Where Must They Go?

Minority religious groups and Christian sects, particularly those living in countries of the Middle East, the near East and North Africa are now, more than ever, on the cusp of elimination. The countries that harboured them for thousands of years, and where Christianity was first introduced to humankind now threaten their existence. They are threatened by the rigour with which the faithful interpret the rigidity of fundamental Islamic belief translating to an absolute rejection of 'non-believers' in their midst.

The vicious intolerance at the presence of Christians and other minority religious groups, along with the detested symbols of their beliefs, their heritage shrines, their places of worship, those places held dear in the hearts of the faithful, have resulted in slander, persecution, bombing, looting, torching, wounding attacks and mass slaughter of the innocent whom their god fails to protect. Omniscient and omnipotent as he may be, clearly not a match for the superior god whose worshippers come more fully armed, not merely with their faith but with the murderous weapons their faith supports.

From Egypt to Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan to the southern Philippines, Christian lives are in danger. Their churches, their schools, their social systems and culture of divine worship of a god promoting peace and understanding between humankind, are dwindling in number as they are slowly destroyed as representing an intolerable blot upon the landscape of the people who reject their presence.

In the last decade and more, since the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, churches, schools and enclaves in Pakistan, with its over two million Christians, have been attacked by furious mobs of Muslims who respond with emotional violence to charges that a Christian had insulted Islam. Children in their early teens are arrested and imprisoned for long periods, on charges of blasphemy brought against them by local mullahs.

One in 20 Arabs living today is a Christian, as opposed to the one in five that professed belief in Christianity in 1900. As the process of sublimation of the original belief succumbed to the threats brought with prosetylization for Islam, greater numbers of people sought refuge and preservation of their lives and that of their families in eschewing Christianity for Islam. Submitting to what they felt was the inevitable.

In countries like Iraq and Egypt, Syria and the Palestinian Territories the incidence of emigration has accelerated. Where Christian populations were always viewed with a measure of distrust matched by the uneasiness felt by the Christians at their insecurity and the oppression by the majority that wracked their lives, it was still possible to remain in the land where they and their ancestors were born. Increasingly now, there is little option left to them but to seek haven in another, more tolerant geography.

Half of Iraq's 1.4-million Christians fled for their lives ten years ago when Sunni and Shia Muslims were attacking priests from the country's ancient Christian community. They were abducted and beheaded; Catholic and Orthodox churches were under siege. That vicious scenario is now being repeated in Syria as fiercely jihadist terror militias have infiltrated the country at war with itself. The Islamists' plan is to turn the country into a Sharia-led Caliphate, and a place where there is no space for unbelievers.

Christians take little comfort in the undeniable fact that Muslims are themselves attacking one another. Tribal antipathies added to the sectarian hatreds, with Muslim Shiites viewing the Sunnis among them as heretics and apostates, hateful and insulting to Islam. With the duty of all faithful Muslims to obey scriptural dictates to eliminate their presence from the eyes of god, lest god be further offended.