The Catholic Church blasts Islamic conquests and the
subjugation of Christian lands and peoples in the following article.
L'Espresso Online The Church and Islam. "La Civiltà Cattolica" Breaks the
Ceasefire
Through the prestigious magazine, the Vatican denounces with unusual harshness the
oppression of Christians in Muslim countries. A testimony from Egypt by Sandro Magister
ROMA – There is a conspicuous absence among the new cardinals created on October 21
by John Paul II: Archbishop Michael Louis Fitzgerald, president of the Pontifical Council
for Interreligious Dialogue.
The current explanation is that Fitzgerald was not made cardinal because of his
excessively placid approach to Islam.
And it is true that, together with this exclusion, an article was printed in “La
Civiltà Cattolica” that contrasts markedly with the matter of Fitzgerald’s
rebuke.
“La Civiltà Cattolica,” edited by a group of Jesuits in Rome, is a very special
magazine. Every one of its articles is reviewed by the Vatican secretary of state before
publication. So the magazine reflects his thought faithfully.
In its October 18 edition, “La Civiltà Cattolica” published a strikingly severe
article on the condition of Christians in Muslim countries. The central thesis of the
article is that “in all of its history, Islam has shown a warlike and conquering
face”; that “for almost a thousand years, Europe lived under its constant
threat”; and that what remains of the Christian population in Islamic countries is
still subjected to “perpetual discrimination,” with episodes of bloody
persecution.
What follows is an ample extract from the article printed in “La Civiltà
Cattolica” no. 3680, October 18, 2003, and used here with the kind permission of the
magazine:
Christians in Islamic Countries
by Giuseppe De Rosa S.I.
How do Christians in Muslim-majority countries live? [...] We must first highlight a
seemingly rather curious fact: in all the countries of North Africa (Egypt, Libya,
Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco), before the Muslim invasion and despite incursions by vandals,
there were blossoming Christian communities that contributed to the universal Church great
personalities, such as Tertullian; Saint Ciprian, bishop of Carthage, martyred in 258;
Saint Augustine, bishop of Hippo; and Saint Fulgentius, bishop of Ruspe. But after the
Arab conquest, Christianity was absorbed by Islam to such an extent that today it has a
significant presence only in Egypt, with the Coptic Orthodox and other tiny Christian
minorities, which make up 7-10 percent of the Egyptian population.
The same can be said of the Middle East (Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Mesopotamia),
in which there were flourishing Christian areas prior to the Islamic invasion, and where
today there are only small Christian communities, with the exception of Lebanon, where
Christians make up a significant part of the population.
As for present-day Turkey, this was in the first Christian centuries the land in which
Christianity bore its best fruits in the areas of liturgy, theology, and monastic life.
The invasion of the Seljuk Turks and the conquest of Constantinople by Mehmet II (1453)
lead to the founding of the Ottoman empire and to the near destruction of Christianity in
the Anatolian peninsula. Thus today in Turkey Christians number approximately 100,000,
among whom are a small number of Orthodox, who live around Phanar, the see of the
ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople, who has the primacy of honor in the Orthodox
world and who holds communion with eight patriarchs and many autocephalous Churches in
both East and West, with approximately 180 million faithful.
In conclusion, we may state in historical terms that in all the places where Islam imposed
itself by military force, which has few historical parallels for its rapidity and breadth,
Christianity, which had been extraordinarily vigorous and rooted for centuries,
practically disappeared or was reduced to tiny islands in an endless Islamic sea. It is
not easy to explain how that could have happened. [...]
In reality, the reduction of Christianity to a small minority was not due to violent
religious persecution, but to the conditions in which Christians were forced to live in
the organization of the Islamic state. [...]
THE WARRIOR FACE OF ISLAM: “JIHAD”
According to Islamic law, the world is divided into three parts: dar al-harb (the house of
war), dar al-islam (the house of Islam), and dar al-‘ahd (the house of accord); that
is, the countries with which a treaty was stipulated. [...]
As for the countries belonging to the “house of war,” Islamic canon law
recognizes no relations with them other than “holy war” (jihad), which signifies
an “effort” in the way of Allah and has two meanings, both of which are equally
essential and must not be dissociated, as if one could exist without the other. In its
primary meaning, jihad indicates the “effort” that the Muslim must undertake to
be faithful to the precepts of the Koran and so improve his “submission” (islam)
to Allah; in the second, it indicates the “effort” that the Muslim must
undertake to “fight in the way of Allah,” which means fighting against the
infidels and spreading Islam throughout the world. Jihad is a precept of the highest
importance, so much so that it is sometimes counted among the fundamental precepts of
Islam, as its sixth “pillar.”
