Middle East Christians

As Jenkins recounts it, some Christians in the Islamic Middle East chose a path of separation, the “creation of a protected Christian reservation.”  that was tried with the creation of Lebanon after World War I, but that experiment ended in civil war and a greatly reduced Christian population.

Others became activists and entered Muslim public life with the aim of creating “a progressive and nonsectarian Middle East in which Christians and other minorities would be able to survive in any nation.”  Christians were thus “influential in  Communist parties, while others founded influential Pan-Arab movements.”  It was Michel Aflaq, from a Greek Orthodox background, who in 1947 founded the Baath party that ruled in Iraq and still rules in Syria.  Christians were also active in the formation of Palestinian resistance movements against Israel: “Much of the sensational Palestinian terrorism across the globe in the 1970s was planned and orchestrated by Christian commanders like George Sabash, Wadih Haddad, and Nayef Hawatmeh, who often operated in alliance with the Baathist regimes.”

Jenkins notes the political ironies that resulted: “From the 1950s through the 1980s, the United States and its European allies viewed the world primarily through the lens of the Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union, and possible Soviet advances against Middle Eastern oil supplies.  Accordingly, the West was alarmed at the propgress of secular leftist movements across the Arab world, of Marxist, Baathist, and nationalist currents, many of which featured Christians so prominently in their leadership.  Americans in particular found it easy to choose between leftist pro-Palestinian Christians and anti-Communist Muslims.  Western governments and intelligence agencies cooperated with the Saudis and other conservative regimes to promote traditionalist Muslim religious organizations.  The result was the spread of Wahhabi- and Muslim Brotherhood-oriented networks in Europe and elsewhere.”

The contemporary political results of these Western alliances are obvious: If the West didn’t exactly create Islamicism, it certainly fanned its flames.  But the brother lessons for Christian politics are also important and challenging.  Might the Christian Arab “secular” and pluralist movements provide a model for the way Christians ought to engage politically in the deChristianized areas of  Europe?  Even if one grants that pluralist systems are neither ideal nor viable in the long run, even if one grants that modern pluralist systems actually involve the establishment of a secular orthodoxy, might the formation of pluralist movements and institutions be a legitimate short-term strategy?  Are there circumstances in which pluralist, “secular” activism is preferable to separatism?