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WE ABANDON MIDEAST CHRISTIANS: THEY FALL PREY TO PUTIN'S CHARMS
Forbes
May 9 2014
Melik Kaylan, Contributor
A chorus of deafening silence has greeted the May 7 public declaration
of solidarity by American churches for Christians in the Middle East.
Except for this item in Fox Fox News
(http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/05/07/american-christians-pledge-solidarity-with-persecuted-christians-in-egypt-iraq/)
the grand gesture seems not to have caught the media's attention in the
US or elsewhere. Why is there so little sustained concern for Eastern
Christians, especially considering the horrors they've endured in
their ancient homelands in recent years? Conversions at gunpoint,
rape, murder, church-burnings, forcible marriages to Jihadists,
abductions, torture, massive intimidation and expulsion. Why so little
response? The answers are buried deep in the historical tangle of
east-west geopolitics.
The eternal polarities between East and West Christianity have
suddenly become strategically relevant again. They endure,
after all these centuries. They've been exacerbated anew. They
explain why Mideast Christians are suffering without our help. The
situation gives the West's opponents huge advantages in today's
revived great power struggles. Earlier this year Syria's Christians
called on President Obama to end his support for anti-Assad rebels
(http://swampland.time.com/2014/01/30/syrian-christian-leaders-call-on-us-to-end-support-for-anti-assad-rebels/)
. If you triangulate Putin's rise as champion of Orthodox Christianity
and the plight of Christians in the Mideast and the role of the US
in the mix, you get a startlingly fresh focus on recent geostrategic
events.
This is a hugely sensitive topic area, which might explain why it gets
so little coverage - and will likely get me into all sorts of trouble.
But no one else is going near it. It's a signal weakness of American
media that it tends to look away from painful truths which might
confuse the allegiance of its readers. The age-old Mideastern feuds now
back in play between sects and faiths will seem remote to Americans
but not to anyone else in a region where now again geography equals
destiny. To some degree, the last century's 'isms'cloaked a lot of
ancient divisions but they're back and our new millenium's 'ism' -
namely globalism - seems paradoxically to make it worse.
One should first note the scandalous mystery of why minimal attention
gets paid to the Armenian tragedy unfolding in Syria. For a century,
the city of Aleppo flourished as a haven for Christian-Armenian
communities. Now, it has become a total warzone. You can imagine:
caught between pressure from the Assad regime to remain loyal and
pressure from anti-Assad rebels many of whom are extreme Islamists,
Armenians have been fleeing in thousands to Armenia and Lebanon and
Iran. The astute reader will instantly discern, from the geography
just mentioned, why U.S. newsmedia finds the Armenian predicament
so easy to bypass. Syria, Iran, Lebanon - these are not places that
America feels comfortable about. Nor are they friendly to Israel. As
for the country of Armenia itself, it has had to serve as Moscow's
bulwark in the Caucasus against anti-Moscow pro-West countries like
Georgia and oil-rich Azerbaijan. That's not something Armenians asked
for. But the Kremlin's habit of stirring enmities in the region,
then marching in to pacify them, has repeatedly forced Yerevan into
Moscow's embrace. The Kremlin plays such imperial gambits in its sleep,
having done so since Czarist times.
The recent plight of other Mideast Christian communities largely
echo the Armenian experience. Greek Orthodox, Syriac, Chaldean,
Copt and others are suffering unprecedented adversity - maybe the
worst since the Crusades. Considering the West's irruption into the
Mideast in the new millennium you'd think the area's Christians would
be having a golden age. But the fact is, the two poles of Christianity,
east and west, never much liked each other doctrinally, never trusted
each other or co-ordinated to any great effect. It seems preposterous
to say, but the repercussions of the notorious Fourth Crusade by
Western Christians almost a millennium ago are more than ever with
us. Western crusaders occupied Greek Byzantium, destroyed its power,
and helped usher in the Ottomans, ultimately giving Russia the role
of protector of Eastern Christians. As Ottoman power waned from, say,
1800 to WW1, Moscow acted as surety to Eastern Orthodoxy while Europe
and America spent their civil society resources on missionary activity
aimed at their regional coreligionists. That too did not endear them
to local church fathers.
If you think it's all forgotten history, think again. The 1990s
Bosnia war essentially featured the three post-Byzantine forces in
the Balkans - Serbia (Russia) vs Balkan Muslims (Ottomans) vs Croatia
(Western European Christianity). The equation there has changed little
since medieval times. East-West Christian enmity never went away.
President Bush's ill-conceived invasion of Iraq quickly led to severe
Muslim reprisals against Iraqi Christians. He had apparently neglected
to prioritize their security in his calculations, which didn't seem to
irk his host of evangelist supporters back home. You can imagine how
much alienation all that led to once again between the two tributaries
of the faith. Almost half the population of Iraqi churches emigrated
from lands they'd occupied since biblical times. America's push
for freedom in Arab countries ended up leaving Christians lethally
exposed. In Egypt, the overthrow of long-time ally Mubarak - with the
consent of the Obama administration - led swiftly to the torching of
Coptic churches. The Copts are not especially grateful to America.
