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Monday, October 10, 2011

The Arab Spring and the end of the Dhimmi Populations in the Arab World

Two news items ought to be required reading for every Western official dealing with policy towards the Middle East. one is the Italian Psychoanalyst David Gerbi's failed attempt to re-open a Synagogue in post-Qaddafi Libya; the other is the increasingly ferocious attacks on Egypt's Christian minority. Both suggest that the Arab revolts against the long-reigning strongmen of the Middle East will bring about more radically Islamicist and anti-Western regimes.

Gerbi, who is of Libyan Jewish birth, apparently believed the propaganda about the Libyan rebels representing a more open, tolerant, and democratic regime. Having been booed out of his natal country with howls for his immediate deportation, perhaps he can take comfort that these were not howls for his death. Maybe this is the moderation that the "Arab Spring" represents. Or, perhaps, along with the attacks on one of the last functioning synagogues in Tunisia a few months earlier, it proves that the Arab peoples once again face a change of thugs-in-power who will whet a deep-seated desire for more anti-Jewish and anti-Western demagoguery.

The attacks on Egypt's Christians--the last carriers of the language (in the form of liturgical Coptic) and elements of the culture of the ancient, Pharaonic Egyptians--further warns of the power of Muslim radicalism across the Arab world. The attacks of the last week are not de novo, but have a number of precedents reaching back into the waning years of the Mubarak dictatorship, when the regime was often successful in deflecting hatred of the regime towards the Coptic Christian minority. With Nasser's successful snuffing out of Egypt's millennia-old Jewish community as a precedent, Islamic radicals apparently hope that they may now make Egypt purely Islamic, by snuffing out the Copts.

This wave of Islamic radicalism bodes ill for the Middle East Peace Prospect. The very existence of states like Israel, and Christian Lebanon earlier, are an affront to Islamic doctrine, which posits perpetual Muslim supremacy over the Peoples of the Book; for these states exist on lands that have been under Muslim rule for centuries, apart from the very brief interlude of Western colonialism (which, incidentally, were the only period since the eruption of Islam from the Arabian Peninsula when a non-Muslim's word in court carried as much weight as a Muslim's). The likelihood that an Egyptian regime dominated by the Islamic Brotherhood will maintain its cold peace with Egypt is small; the likelihood that an Islamicist-dominated Egypt will throw its weight behind an increasingly Hamas-dominated Palestinian Arab entity is great. This rejectionism probably will further continue to dominate until a future Arab-Israeli War results in the Islamicists producing no more than an unbearably high number of "martyrs" killed by an Israel that will recognize that it has no alternatives but clear-cut victory or death. Should such a wave of Islamic radicalism engulf Israel, the Balkans and Spain are probably the next countries that must get very, very worried.

At present, most of the Western world is in a state of denial (not a river in Egypt, pun intended) about the danger posed by the new Arab regimes. We have convinced ourselves too long that Islam is at heart, a "tolerant" religion (ask the Armenians, extinct Mizrahi Jewish communities, the Copts of today, or Pastor Nardakhani aawaiting execution in Iran for apostasy from Islam about "Islamic tolerance"), especially since a line of cultural elites from the writers of the French enlightenment to today's so-called multi-culturalists have ever sought convenient sticks to beat the dog of the West's Christian heritage. But the handwriting is on the wall, and it is our choice to read and heed it if we will.

10 comments:

  1. The history of the German Kaiser Wilhelm II is a fine example of severely malicious inteference in the internal affairs of other countries

    the German Kaiser Wilhelm II proclaimed his "Friendship" for muslims and claimed he was the "defender" of Islam, while Wilhelm II openly proclaimed that Asians were an enemy race and a threat, contributing to the outbreak of the Boxer Rebellion by encouraing German troops in China to massacre Chinese civilians, and after the rebellion to act like "huns".

    what Kaiser Wilhelm II really meant was that he wanted to be a friend only to white, caucasian muslims like Turks, with blacks and asians being enemy races. His policy in africa was to massacre any african who resisted. Islam forbids racism, if any asian or african becomes a muslim, he is supposed to be equal to any other muslim. Whether that gets carried out or not is due to personal prejudices.

    Wilhelm also allowed the Ottoman Empire to conduct massacres of Armenians, supporting them and supplyin them with officers and weapons. The Ottoman Sultan looked to Germany for signals on whether it was okay to masssacre.

    Wilhem should have been harshly punished after World war 1 and charged for his crimes in China, Africa, and for supporting the Ottomans.

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  2. There are thousands of Armenians living in Syria and Lebanon. They were only attacked by Turks, and are free to practice their religion in Syria and Lebanon. Syria is not like Saudi Arabia.

    The Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches in Syria do not like the protestants, and they requested that the Syrian government shut down protestant house churches.

    the Copts and Aramaic speaking Assyrian christians are notable because they are not ethnically Arab, their liturgical language is coptic or aramaic.

    But seperate from them, there are ethnic Arab Christians. in Syria and Jordan these Arab Christians claim descent from the Arab Ghassanids who served the Byzantine Empire, they belong to the mainstream Eastern Othodox Church- not the monophysite Coptic or Assyrian churches.

    they can be fiercely Arab nationalist, and anti western in ideology. They are not like Copts, who are not ethnic arabs, if they are nationalist, then it is ethnic arab nationalism, unlike Copts who claim their pharonic heritage.

    And they weren't just pretending to be nationalist to hide from persecution. Many of them were the frontrunners in anti colonialism and activism against France and Britain. Go look at the founders of the baath party for an example. they drew inspiration from Hitler, and immediately wanted to side with the Soviet Union after World War 2.

    there are multitudes of statements by Arab Christian nationalists like Aflaq and Habash hailing the Soviet Union as heroic, and attacking the west and the Jews. they did so of their own violation, Islamists hate the Soviet Union, the fact that they sought Soviet support blasts away the claim that Arab christians are anti israel just because of pressure from muslims.

