Jewish World Report carries a worthwhile story by Daniel Pipes on the persecutions Christians are facing in Palestinian-held lands.
EXCERPTS:
What some observers are calling a pogrom took place near Ramallah, West Bank, on the night of Sep. 3-4. That’s when fifteen Muslim youths from one village, Dair Jarir, rampaged against Taybeh, a neighboring all-Christian village of 1,500 people.
The reason for the assault? A Muslim woman from Dair Jarir, Hiyam Ajaj, 23, fell in love with her Christian boss, Mehdi Khouriyye, owner of a tailor shop in Taybeh. The couple maintained a clandestine two-year affair and she became pregnant in about March 2005. When her family learned of her condition, it murdered her. That was on about Sep. 1; unsatisfied even with this "honor killing" — for Islamic law strictly forbids non-Muslim males to have sexual relations with Muslim females — the Ajaj men sought vengeance against Khouriyye and his family.
The article notes that many Christians have been fleeing the Holy Land due to Muslim persecution:
The campaign of persecution has succeeded. Even as the Christian population of Israel grows, that of the Palestinian Authority shrinks precipitously. Bethlehem and Nazareth, historic Christian towns for nearly two millennia, are now primarily Muslim. In 1922, Christians outnumbered Muslims in Jerusalem; today, Christians amount to a mere 2 percent of that city’s population.
"Is Christian life liable to be reduced to empty church buildings and a congregation-less hierarchy with no flock in the birthplace of Christianity?" So asks Daphne Tsimhoni in the Middle East Quarterly.
GET THE STORY.
(CHT to the reader who e-mailed.)
Daphne Tsimhoni’s ten-page essay, referenced in Pipes’ piece, is worth reading.
“Bethlehem and Nazareth, historic Christian towns for nearly two millennia, are now primarily Muslim.”
“Muslim persecution” might be the explanation in the case of Bethlehem, which has been under Palestinian Authority rule for several years now, but not in the case of Nazareth, which has been Israeli since 1948-49.
Christians in the Holy Land are finding themselves ground between upper and nether stones. As a result, the Christian presence in the Holy Land, which managed to survive centuries of dhimmitude, is likely to be reduced to a state comparable to that of the Greeks in Constantinople. The Holy Places of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth are likely to become a kind of Christian Disneyland, visited by pilgrims but not supported by any Christian community rooted in the native soil.
This, it should go without saying, would be tragic. People in the US are rightfully concerned that the Jews of Israel be able to live in security in the land they or their ancestors settled in the last 50-100 years (and lived in several centuries ago). They should be equally concerned to ensure the security of Christians whose ancestors have lived there for centuries (and perhaps since the time of Our Lord). In neither case is it acceptable to say, Well, they should just move to the United States.
Just in case there was some doubt, I didn’t mean my comment to being ground between upper and nether stones to be a claim of some sort of moral equivalence between Israelis and Moslems in their treatment of Arab Christians. I just meant to say that neither was terribly solicitous for the Christians, and that the conflict between the two was having a baleful impact on the Christians.
And having read Daphne Tsimhoni’s essay, I would agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Leonardi’s recommendation.
I just meant to say that neither was terribly solicitous for the Christians, and that the conflict between the two was having a baleful impact on the Christians.
I didn’t read your original post as equating the two. It made your point 🙂
Great Christian witness by that boss. Not.
Ah. That’s very interesting. But, political corrrectness is going to win out again, I think.
Actually, the Muslim lady and the Christian boss may well have been married secretly, for all we know. Since Muslims are forbidden to marry outside their religion (many consider it instant apostasy) and forbidden to convert on pain of death, she might well have been killed for that, too. Claiming an affair is thus often more acceptable than admitting a daughter got honorably married. But since both are dead, they can hardly testify either way.