Obedience to the precept of the “holy war” explains why the history of Islam is
one of unending warfare for the conquest of infidel lands. [...] In particular, all of
Islamic history is dominated by the idea of the conquest of the Christian lands of Western
Europe and of the Eastern Roman Empire, whose capital was Constantinople. Thus, through
many centuries, Islam and Christianity faced each other in terrible battles, which led on
one side to the conquest of Constantinople (1453), Bulgaria, and Greece, and on the other,
to the defeat of the Ottoman empire in the naval battle of Lepanto (1571).
But the conquering spirit of Islam did not die after Lepanto. The Islamic advance into
Europe was definitively halted only in 1683, when Vienna was liberated from the Ottoman
siege by the Christian armies under the command of John III Sobieski, the king of Poland.
[...] In reality, for almost a thousand years Europe was under constant threat from Islam,
which twice put its survival in serious danger.
Thus, in all of its history, Islam has shown a warlike face and a conquering spirit for
the glory of Allah. [...] against the “idolaters” who must be given a choice:
convert to Islam, or be killed. [...] As for the “people of the Book”
(Christians, Jews, and “Sabeans”), Muslims must “fight them until their
members pay tribute, one by one, humiliated” (Koran, Sura 9:29). [...]
THE REGIME OF THE “DHIMMA”
According to Muslim law, Christians, Jews, and the followers of other religions
assimilated to Christianity and Judaism (the “Sabeans”) who live in a Muslim
state belong to an inferior social order, in spite of their eventually belonging to the
same race, language, and descent. Islamic law does not recognize the concepts of nation
and citizenship, but only the umma, the one Islamic community, for which reason a Muslim,
as he is part of the umma, may live in any Islamic country as he would in his homeland: he
is subject to the same laws, finds the same customs, and enjoys the same consideration.
But those belonging to the “people of the Book” are subject to the dhimma, which
is a kind of bilateral treaty consisting in the fact that the Islamic state authorizes the
“people of the Book” to inhabit its lands, tolerates its religion, and
guarantees the “protection” of its persons and goods and its defense from
external enemies. Thus the “people of the Book” (Ahl al-Kitab) becomes the
“protected people” (Ahl al-dhimma). In exchange for this “protection,”
the “people of the Book” must pay a tax (jizya) to the Islamic state, which is
imposed only upon able-bodied free men, excluding women, children, and the old and infirm,
and pay a tribute, called the haram, on the lands in its possession.
As for the freedom of worship, the dhimmi are prohibited only from external manifestations
of worship, such as the ringing of bells, processions with the cross, solemn funerals, and
the public sale of religious objects or other articles prohibited for Muslims. A Muslim
man who marries a Christian or a Jew must leave her free to practice her religion and also
to consume the foods permitted by her religion, even if they are forbidden for Muslims,
such as pork or wine. The dhimmi may maintain or repair the churches or synagogues they
already have, but, unless there is a treaty permitting them to own land, they may not
build new places of worship, because to do this they would need to occupy Muslim land,
which can never be ceded to anyone, having become, through Muslim conquest, land
“sacred” to Allah.
In Sura 9:29 the Koran affirms that the “people of the Book,” apart from being
constrained to pay the two taxes mentioned above, must be placed under certain
restrictions, such as dressing in a special way and not being allowed to bear arms or ride
on horseback. Furthermore, the dhimmi may not serve in the army, be functionaries of the
state, be witnesses in trials between Muslims, take the daughters of Muslims as their
wives, be the guardians of underage Muslims, or keep Muslim slaves. They may not inherit
from Muslims, nor Muslims from them, but legacies are permitted.
The release of the dhimma came about above all through conversion of the “people of
the Book” to islam; but Muslims, especially in the early centuries, did not look
favorably upon such conversions, because they represented a grave loss to the treasury,
which flourished in direct proportion to the number of the dhimmi, who paid both the
personal tax and the land tax. The dissolution of dhimma status could also take place
through failure to observe the “treaty”; that is, if the dhimmi took up arms
against Muslims, refused to remain subject or to pay tribute, abducted a Muslim woman,
blasphemed or offended the prophet Mohammed and the Islamic religion, or if they drew a
Muslim away from Islam, converting him to their own religion. According to the gravity of
each case, the penalty could be the confiscation of goods, reduction to slavery, or death
– unless the person who had committed the crimes converted to Islam. In that case,
all penalties were waived.