    One Arab Christian who is hailed as a martyr in Syria, named Jules Jammal, engaged in a suicide bombing of a French liner, the jeanne d'arc, when France and Britain attacked Egypt in 1956.

    That was actually the first suicide bombing in the middle east, islamists adopted terror tactics like hijacking and suicide bombing it from secular marxist groups like PLPF, founded by the Christian George Habash.

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  3. While the ethnic Assyrian Christians were pro British, ethnic Arab Christians like Michel Aflaq savagely denounced the west, denouncing "anglo saxon American" supremacy, and looking up to Nazi germany and the soviet union as role models.

    feel free to look at Aflaq's statements here-

    http://albaath.online.fr/English/index-English.htm

    Information on Jules Jamal, an Arab Christian, and the first suicide bomber in the Arab world can be found here. he killed over 2,000 French troops.

    http://www.fresh.co.il/vBulletin/showthread.php?t=541111

    http://gulfnews.com/about-gulf-news/al-nisr-portfolio/weekend-review/articles/rising-above-odds-to-resurrect-leaders-1.40430

    A Copt or an Assyrian would certainly not blow themselves up for arab nationalism, seeing as they are not arab, but Arab christians can be fanatics.

    the Arab Christian George Habash engineered modern terrorism in the ME

    www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1707366,00.html

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  4. I note that Michel Aflaq was an outspsoken admirer of European fascism and modeled the Ba'ath party on models from Mussolini and Hitler. Further, he converted to Islam before his death.

    As for George Habbash, he was a Communist as well.

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  5. I understand some of what you're adding, Zebra. However, all of these Coptic, Assyrian, and Mizrahi Jewish communities (Mustarib and Berber-speaking at least) predated the Arab conquest by centuries--even if I must concede that the Sephardi (or Spanish) Jews were relative latecomers--although there's evidence that the Sephardim in several North African urban areas absorbed older Mustarib communities.

    So, in the name of anti-colonialism, and righteous indignation against the West, the Arab peoples first turn on their own indigenous populations.

    As for sectarian differences among Middle Eastern Christians, I have heard Shi'ite Iraqi immigrants in the USA quite openly say they disliked guys named Omar and Abu Bakr because such names reveal Sunnite origins.

    Regards.

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  6. the anti jewish attacks occured before the colonial era.

    there was an infamous pogrom intiated by Arab Christians in Damascus against the Jews, known as the "Damascus affair", during Ottoman rule in 1840. Arab Christians accused Jews of the blood libel, claiming they killed a Christian monk and baked his blood into passover bread. The french consul actually encouraged the Arab christians to attack the jews.

    in 1860, when Muslim rioters attacked Arab Christians for not paying taxes, and then the rioters were being punished, the Arab christians accused several hundred jews of taking part in addition to muslims, I don't know whether they did take part, but even if its false it shows that there was hostility toward Jews.

    That was during the Ottoman era when people were divided by religion, before modern ethnic nationalism came in. Arab christians, influenced by study abroad introduced nationalism to the Arab world.

    I agree that Copts and Assyrians are persecuted. But not just for religion. If an Arab christian was ruling the Middle east, he would probably try to arabdize everything.

    don't forget the persecution of monophysites by the Byzantines, whom the Arab Ghassanids were aligned with.

    the Arab Ghassanids were standard Eastern Orthodox Christians like the Byzantine Greeks.

    The monophysite Copts and Assyrians were persecuted by the Byzantines. That ended after the arab conquest of the region, although it was replaced by other forms of persecution

    Although clearly Arab christians are not persecuting anyone for religious differences, they will uphold arab nationalism, and would want to claim Iraq, Egypt, Syria, all as sacred Arab land, placing pharonic/assyrian history as secondary.

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  7. I congratulate you on your grasp of Christian history.

    However, the Assyrians, living mostly on the Sassanid side of the Romano-Persian frontier, were usually persecuted by Zoroastrians, not Eastern Orthodox.

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  8. I read accounts of anti semitism in Europe. The exact same blood libel was used by catholic Europeans against Ashkenazi Jews, during medieval times, as the 1840 blood libel by Arab Christians against mizrahi Jews

    I Find it strange that people separated by time, culture, and distance came up with the same accusation. Is there something in Passover bread that resembles human blood?

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  9. I noticed the name of a people called the Samaritans appeared in Christian literature. Are they a kind of Jew or are another ethnic group?

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  10. The origins of the Samaritans are recounted in II Kings 17 in the Old Testament. They descend from a mixture of Israelites left in the land after the Assyrian conquest of northern Israel and outsiders brought in to repopulate the land.

    The Samaritans recognize only the Five Books of Moses as Scripture (not the Hagiographa and Prophets) and claim an Aaronic priesthood that still sacrifices a Passover lamb on the ruins of their temple on Mt. Gerizim, near Nablus. Perhaps 1000 or so Samaritans remain today.

    From the return of the Jews from the Babylonian exile (ca. 705 B.C.) throughout the early part of the Christian era, the Jews and the Samaritans despised each other. However, since after the 1967 War, the Israeli Rabbinate has recognized Samaritans as Jews and intermarriage with them is permissible.

    The point of Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan in the Gospel of Luke is that an "outsider" (to 1st century Jews, that is), was kinder to a man in need than those whom Jesus' hearers would normally expect to show righteousness and mercy.

    As for Passover bread (matzoh), there's nothing resembling blood in it. It's basically a cracker. Even animal blood is forbidden food in the Torah.

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