of the policies of minorities within their State or environment) and the position of Arab Christians in relation to the objectives they are trying to achieve and to the restrictions they inevitably come up against. Researchers often give appraisals of this strategy, voicing frequently contradictory opinions about the best chances of Christians' integration and participation, or alternatively, expressing pessimism about their future in the Muslim Arab world. 3

From a quick glance at the academic literature we can see the areas opened up by the study of the Arab Christian communities. The historical approach looks at their identity: who are they? how are they organized? what is their role? The study of their legal status examines the specific position of Arab Christians in society: are they active members of the whole of society or do they only act for their own society? In other words, are Arab Christians full members of the Arab East, of its geography and culture, or are they separate members, to be considered differently on account of their religious status? Lastly, their political role shows the extent to which they are integrated, as well as their overall relationship with their environment, in terms of the extent to which they participate in national affairs. In a region of the world where the dominant religion provides the basis for the allocation of opportunities of both political and symbolic importance, there may be discrepancies in the access of Christians to the political arena.