BACKGROUND: Middle East Christians suffer persecution and expulsion

By our dpa-correspondent and Europe Online
13/9/2012

Berlin (dpa) – More than 15 million Christians are thought to be living in the Arab world, although estimates are complicated by the fact that official statistics often put their numbers much lower than the Christian communities do themselves.

The rising influence of Islamists has frequently been accompanied by increased harassment of Christians, ranging from bureaucratic inconvenience to terrorist attack.

LEBANON: Lebanon is home to 18 Christian and Muslim religious groupings, with about 60 per cent of the population of more than 4 million professing Islam. Maronites, who split from the Syriac Orthodox Church in the 7th century, dominate among the 40 per cent of Lebanese describing themselves as Christian. With the aim of avoiding religious conflict, the Lebanese constitution lays down a proportional system. The country‘s president comes traditionally from the Maronite community. The Christian community also includes Greek Orthodox numbering about 250,000, Armenian Orthodox of some 150,000 and around 20,000 Roman Catholics.

SYRIA: Syria regards itself as a secular state, although the president is required to be Muslim. Up to 10 per cent of the population of more than 20 million are Christian. The largest groups are the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch, with a community of 500,000, and Catholics numbering 420,000. Until the civil war erupted, Christians were largely free to practise their religion unhindered. Support for the regime of Bashar al-Assad from Christian communities has turned this religious minority into a target for Islamist rebels.

PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES: Thousands of Christians have emigrated from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip over recent years. The reasons are the violence and terror that erupted after the start of the armed Palestinian resistance in 2000, Israel‘s blockade of the Gaza Strip, poor economic conditions and attacks on the community by radical Islamists. There are around 40,000 Catholics and Orthodox Christians of various kinds on the West Bank and a further 1,000 in the Gaza Strip.

EGYPT: Egypt‘s Copts, whose church dates back to Christianity‘s earliest days, is the largest Christian community in the Middle East. There are between 7 and 12 million Copts in a total population of some 80 million Egyptians. Despite legal guarantees of religious freedom, violent confrontations between Muslims and Copts have erupted over recent years. Conflicts over places of worship and religious converts often end in violence. During the Arab Spring, Egyptians from all religions took part in demonstrations, but following the ousting of President Hosny Mubarak in February 2011, attacks on Christians actually increased.

IRAQ: There were massacres and expulsions of Christians in some of the Middle East‘s oldest Christian communities under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Since the 2003 US-led invasion, Christians have become a target for fundamentalist fanatics, and around 2,000 Christians have been killed. There are no reliable figures on the number of Christians remaining in Iraq, but estimates suggest there are fewer than 300,000 left, from a figure that once reached 1.5 million. dpa fsr cha sit npr Author: Friedhelm Schachtschneider

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