THE DISMAL PROSPECT FOR CHRISTIANITY IN EGYPT
By Paul Merkley.
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Recently, Pope Francis visited Egypt (https://www.osv.com/…/Pope-Francis-preaches-peace-unity-in-Egypt.aspx.)
As usual on such occasions, the principals, Pope Francis and President Sisi of Egypt, huddled briefly out of view. The content of their discussion we cannot know, but the published statement for the press and the waiting world afterwards exposes their heartfelt concern for all suffering people everywhere. As for Egypt, itself, the Pope expressed confidence that the Catholics of Egypt and Christians generally were all proud Egyptians and that they all rejoiced in the goodwill of their neighbours.
In spite of the politically-inspired reassurances of the Pope, we know from testimony of the Christians who have fled to our world that the Christian population of Egypt experience substantial, daily persecution by the general population – which is reckoned to be 97% Muslim. Reporting in Western media on this theme has been sparse, but it is not impossible to find. (See, “Christians in Egypt face unprecedented persecution,” Guardian, January 10, 2018.)
The Pope also had a message for Western leaders who invoke anti-Islamic rhetoric. “Demagogic forms of populism are on the rise. These certainly do not help to consolidate peace and stability,” he said.
It should surprise no grown-up person to find that actual reality is clearly at odds with the Pope’s fantastic description of the life of Christians in Egypt. For some reason that I have never seen adequately explained, only the Guardian seems to have a continuing interest in this matter of how Muslim governments treat their Christian population. With respect to Egypt, here follows an example is its recent reportage on the situation of Christians in Muslim Egypt.
Christians in Egypt are facing unprecedented levels of persecution, with attacks on churches and the kidnap of girls by Islamist extremists intent on forcing them to marry Muslims, a report says. In the past year, Egypt has moved up an annual league table of persecution of Christians compiled by the charity Open Doors. (“Christians in Egypt are facing unprecedented levels of persecution,” Guardian, January 10. 2018.)
Other sources report on exceptionally spectacular cases of Muslim persecution of ‘Christians in Egypt, but show no commitment to ongoing research into the theme. (“Christians in Egypt bury their dead after attack,” ctvnews.ca, November 3, 2018; bbc.com/news, May 26, 2017.)
The Muslim population of Egypt is officially reckoned at ninety-two percent. The Christian population is officially reckoned to be 10 percent of this figure. Of these, only 200,000 are Roman Catholics; the vast majority belong to the Orthodox churches.
The number of Christians is declining daily, as almost all of the emigres from Egypt to our world have been Christian. The primary reason for this fact is simply that Christians are readier to emigrate, out of determination to find a better life. The Egyptian authorities are disposed to understate this matter — for obvious reasons.
This is a general fact of life just about everywhere in the Muslim world — that readiness to emigrate follows from the fact that Christians are generally much better-educated than the general population. The history behind that circumstance is that reading of the Bible is a powerful force in the upbringing of Christians generally. Accordingly, dedication to basic literacy is a major preoccupation in the culture of Christians and of Jews everywhere in the world. Among many other consequence is that Christians, like Jews, achieve higher levels of education and of professional training than is found among the members of the larger host culture. From this discrepancy follows a corresponding discrepancy in wealth and material success – from which follows the resentment of the local masses. And from all of this follows the inclination of Christians and Jews, to seek greater economic opportunities and a more congenial life in the outside world – in Europe and in the Americas.
Many Muslim countries have for several generations been witnessing emigration rates among their Christian minorities so steeply rising that there is a clear prospect today of the disappearance, before many more decades go by, of the Christians from the lands of their birth.
It is safe to say that most of our journalists and politicians are under the impression that the Muslim are the aboriginal people of the Middle East and that the Christians are “imperialists” – late arrivals who tried to bury the original Muslim culture under the weight of missionary action and thinking. The beginning of wisdom on the matter of Christian/Muslim relations is that, despite near-total amnesia on this matter on the part of our intelligentsia, Christian people made up almost the entire population in the lands where the alien Muslim hoards found them in the decades immediately following the Prophet’s death in 732AD. The missionary method that Muslims have used at this moment in History is the same as the one that they have used in all parts of the world where they were proved successful– in Asia and in Africa and in the Far East. It always begins with a heart-stopping demonstration of the consequences that would follow from refusal to submit.
