Religious dialogue is worthwhile endeavor. In particular,
Christians and Muslims should engage one another. While miracles
are unlikely to result, greater familiarity may reduce unintended
misunderstanding and insult.
However, any dialogue must be based on truth. Including
the pervasive Islamic persecution of Christians, Jews, and other
religious minorities.
Unfortunately, truth apparently is not a concern of the
Muslim side of one well-publicized engagement process with
Catholics. The al-Azhar Islamic Research Council, Sunni Islam’s
highest seat of learning, held an emergency meeting and decided to
suspend its bi-annual meetings with the Vatican.
The reason: “repeatedly insulting remarks issued by the
Vatican Pope towards Islam and his statement that Muslims are
discriminating against others who live with them in the Middle
East.” The Cairo-based Council also criticized Pope Benedict XVI’s
“unjustified claim that Copts are persecuted in Egypt and the
Middle East.” Indeed, added the Council, the Pope had “repeatedly
addressed Islam negatively.” Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, the grand imam
of al-Azhar University, further denounced the Pope’s “unacceptable
interference in Egypt’s affairs.”
Even before the Council acted, the Egyptian government had
attacked the Vatican’s “unacceptable interference in its internal
affairs” and recalled its ambassador from the Holy See. Ambassador
Lamia Aly Mekhemar, who returned to Cairo for “consultation,”
explained that “We do not share the views that Christians are
persecuted in our part of the world.” Nor, he added, does his
government agree that “some governments in the area have not
provided protection for the Christians in the Middle East.”
Moreover, Arab leaders gathered for an economic summit in Sharm
al-Sheikh expressed “total rejection” of foreign interference
regarding Christian minorities in the Middle East.
The Council, Egyptian government, and other Middle Eastern
states are angry because the Pope denounced the murder of
Christians in Egypt, Iraq, and Nigeria. He spoke of “the urgent
need for the governments of the region” to protect religious
minorities and urged Christian communities to maintain a nonviolent
response to “a strategy of violence that has Christians as a
target.”
Apparently the al-Azhar Islamic Research Council believes
in inter-faith dialogue, but only so long as it does not include
the fact that members of one side of that dialogue are busy killing
members of the other side. Indeed, pointing to ongoing attacks
constitutes “insulting remarks.” Moreover, America’s Arab allies
enjoy cashing big checks from Uncle Sam, but are outraged, simply
outraged, that the latter has the temerity to mention the lack of
religious liberty in those same nations.
Almost makes you wonder whether adherents of the “religion
of peace” think it really is the “religion of peace.” Or at least
that being the “religion of peace” actually requires believing in,
well, “peace.”
The reaction of the Council and Arab governments is
extraordinarily revealing because Islamic brutality, both
discrimination and violence, against Christians is so pervasive.
The Pope spoke out after a bombing in Alexandria outside a Coptic
Church on New Year’s Eve which killed 25 people and injured more
than 90 others. Christians continue to be killed in Iraq and
Nigeria.
Christian converts risk judicial murder in Afghanistan.
Pakistan is threatening to execute a Christian “blasphemer” in
Pakistan. Iran recently initiated a campaign against Christians.
Even in relatively liberal Muslim states, like Kuwait, where
Christians can worship openly, proselytism is forbidden.
Egypt is a particularly apt case since the number of
Christians is relatively large, constituting as much as 15 percent
of a population of more than 80 million.
Violence is common. In mid-November an off-duty police
officer boarded a train and opened fire, murdering a 71-year-old
Copt and injuring five other Christians. Last November Muslim mobs
destroyed a score of homes and shops in Qena Province. Earlier in
the year six Copts along with a Muslim guard were killed and
another nine Copts wounded in a drive-by shooting in the town of
Nag Hammadi. Kathryn Cameron Porter of the Council for Human Rights
observed afterwards: “Copts in Egypt continuously face ongoing
discrimination and outright persecution, either by the Egyptian
government or through its tacit approval.”