CONSEQUENCE: THE EROSION OF CHRISTIANITY
It is evident that the condition of the dhimmi, prolonged through centuries, has led
slowly but inexorably to the near extinction of Christianity in Muslim lands: the
condition of civil inferiority, which prevented Christians from attaining public offices,
and the condition of religious inferiority, which closed them in an asphyxiated religious
life and practice with no possibility of development, put the Christians to the necessity
of emigrating, or, more frequently, to the temptation of converting to Islam. There was
also the fact that a Christian could not marry a Muslim woman without converting to Islam,
in part because her children had to be educated in that faith. Furthermore, a Christian
who became Muslim could divorce very easily, whereas Christianity prohibited divorce. And
apart from all this, the Christians in Muslim territories were seriously divided among
themselves – and frequently even enemies – because they belonged to Churches
that were different by confession (Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Churches) and by rite
(Syro-oriental, Antiochian, Maronite, Coptic-Alexandrian, Armenian, Byzantine). Thus
mutual assistance was almost impossible.
The regime of the dhimma lasted for over a millennium, even if not always and everywhere
in the harsh form called “the conditions of ‘Umar,” according to which
Christians not only did not have the right to construct new churches and restore existing
ones, even if they fell into ruins (and, if they had the permission to construct through
the good will of the Muslim governor, the churches could not be of large dimensions: the
building must be more modest than all the religious buildings around it); but the largest
and most beautiful churches had to be transformed into mosques. That transformation made
it impossible for the church-mosques ever to be restored to the Christian community,
because a place that has become a mosque cannot be put to another use.
The consequence of the dhimma regime was the “erosion” of the Christian
communities and the conversion of many Christians to Islam for economic, social, and
political motives: to find a better job, enjoy a better social status, participate in
administrative, political, and military life, and in order not to live in a condition of
perpetual discrimination.
In recent centuries, the dhimma system has undergone some modifications, in part because
the ideas of citizenship and the equality of all citizens before the state have gained a
foothold even in Muslim countries. Nevertheless, in practice, the traditional conception
is still present. [...] The Christian, whether he wish it or not, is brought back in spite
of himself to the concept of the dhimmi, even if the term no longer appears in the
present-day laws of a good number of Muslim-majority countries.
To understand the present condition of these Christians, we must refer back to the history
of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the Ottoman empire of the 19th century, where the
millet system was in force, the tanzimat, “regulations” of a liberal character,
were introduced. [...] From the second half of the 19th century to the end of the first
World War, there was a “Reawakening” (Nahda) movement in the Arab world, under
Western influence, in the fields of literature, language, and thought. Many intellectuals
were conquered by liberal ideas.
On another front, the Christians created strong ties with the Western powers – France
and Great Britain in particular – which, after the dissolution of the Ottoman empire,
obtained the protectorate of the countries that had belonged to the empire. This permitted
the Christians both greater civil and religious liberty and cultural advancement.
Moreover, during the first half of the 20th century various political parties of
nationalist and socialist, and thus secularist, tendencies were born, such as the
Ba’th, the Socialist Party of the Arab Renewal, founded at the end of the 1930’s
in Damascus by Syrian professor Michel ‘Aflaz, a Greek Orthodox. In 1953 this party
was united with the Syrian Popular Party, founded in 1932 by Antun Sa’ada, a Greek
Orthodox from Lebanon. In brief, political regimes inspired by the liberal and secular
principles of Western Europe rose up in various Islamic countries.
THE BIRTH OF RADICAL ISLAM
These events provoked a harsh reaction in the Islamic world, due to fears that the
secularist ideas and “corrupt” customs of the Western world, identified with
Christianity, would endanger the purity of Islam and constitute a deadly threat to its
very existence. This reaction was fed by strong resentment against the Western powers,
which had dared to impose their political rule upon Islam, “the greatest nation ever
raised up by Allah among men” (Koran, s. 3:110), and against their customs
“despised” by the “nation (umma) that urges to goodness, promotes justice,
and restrains iniquity” (ibid, s. 3:104).
Thus was born “radical Islam,” which set itself up as the interpreter of the
frustrations of the Muslim masses. Hasan al Banna, Sayyd Qutb, Abd al-Qadir ‘Uda in
Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood; Abu l-A‘li al-Mawdudi in Pakistan, and the
Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran are its most significant witnesses, and their followers have
spread from Dakar to Kuala Lumpur. [...]
