PYRAMID SCHEME

Christians face rising bias in Middle East (H.D.S. Greenway, 7/25/2003, Boston Globe)

Even though the Koran teaches that Christians and Jews are ''people of the book,'' and therefore to be respected, there is no question but that Christians in Egypt today are facing increasing discrimination and rising fear since the Islamists have not explained where nonbelievers would fit into an Islamic state. As for Jews, whereas historically Islam was much more tolerant of Jews than Christendom ever was, this has been reversed since the advent of Israel. [...]

What happens in Egypt is important, because almost one in three Arabs is an Egyptian, and Cairo is the traditional capital of Arab learning. What happens to religious tolerance in Egypt will speak libraries about the future of tolerance in the Middle East. But Christians in other Middle East countries have had it as bad or worse. Christians have been pouring out of the occupied West Bank for years, and the irony is that Christians will probably come under more pressure from Islamists in the new Iraq than they did under Saddam Hussein. Christians fare best in Syria, where religious tolerance is, ironically, enforced by dictatorship.

Further afield, Pakistan's tiny Christian minority finds itself under increasing discrimination from Islamic groups, and Christians are under assault in Indonesia, too. The trouble doesn't all come from Islam either. In India, Hindu nationalists are making life difficult not only for Muslims, but for Indian Christians as well, many of whom trace their arrival on the subcontinent to the third century.

Unfortunately, there is no reason for Western society to feel smug. Muslims are being daily demonized in the United States by Christian right groups, and our traditional tolerance is being tested.

When folks like Mr. (?) Greenway do things like compare the systematic repression and violence towards Jews and Christians in portions of the Islamic world to pronouncements by American religious leaders that Islam is dysfunctional, do you suppose they know how silly they sound? Here's a little thought experiment that may answer the question: would you feel safer if you were a Muslim in Lynchburg, VA or a Jew in Islamabad?

On a broader point though, it's long past time we stop subsidizing the Egyptian state. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 26, 2003 10:23 AM