(We should never forget that “Submission,” both in theory and in practice – has always been what Islam means. Muslims have never been interested in discussion.)
Islam’s first victories were won under threat of imminent death. Massive taxation was imposed upon those who would not accept the terms of their quasi-enslavement. These were to be the terms of existence for non-Muslim people throughout the Arab world– until the British and the French imposed their Empires in the mid-Nineteenth-century.
In the wacky, upside-down world in which our own politically-correct scholars operate today, the British and the French who liberated the masses who had so long been enslaved by Islam, are branded as “imperialist.” Contempt for our own Christian origins requires monolithic denunciation of Christian missionaries and the nominally-Christian political regimes that were their collaborators, while the monsters who imposed by violence Islamic conformity on everything and everybody – and who will do so again, when opportunity affords — are portrayed as victims of cultural imperialism.
Today, most people of Middle-Eastern origin living in Canada and the United States are Christians. The reason is simple: to have sufficient knowledge of history and contemporary realities to recognize the superior opportunities provided by the North American situation requires some knowledge of recent History – and that, of course, requires literacy. Because their religious lives were founded upon serious devotion to the reading of the Bible, Christians were qualified, as their Muslim neighbours were not, to see the advantages of leaving the Arab world behind and moving to the New World.
Take the case of Iraq. Following the Iraq war, the Christian population of Iraq collapsed. Of the nearly 1 million Christians, living in Iraq at the time of the American-led invasion in 2003, most have emigrated to the United States, Canada, Australia or to some of the 28 member states of the EU. Most of the rest are now concentrated within the northern Kurdish enclave of Iraqi Kurdistan. As Christian numbers decline, hatred of them grows among the Muslims whom they are leaving behind. Christians made up 12% of the population of Iraq in 1948 (at that time, about 5 million.) By 1987, when the total population of Iraq was about 20 million, they made up about 7%; in 1987 they were 6% of a total of 20 million; they were 6% in 2003 , of a total of 27 million. The Muslim masses are or course resentful of the opportunities to leave that belong to such people. Such opportunity is fundamentally a consequence of being better equipped for a new life in a new world – and that in turn requires better education– something that has always marked Christians everywhere in the world, but which has likewise y occasioned rage amongst the Muslim masses.
So far, the Christians of Egypt have seemed to be relatively the most secure. This circumstance turns on the large degree of respect that this community commands in the eyes of its dictator, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
However, as I write (Monday, September 23), news is coming of a massive demonstration being mounted in Cairo and satellite demonstrations in other cities (including Alexandria and Suez) demanding the resignation of President Sisi. (www.middleeasteye.net/news/protests-break-out-against-egypts-sisi,-cairo😉 The wed-journal, Middle East Eye describes the protests as the largest since Sisi took control of the country in 2014, in the wake of the overthrow of former President Mohamed Morsi.
No doubt there is merit in the case again Sisi, who, like every Arab leader in the history of the world, has used the highest office in his land to enrich himself his family and his coterie and has brutally expunged any who voice dissent. So far expert voices seem agreed that Sisi has the resources to quell these scattered disturbances and to recover quickly at least the degree of authority that he had before. Still, it needs to be considered that if the dictator Sisi is overthrown, the Christian population of Egypt faces rapid extinction. Any successor is bound to include in his indictment of his predecessor the charge that he made himself an instrument of the Christians — and in doing proved his villainy.
If Sisi falls, the demonization of Christians – already a force great enough to have prompted all Christians in Egypt to contemplate seeking refuge in our world — can now proceed apace; and as it does, we can be sure that our own elected politicians will look the other way for the sake of ingratiation with the new man of the hour—the latest of the long line of champions of Islam.
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