English: Hama, Syria - a Greek Orthodox church of the entrance of
Theotokos to the Temple. Slovenščina: Hama, Sirija - rimsko pravoslavna
cerkev "Theotokusovega vhoda v tempelj" (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Conversely, evangelical America in the modern era never liked the
political choices of their Eastern cousins. In the main, the antipathy
revolves around the advent of Israel but the issue has earlier roots.
Arab nationalism, began as largely a phenomenon driven by Christians
in rebellion against Ottoman rule. They were the ones who conceived
of separate Arab national identities as preceding and superseding
pan-Islam under the Caliphate. They believed in the entity of Syria
rooted in Alexandrian times, or of ancient Mesopotamia as Iraq or
of Egyptian identity going back to the Pharaohs. They, with Western
educations, were the first to embrace the trendy modern secular isms.
They were the first ideologues of the Arab iteration of socialism,
fascism, communism and the like, indeed what became Baathism. Arab
nationalism also fed Palestinian nationalism. Christians were very
prominent among the earliest international Palestinian terrorists from
the notorious George Habash to members of Black September who killed
Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics. (The operation was named
"Ikrit and Biram" after two Palestinian villages brutally purged by
Israeli forces during the country's birth pangs in the 1940s).
Israelis have no sympathy for Arab
Christians (here's an example of what I mean
(http://www.debbieschlussel.com/43630/hamas-fatahs-christian-terrorists-meet-chris-al-bandak-of-the-shalit-trade/).
All of which is to explain why American Christians in general,
and evangelicals devoted to Israel in particular, have had trouble
identifying with their counterparts in the Mideast.
And look at the Middle East now. Putin and Assad have maneuvered to
become the explicit protectors of Eastern Christianity in situ. Moscow
is back as their shield and Orthodoxy's patron. He didn't sidle up to
the Russian church in recent years purely for domestic reasons. He
knew the unforgotten historical alignments just below the surface
from Moscow out through the Balkans, through the Caucasus, past
Turkey to the Holy Land. All he needed was a spate of Sunni jihadist
assaults on Christians for which he could blame the West's chaotic
freedom-mongering. His Shiite crescent from Tehran through Assad to
Hezbollah can and do now posture as the champions of local Christians.
As the US and Europe are too tangled up in ideological confusion and
contradictory goals to step into the breach, we furnish Moscow with
easy triumphs in this area as in so many others.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/melikkaylan/2014/05/09/we-abandon-mideast-christians-they-fall-prey-to-putins-charms/
Forbes
May 9 2014
Melik Kaylan, Contributor
A chorus of deafening silence has greeted the May 7 public declaration
of solidarity by American churches for Christians in the Middle East.
Except for this item in Fox Fox News
(http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/05/07/american-christians-pledge-solidarity-with-persecuted-christians-in-egypt-iraq/)
the grand gesture seems not to have caught the media's attention in the
US or elsewhere. Why is there so little sustained concern for Eastern
Christians, especially considering the horrors they've endured in
their ancient homelands in recent years? Conversions at gunpoint,
rape, murder, church-burnings, forcible marriages to Jihadists,
abductions, torture, massive intimidation and expulsion. Why so little
response? The answers are buried deep in the historical tangle of
east-west geopolitics.
The eternal polarities between East and West Christianity have
suddenly become strategically relevant again. They endure,
after all these centuries. They've been exacerbated anew. They
explain why Mideast Christians are suffering without our help. The
situation gives the West's opponents huge advantages in today's
revived great power struggles. Earlier this year Syria's Christians
called on President Obama to end his support for anti-Assad rebels
(http://swampland.time.com/2014/01/30/syrian-christian-leaders-call-on-us-to-end-support-for-anti-assad-rebels/)
. If you triangulate Putin's rise as champion of Orthodox Christianity
and the plight of Christians in the Mideast and the role of the US
in the mix, you get a startlingly fresh focus on recent geostrategic
events.
This is a hugely sensitive topic area, which might explain why it gets
so little coverage - and will likely get me into all sorts of trouble.
But no one else is going near it. It's a signal weakness of American
media that it tends to look away from painful truths which might
confuse the allegiance of its readers. The age-old Mideastern feuds now
back in play between sects and faiths will seem remote to Americans
but not to anyone else in a region where now again geography equals
destiny. To some degree, the last century's 'isms'cloaked a lot of
ancient divisions but they're back and our new millenium's 'ism' -
namely globalism - seems paradoxically to make it worse.