THE PRESENT CONDITION OF CHRISTIANS IN THE MUSLIM WORLD
Radical Islam, which proposes that shari’a law be instituted in every Islamic state,
is gaining ground in many Muslim countries, in which groups of Christians are also
present. It is evident that the institution of shari’a would render the lives of
Christians rather difficult, and their very existence would be constantly in danger. This
is the cause of the mass emigration of Christians from Islamic countries to Western
countries: Europe, the United States, Canada, and Australia. [...] The estimated number of
Arab Christians who have emigrated from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine,
and Israel in the last decade hovers around three million, which is from 26.5 to 34.1
percent of the estimated number of Christians currently living in the Middle East.
Furthermore, we must not underestimate grave recent actions against Christians in some
Muslim-majority countries. In Algeria, the bishop of Orano, P. Claverie (1996), seven
Trappist monks from Tibehirini (1999), four White Fathers (1994), and six sisters from
various religious congregations have been brutally killed by Islamic fundamentalists,
although the murders were condemned by numerous Muslim authorities. In Pakistan, which
numbers 3,800,000 Christians among a population of 156,000,000 (96 percent Muslim), on
October 28, 2001, some Muslims entered the Church of St. Dominic in Bahawalpur and gunned
down 18 Christians. On May 6, 1998, Catholic bishop John Joseph killed himself for
protesting against the blasphemy law, which punishes with death anyone who offends
Mohammed, even only “by speaking words, or by actions and through allusions, directly
or indirectly.” For example, by saying that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, one
offends Mohammed, who affirmed that Jesus is not the Son of God, but his
“servant.” With this kind of law, Christians are in constant danger of death.
In Nigeria – where 13 states have introduced shari’a as state law – several
thousand Christians have been the victims of incidents. Serious incidents are taking place
in the south of the Philippines and in Indonesia, which, with its 212 million inhabitants,
is the most populous Muslim country in the world, to the harm of the Christians of Java,
East Timor, and the Moluccas. But the most tragic situation – and, unfortunately,
forgotten by the Western world! – is that of Sudan, where the North is Arab and
Muslim, and the South black and Christian, and in part, animist. Since the time of
president G.M. Nimeiry, there has been a state of civil war between the North, which has
proclaimed shari’a and intends to impose it with fierce violence on the rest of the
country, and the South, which aims to preserve and defend its Christian identity. The
North makes use of all of its military power – financed by oil exports to the West
– to destroy Christian villages; prevent the arrival of humanitarian aid; kill the
cattle, which are the means of sustenance for many South Sudanese; and carry out raids,
for Christian girls in particular, who are brought to the North, raped, and sold as slaves
or concubines to rich, older Sudanese men. According to the 2001 report of Amnesty
International, “at the end of 2000, the civil war, which started again in 1983, had
cost the lives of almost two million persons and had caused the forced evacuation of
4,500,000 more. Tens of thousands of persons have been compelled by terror to leave their
homes in the upper Nile region, which is rich in oil, after aerial bombardments, mass
executions, and torture.”
We must, finally, recall a fact that is often forgotten because Saudi Arabia is the
largest provider of oil to the Western world, and the latter therefore has an interest in
not disturbing relations with that country. In reality, in Saudi Arabia, where wahhabism
is in force, not only is it impossible to build a church or even a tiny place of worship,
but any act of Christian worship or any sign of Christian faith is severely prohibited
with the harshest penalties. Thus about a million Christians working in Saudi Arabia are
deprived by violence of any Christian practice or sign. They may participate in mass or in
other Christian practices – and even then with the serious danger of losing their
jobs – only on the property of the foreign oil companies. And yet, Saudi Arabia
spends billions of petrodollars, not for the benefit of its poor citizens or of poor
Muslims in other Muslim countries, but to construct mosques and madrasas in Europe and to
finance the imams of the mosques in all the Western countries. We recall that the Roman
mosque of Monte Antenne, constructed on land donated by the Italian government, was
principally financed by Saudi Arabia and was built to be the largest mosque in Europe, in
the very heart of Christianity.
The following is an interview published in the latest edition of “Il Regno,” the
biweekly of the Sacred Heart congregation of Bologna. The man interviewed is a Coptic
Orthodox Christian, the director of a Cairo weekly. The picture he paints of the condition
of Christians in Egypt – usually classified among the “moderate” Arab
countries – fully confirms what was more generally described by “La Civiltà
Cattolica”:
Christians in Egypt. The Humiliation Continues An interview with Youssef Sidhom, director
of “Watani”
CAIRO – Youssef Sidhom is the director of the weekly “Watani” (“My
Homeland”). Founded in 1958 by his father, Antoun Sidhom, it has always published
news and commentary on the Church and Christianity, themes completely overlooked by all
the other Egyptian newspapers. Many believe it to be a newspaper of the Coptic Orthodox
Church, but that’s not true. It is independent, and has no particular relationship
with that Church, nor does it receive financial support from it. [...]
