Reply to I’m Arab and Christian- why are people always so surprised ?

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Reply to "I’m Arab and Christian- why are people always so surprised ?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't think some people understand that Muslim countries still have pockets of Christians and sometimes up to million to a million and a half Christians.

Some of the Christians in Muslim countries come from very, very ancient sects.[/quote]
The title of your post is misleading.  Most Christians in the Middle East are not Arab but rather Assyrian, Copt, Armenian, Greek, Chaldean, Aramaic (Syriacs), and Phoenician (as many Lebanese Christians identify).
But you are right, they are very ancient communities.  The hatred and persecution they have suffered and continue to suffer from the Arabs is wholly tragic.  Pope Francis has often brought attention to this.[/quote]

OP here. Christians in the Arab countries of the Middle East are Arabs! I know many Lebanese Christians who will tell me - in plain Arabic - they are not Arab, they are Pheonician. Several DNA studies have shown that both Lebanese Muslims and Christians are descendant from the Phoenicians but somehow Lebanese Christian’s want to distance themselves from the Arabs because of the common misconception than Arabs are mostly Muslim.

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LOL.
I’ll take their word regarding what they are over yours.  Go label someone else.[/quote]

I am Coptic and I tell people my parents are Egyptian.  People barely understand where Egypt is, much less what Coptic means and  I’m not getting into sectarian divides with acquaintances and strangers.

You have to remember that the Lebanese went through a very traumatic sectarian war recently and many people from these other groups faced really heinous treatment from the Muslim majority and thus refuse to identify as Arabs.  A lot of Coptic people refuse to identify as Arab as well but I find it somewhat silly.  My parents have more in common with a Lebanese Muslim than an American baptist.[/quote]
In the recent past Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan all have brutally oppressed their Christian minorities.[/quote]

Please give examples.  This is the second time you have alleged this and you cited it as the reason for Christian emigration.  If Christians were so oppressed in that area, why did so many Armenians emigrate to the Middle East when facing persecution in Turkey?

FYI, neither Christian nor Muslim Arabs were big fans of the Ottomans; Christians were not singled out by Ottoman authorities.

In fact, Christian emigration from the Levant began in the 19th century for economic reasons.  You can see this especially in the last names of prominent people from South America.

But you see it here too.  For example the Sununus of New Hampshire, whom I am sure our "I've never met a Christian Arab" poster does not recognize as Arab.[/quote]

Are you claiming that Middle Eastern Christians are not persecuted? This is easily disproven by anyone who can use google. [/quote]

There have been incidents in Egypt and of course ISIS was crazy.  But popular appeal of Islamic nationalism stuff came in reaction to the founding of Israel and loss of Arab territory (in which many Christians lived), particularly after 1967. Please cite evidence of Christian persecution before this, true persecution, not things like Muslims not being allowed to convert, which Arab Christians don't really care about.

DH is an Arab Christian, who lived in his Middle Eastern homeland the majority of his life.  He and his family have never felt persecuted, nor have they ever referred to any historical instances of Christian persecution. [/quote]

This is entirely false. The greatest persecution of Christians in the Middle East occurred during the Interwar Period and also coincided with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. [/quote]

If you are speaking of Armenians in Turkey as part of the Middle East, I concede the point.  If you are excluding the Armenians, whom, as I pointed out fled to safety living among Arabs in the Levant, I'd like to see some cites.[/quote]

Are you unfamiliar with the Assyrian genocide, Hammidian massacres, and Muslim conquests?

It is literally unbelievable that someone claims Christian persecution “only really started” after the creation of Israel. Wow. Take a history class. [/quote]

We were talking about this century and the last in Arab countries, not in Turkey or Persia, which is where the Assyrian genocide and Hamidian massacres took place.

A PP even referred to "recent" instances of severe oppression of Christians in specific Arab countries but has not provided cites.  And the Wikipedia cite offered was all about the the Islamic State, not legitimate states.

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Here you go. https://sa.usembassy.gov/2022-report-on-international-religious-freedom-for-saudi-arabia/

[/quote]

Saudi Arabia was not one of the countries the PP named.  They named the Levantine countries, Egypt and Iraq.[/quote]

DP. Here’s Egypt, someone else can do the other countries. The Google machine is very easy to use.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Copts

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2022/4/8/palm-sunday-church-attacks-egypts-worst-day-of-violence

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/10/christians-egypt-unprecedented-persecution-report

Also, arbitrarily excluding Saudi Arabia based on (checks notes) nothing more than an earlier DCUM post seems a bit dishonest, wouldn’t you say?

[/quote]

Not really.

Historically, the area that is Saudi Arabia was overwhelmingly pagan, which Islam made anathema. There were a few Christians here and there (mainly Nestorians) but, as the center of Islam, those few Christians disappeared very early on in Islamic history. Christians traveled through as a part of trade but most Arabian peninsula Muslims had almost no encounters with Christians until the second half of the last century. This changed with the discovery of oil, particularly after the price rose dramatically in the 1970s with the accompanying huge influx of money and foreigners eager to help spend it.

This is very different from the Levantine countries and Iraq, which for more than twenty centuries had large Christian populations up until the present time.  For the most part, Christians and Muslims dwelt peacefully together, bolstered in some areas by a long-established custom, still existing today, of each Muslim and Christian tribe having a tribe of the other religion as their sole tribal ally.[/quote]

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