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The Impossible Future of Christians in the Middle East

(The Atlantic) Emma Green - The precarious state of Christianity in Iraq is tragic on its own terms. The world may soon witness the permanent displacement of an ancient religion and an ancient people. Those indigenous to this area share more than faith: They call themselves Suraye and claim a connection to the ancient peoples who inhabited this land long before the birth of Christ. But the fate of Christianity in places like the Nineveh Plain of Iraq has a geopolitical significance as well. Religious minorities test a country's tolerance for pluralism; a healthy liberal democracy protects vulnerable groups and allows them to participate freely in society. Whether Christians can survive and thrive in Muslim-majority countries is a crucial indicator of whether democracy, too, is viable in those places. In Iraq, the outlook is grim, as it is in other nations in the region that are home to historic Christian populations, including Egypt, Syria, and Turkey. Christians who live in these places are subject to discrimination, government-sanctioned intimidation, and routine violence. Alqosh sits nestled below the mountains that divide Iraq from Turkey. For Christians in the Nineveh Plain, Alqosh is a place of national and religious pride, a way station for important figures in the ancient Christian world that some here compare in significance to Jerusalem or Rome. There's another history to Alqosh. Back through the winding roads of town sits a tomb said to belong to Nahum, a biblical prophet believed to have lived in the region during the seventh century BCE. Jews prayed in this place. The building was a synagogue and the walls are covered in Hebrew. One engraved stone promises, "This will be your dwelling place forever." Jews lived in Alqosh for centuries, and in Iraq for thousands of years, although the priest who showed me around, Father Araam, knew about them only from stories. The Babylonian Talmud, which is the major text of rabbinic Judaism, was written here. Then, over a few short years, the Jews disappeared. Almost all of Iraq's remaining Jews were effectively expelled from the country in the late 1940s and early 1950s amid intense political pressure and mob violence. Priests in the Nineveh Plain see this history as a warning. Their communities, too, could one day be nothing more than overgrown tombs.
2019-05-29 00:00:00
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