What are the main problems of the Christians in Egypt?
“The most striking problem is the extreme difficulty in receiving permission to build
a church. Current legislation offers all of the incentives for the construction of
mosques, but it poses almost insurmountable obstacles to the construction of churches. In
1934, the undersecretary for the minister of the interior, Muhammad al-‘Azabi, made
ten conditions for giving permission for the construction of a church, and those
conditions are still valid. Let’s cite a few of them: a church must not be built on
farm land; it must not be close to a mosque or monument; if it is to be constructed in a
zone in which Muslims also live, one must first obtain their permission; there must be a
sufficient number of Christians in the area; there must not be other churches nearby;
police permission must be obtained if there are bridges or canals of the Nile near or if
there is a railroad; the signature of the president of the republic must be obtained. All
these conditions cause insurmountable difficulties. In fact, more than ten years can go by
while waiting for police permission, and in the meantime mosques are hurriedly erected in
the vicinity of the area where the church was meant to be, and the project stumbles
against another prohibition. Moreover, it is not specified how many Christians there must
be for them to have the right to a church. If, for example, there are 1,500, the
government can say that that’s not a sufficient number, when a hundred would be
enough to fill one of our churches.”
But hasn’t President Mubarak facilitated the granting of these permissions by
delegating the matter to the provincial prefects?
“Yes, he allowed the permits to be given by the provincial prefects, and a year later
he ruled that they can also be given by the territory’s local authority. But this
delegated authority only regards the permits to repair and restructure the churches. The
permission to construct a new church is still the sole prerogative of the president of the
republic. [...] This discrimination in the matter of the construction of churches leads
Christians to the bitter conviction that the state considers them second-class citizens.
For the state, a Christian is a kafir, an infidel, he doesn’t know the true religion
or have the true faith, so it’s not worth it to listen to him. In Egypt we live with
humiliating discrimination on religious grounds.” [...]
Does the discrimination regard only the construction of churches, or other aspects of
social life for Christians in Egypt as well?
“It regards our entire life. There’s discrimination in state offices. According
to the constitution, the president must be a Muslim. The Islamic religion is the
foundation of Egyptian legislation. Today, no Christian can be prime minister, even though
there have been Christian prime ministers in the past. Of the thirty-two ministers, only
two are Christians: the finance minister and the minister of the environment. No city or
village mayor can be a Christian. The high posts in the military, the police, and the
presidential guard are filled only with Muslims. There are hundreds of persons in the
diplomatic corps, but only two or three Christians. No Christian can attain high office in
the tribunals. According to the law, two witnesses are necessary to justify a sentence,
but if one of them is Christian, the judge may refuse his testimony because it comes from
an infidel. The rectors of the universities must be Muslim. [...] In any office, the
career of a Muslim who has just arrived will advance beyond that of a Christian who has
been in his post for years. In the 2000 elections, the al-Watani party, which dominates
politics in the country, listed only three Christians among 888 candidates. A Christian
may not teach Arabic, because this material is linked to the teaching of the Islamic
religion. Discrimination is at work even on our identity card, where the religion of
one’s father is shown.”
And in case of divorce?
“The law provides that the children should remain with their mother. But if the
father wants to divorce because he has become a Muslim, which happens frequently, the
judge rules that the children should remain on the side that has the true faith, meaning
the father. So children born to Christians grow up in a completely Muslim family.”
“Is changing religions permitted?”
“Anyone who becomes Muslim is welcomed with big parties. They change his identity
card very quickly; he is helped in his job, with his house, etc. But if a Muslim wants to
become Christian, they not only seek to dissuade him by any means, but his very life is in
danger. I believe that every day there are Egyptians who change religions, but it’s
impossible to know how many. Al-Ahzar would willingly publish the statistics, which would
be a sign of victory and glory, but the Church could never make a choice like this,
because it would bring about many tragedies. In any case, there is a ruling by the
tribunal that establishes that if an Egyptian is born non-Muslim, becomes Muslim, and then
wants to return to his original faith, he may do it. But a Muslim by birth may never
change religions, on pain of exclusion from his inheritance and from the society to which
he belongs – with danger to his own safety.”
(Interview by Camillo Ballin and Francesco Strazzari)
The complete text of the interview is in the September 15, 2003 edition of
“Il Regno”
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