Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day: A Time to Reflect on the Status of Christianity
President Biden declaring that the Ottoman Empire did commit mass genocides. This move has severed relations between Turkey and the US. In his own words: "Each year on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring." Photo credit: CNN.
Report by Fouad Kazan
On the occasion of the April 24, Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, the Biden administration officially recognized the massacre of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire as a genocide. Prompting the anger of Turkey, President Biden is the first US president to declare so. During the early part of the 20th century, one and the half million people were murdered as part of an ethnic cleansing scheme orchestrated by top Turkish decision makers. Part of the plan was also to relocate them to other parts of the empire. As such, an estimated 1.5 million Armenian women, children, and elderly were forcefully deported and set on death marches into the Syrian Desert, lacking food and water. As a result, more than two millennia of Armenian and Christian civilization was destroyed, especially with the expulsion of Syriac and Greek Orthodox Christians as well and the destruction of the civilization they had built. Naturally, this paved the way for creating a unified ethno-national Turkish state without Armenians and Christians of all denominations.[1] The Ottoman Empire does not exist anymore, but the effects of the atrocities it had committed reverberated through history and to our current times. Today, we refer to the Armenian Genocide as a pretext to evaluate the current status of Christianity in the Middle East.
Aid to the Church in Need warns that as persecution and conflict continue to threaten and dislocate Christian communities, the Christian presence throughout the Middle East may be brought to an unwilling end within 10 years—even sooner in particularly troubled states such as Iraq. Photo credit: Aid to the Church in Need.
Throughout the past decade, Christians in the Middle East have decreased in number. In Iraq for instance, 1.4 million Christians were counted in a 1987 Iraqi government census. Today, it is thought that between 200,000 and 300,000 Christians are left in Iraq.[2] Similarly, in Palestine, Christians form about 1% of the population.[3] However, in Lebanon and Syria, Christians comprise 36% and 10% respectively. The reason for this is that Christians generally have lower birth rates, higher economic status, and more opportunities to leave the country. As such, many Christians decide to emigrate to the West, a Christian based culture, as a form of salvation and a transition to better life conditions. Moreover, many Christians fear the resurgence of radical Islam as a political movement as was the case with the emergence of ISIS. For Christians, the defeat of ISIS does not mean that radical Islam is finished; the socioeconomic and cultural conditions that gave birth to ISIS and other similar groups still exist. [4]
In many countries across the region, laws and political practices tend to undermine basic human rights and a general sense of equality for all citizens—a reality that places special burdens on Christians. For example, blasphemy laws are currently in place and are used to prosecute individuals on basic religious freedoms, particularly in the Christian community. Christians—along with other religious minorities, atheists, and even secular Muslims—are often threatened with imprisonment for any perceived negative comments against Islam or preaching other religions in most Middle Eastern nations.
Even after the defeat of ISIS and other fundamental groups, Christians are still being persecuted by extremism. Photo credit: www.churchinneed.org.
Meanwhile, in countries that do have legal frameworks that strive to strike a balance between all people of several denominations, nations in the region suffer from institutional weakness. For example, in Egypt’s rural south, an area known as Upper Egypt, Christians are being kidnapped while the police and law enforcement agencies do not intervene adequately to protect them, a nuisance shared by many Christians. In other countries such as Syria and Iraq that are experiencing extreme conflict and civil war, nonexistent government institutions have left Christians particularly vulnerable.
Another issue that affects Christian presence is the internal divisions among churches and inadequate coordination between different churches to solve specific issues affecting their communities. There is a divide in certain churches between the leadership and clergy and laity on the distribution and use of church resources, including property holdings, leading to many arguments and persistent disunity. Many ordinary Christian civilians feel that churches are not giving them the assistance they need, seeing that they have strips of property and reserves.
We can go on and on about this topic as a plethora of information is available to us on the issues raised above. All data available point towards one fact: Christians in the Middle East are in trouble. Despite the signing of the document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together, despite the recent visit of his Holiness Pope Francis to Iraq, despite the acknowledgment of the Armenian genocide by the US, and despite Russia’s military intervention to cripple ISIS, Christian presence within the region is deteriorating for all the reasons (and more) mentioned above. Unless ecumenical institutions push forward for solidarity, another Armenian/ Christian genocide will not be far off in the future.
Communication and Public Relations Department
[1] Savelsberg, J. J. Knowing About Genocide: Armenian Suffering and Epistemic Struggles. Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.99
[2] Amanda Ufheil-Somers "Iraqi Christians: A Primer," Middle East Report 267 (Summer 2013)
[3] Minority Rights Group International, World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples - Palestine : Christians, May 2018, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/49749cd12.html [accessed 27 April 2021]
[4] Christians in Syria and the civil war, November 2014 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279186094_Christians_in_Syria_and_the_civil_war
[5] Brian Katulis, Rudy deLeon, and John Craig , The Plight of Christians in the Middle East , Center For American Progress, March 2015, https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/ChristiansMiddleEast-report.pdf