Warning on persecuted Christians

THE Catholic bishops of the Holy Land have said that repeated warnings in Western countries about the persecution of Christians in the Middle East “play into the hands of extremists at home and abroad whose aim is to sow prejudice and hatred, setting peoples and religions against one another”.

The Jerusalem-based Assembly of the Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land said the “Arab Spring” uprisings had clearly empowered militant Islamists who see Christian minorities “as infidels, as enemies, as agents of hostile foreign powers or simply as an easy target for extortion”.

But they were not the only victims, the bishops said. Secular Muslims and those defined as heretics were being attacked and murdered. Where Sunni extremists predominate, they prey on Shias and where Shia militants have the upper hand, they oppress Sunnis. So Christians “fall victim alongside many others who are suffering and dying in these times of death and destruction”.

The statement by the assembly – which brings together Latin, Melkite, Maronite, Syrian, Armenian and Chaldean Catholics –  said the protest movements had started because people demanded “a new age of dignity”. In several Arab countries, they swept away dictatorial regimes that had guaranteed relative security to their Christian minorities. Many Christians responded with support for the old regimes.“Instead, loyalty to their faith and concern for the good of their country should perhaps have led them,” the bishops said, “to speak out much earlier, telling the truth and calling for necessary reforms”.

The statement said Christians and Muslims had to “stand together against the new forces of extremism and destruction” because the militants wanted to purge the country of Christians and leave a society where most Muslims would not feel at home.