Although Cairo routinely discriminates against
non-Muslims, it does not directly engage in what we typically think
of as persecution. But it does little to prevent private violence.
Unfortunately, the effect is basically the same.
Dina Guirguis of the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy testified last week before the Tom Lantos Human Rights
Commission of the House Foreign Affairs Committee: “Egypt’s native
Christians … are the Middle East’s largest Christian minority but
in the past decade have faced an alarming escalation of violence as
state protection has dwindled.” Yet when the Copts attempt to
protect themselves, as in the city of Giza last November, the
police do intervene — against the victims.
Guirguis pointed to one case where a judge and his two
sons, who were prosecutors, led a mob in destroying a Greek
Orthodox church. “At least half a dozen murders of Christians by
Muslims in the last four years were rendered crimes without
punishment due to the refusal of the state to follow the
requirements of the rule of law in prosecuting felonies,” she
added. The complicity of security forces and legal officials in
violence as well as discrimination demonstrates to all Egyptians
that “sectarian violence is a crime to be committed with impunity,”
Guirguis warned.
The government also routinely interferes with Copts simply
seeking to live out their faith. The state often refuses to allow
construction or repair of churches or other buildings, even those
for social functions. Christians have been ordered to take down
crosses outside of churches and even charged for private worship
without a permit. Moreover, the government has discriminated
against Copts when fulfilling its civil role, such as issuing
identification cards.
Egypt’s wretched record is well established. In its report
last year on international religious freedom, the State Department
observed: “Christians and members of the Baha’i faith, which the
government does not recognize, face personal and collective
discrimination, especially in government employment and their
ability to build, renovate, and repair places of worship. The
government also sometimes arrested, detained, and harassed Muslims
such as Shi’a. Ahmadiyas, Quaranists, converts from Islam to
Christianity, and members of other religious groups whose beliefs
and/or practices it deemed to deviate from mainstream Islamic
beliefs and whose activities it alleged to jeopardize communal
harmony.”
For the same reasons the U.S. Commission on International
Religious Freedom placed Egypt on its “watch list.” The Commission
pointed to widespread “discrimination, intolerance, and other human
rights violations against members of religious minorities, as well
as disfavored Muslims.” Last year’s Commission report cited “a
significant upsurge in violence” against Copts as well as “a
growing climate of impunity” for those who commit such
crimes.
The group International Christian Concern placed Egypt in
this year’s annual “Hall of Shame.” Explained ICC: “While Egypt
escaped being included in the Hall of Shame in 2010, escalating
atrocities committed against the Arab world’s largest Christian
minority forced us to include Egypt in this year’s report.” Indeed,
last year, reported ICC, was “one of Egypt’s worse years of
persecution in recent memory.”
One can’t help but wonder where Pope Benedict came up with
the silly idea that Christians face discrimination and persecution
in the Middle East. No wonder the al-Azhar Islamic Research Council
was upset. Tsk, tsk.
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi responded to the
Council decision: “The pontifical council for inter-religious
dialogue’s line of openness and desire to dialogue is unchanged.”
That’s a truly “Christian” response, but the Vatican obviously
should not expect the same in return, at least not from its Islamic
counterparts.
There is much to criticize in the policies of Western
governments, including of the U.S. But that has nothing to do with
an inter-faith dialogue. It certainly has nothing to do with how
Christians, Jews, Baha’is, and other religious minorities are, or
at least should be, treated in majority Muslim
nations.
Moreover, until Muslim governments treat all of their
people, irrespective of faith, with respect and dignity, they have
no credibility to complain about the treatment of Muslims
elsewhere. As Jesus explained, we should take the plank out of our
own eye before seeking to pull a speck out of someone else’s eye
(Matthew 7:3-5). His advice should be widely shared and, more
importantly, heeded in Cairo and throughout the Muslim
world.
Mr. Bandow is a Senior Fellow in International
Religious Persecution at the Institute on Religion and Public
Policy.