One should first note the scandalous mystery of why minimal attention
gets paid to the Armenian tragedy unfolding in Syria. For a century,
the city of Aleppo flourished as a haven for Christian-Armenian
communities. Now, it has become a total warzone. You can imagine:
caught between pressure from the Assad regime to remain loyal and
pressure from anti-Assad rebels many of whom are extreme Islamists,
Armenians have been fleeing in thousands to Armenia and Lebanon and
Iran. The astute reader will instantly discern, from the geography
just mentioned, why U.S. newsmedia finds the Armenian predicament
so easy to bypass. Syria, Iran, Lebanon - these are not places that
America feels comfortable about. Nor are they friendly to Israel. As
for the country of Armenia itself, it has had to serve as Moscow's
bulwark in the Caucasus against anti-Moscow pro-West countries like
Georgia and oil-rich Azerbaijan. That's not something Armenians asked
for. But the Kremlin's habit of stirring enmities in the region,
then marching in to pacify them, has repeatedly forced Yerevan into
Moscow's embrace. The Kremlin plays such imperial gambits in its sleep,
having done so since Czarist times.
The recent plight of other Mideast Christian communities largely
echo the Armenian experience. Greek Orthodox, Syriac, Chaldean,
Copt and others are suffering unprecedented adversity - maybe the
worst since the Crusades. Considering the West's irruption into the
Mideast in the new millennium you'd think the area's Christians would
be having a golden age. But the fact is, the two poles of Christianity,
east and west, never much liked each other doctrinally, never trusted
each other or co-ordinated to any great effect. It seems preposterous
to say, but the repercussions of the notorious Fourth Crusade by
Western Christians almost a millennium ago are more than ever with
us. Western crusaders occupied Greek Byzantium, destroyed its power,
and helped usher in the Ottomans, ultimately giving Russia the role
of protector of Eastern Christians. As Ottoman power waned from, say,
1800 to WW1, Moscow acted as surety to Eastern Orthodoxy while Europe
and America spent their civil society resources on missionary activity
aimed at their regional coreligionists. That too did not endear them
to local church fathers.
If you think it's all forgotten history, think again. The 1990s
Bosnia war essentially featured the three post-Byzantine forces in
the Balkans - Serbia (Russia) vs Balkan Muslims (Ottomans) vs Croatia
(Western European Christianity). The equation there has changed little
since medieval times. East-West Christian enmity never went away.
President Bush's ill-conceived invasion of Iraq quickly led to severe
Muslim reprisals against Iraqi Christians. He had apparently neglected
to prioritize their security in his calculations, which didn't seem to
irk his host of evangelist supporters back home. You can imagine how
much alienation all that led to once again between the two tributaries
of the faith. Almost half the population of Iraqi churches emigrated
from lands they'd occupied since biblical times. America's push
for freedom in Arab countries ended up leaving Christians lethally
exposed. In Egypt, the overthrow of long-time ally Mubarak - with the
consent of the Obama administration - led swiftly to the torching of
Coptic churches. The Copts are not especially grateful to America.
English: Hama, Syria - a Greek Orthodox church of the entrance of
Theotokos to the Temple. Slovenščina: Hama, Sirija - rimsko pravoslavna
cerkev "Theotokusovega vhoda v tempelj" (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Conversely, evangelical America in the modern era never liked the
political choices of their Eastern cousins. In the main, the antipathy
revolves around the advent of Israel but the issue has earlier roots.
Arab nationalism, began as largely a phenomenon driven by Christians
in rebellion against Ottoman rule. They were the ones who conceived
of separate Arab national identities as preceding and superseding
pan-Islam under the Caliphate. They believed in the entity of Syria
rooted in Alexandrian times, or of ancient Mesopotamia as Iraq or
of Egyptian identity going back to the Pharaohs. They, with Western
educations, were the first to embrace the trendy modern secular isms.
They were the first ideologues of the Arab iteration of socialism,
fascism, communism and the like, indeed what became Baathism. Arab
nationalism also fed Palestinian nationalism. Christians were very
prominent among the earliest international Palestinian terrorists from
the notorious George Habash to members of Black September who killed
Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics. (The operation was named
"Ikrit and Biram" after two Palestinian villages brutally purged by
Israeli forces during the country's birth pangs in the 1940s).
Israelis have no sympathy for Arab
Christians (here's an example of what I mean
(http://www.debbieschlussel.com/43630/hamas-fatahs-christian-terrorists-meet-chris-al-bandak-of-the-shalit-trade/).
All of which is to explain why American Christians in general,
and evangelicals devoted to Israel in particular, have had trouble
identifying with their counterparts in the Mideast.
And look at the Middle East now. Putin and Assad have maneuvered to
become the explicit protectors of Eastern Christianity in situ. Moscow
is back as their shield and Orthodoxy's patron. He didn't sidle up to
the Russian church in recent years purely for domestic reasons. He
knew the unforgotten historical alignments just below the surface
from Moscow out through the Balkans, through the Caucasus, past
Turkey to the Holy Land. All he needed was a spate of Sunni jihadist
assaults on Christians for which he could blame the West's chaotic
freedom-mongering. His Shiite crescent from Tehran through Assad to
Hezbollah can and do now posture as the champions of local Christians.
As the US and Europe are too tangled up in ideological confusion and
contradictory goals to step into the breach, we furnish Moscow with
easy triumphs in this area as in so many others.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/melikkaylan/2014/05/09/we-abandon-mideast-christians-they-fall-prey-to-putins-charms/