By Jonathan Manthorpe, CNS
This commentary was published in The Gazette of Montreal on 05/01/2011
Before his death in 2004, Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, used to make a point of attending the Christian midnight mass service at St. Catherine's Church in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve.
Now, it may well be that Arafat, a Muslim, believed the Pablum statements put out around his attendance that it was a gesture of peace and reconciliation toward the three main religions of the Middle East: Islam, Judaism and Christianity.
More likely, though, is that Arafat was recognizing that a substantial and important minority of his constituency - people who identify themselves as Palestinians - are Christians. He was shoring up his political support.
Arafat's antics were a reminder that although the Middle East might sometimes seem to be a monolithic swath of Islamic belief from the Mediterranean to India, with minor enclaves of Jews in Israel and Christians in Lebanon, that is not the case.
The Middle East remains as it has been for hundreds of years a patchwork of religions, sects and styles of observance.
A telling example of this kaleidoscope and the complexity of its patterns is that the second largest Jewish population in the Middle East, perhaps as many as 34,000 people, lives in Iran.
That's the Iran whose president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the fundamentalist Shiite Muslim ayatollah clerics whom he serves seem bent on the destruction of Israel and acquiring nuclear weapons for that purpose.
There has been a more immediately bloody reminder of the quilted pattern of Middle Eastern religion over this Christmas period with murderous attacks on Christian families and churches in Iraq and in Egypt.
Both countries have substantial Christian minorities.
At the time of the American led invasion of Iraq in 2003 the Christian population of the country was estimated to be up to a million out of a total of 27.3 million.
In Egypt, the Christian presence is even stronger with the up to 11 million people of the Coptic Orthodox Church comprising up to 16 per cent of the country's nearly 69 million people.
Until quite recently Christians were the majority in Lebanon, but civil war and rising militancy among factions of the Muslim population have prompted emigration. Christian Lebanese now make up about 40 per cent of the country's four million people.
That is the common picture throughout the Middle East. While the region may still display a spectrum of religions, the story of the last 100 years is of growing intolerance and persecution of minority religions by states professing Islam.
In the modern context this shift began with the defeat and carving up of the usually tolerant Turkish Ottoman Empire after the First World War.
To a significant degree we are still struggling with the confusion that collapse created. France and Britain attempted to fashion subservient nation states with little or no regard for the aspirations of the people involved.
The result, after the Second World War, was a storm of Arab nationalism led by Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Now, it may well be that Arafat, a Muslim, believed the Pablum statements put out around his attendance that it was a gesture of peace and reconciliation toward the three main religions of the Middle East: Islam, Judaism and Christianity.
More likely, though, is that Arafat was recognizing that a substantial and important minority of his constituency - people who identify themselves as Palestinians - are Christians. He was shoring up his political support.
Arafat's antics were a reminder that although the Middle East might sometimes seem to be a monolithic swath of Islamic belief from the Mediterranean to India, with minor enclaves of Jews in Israel and Christians in Lebanon, that is not the case.
The Middle East remains as it has been for hundreds of years a patchwork of religions, sects and styles of observance.
A telling example of this kaleidoscope and the complexity of its patterns is that the second largest Jewish population in the Middle East, perhaps as many as 34,000 people, lives in Iran.
That's the Iran whose president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the fundamentalist Shiite Muslim ayatollah clerics whom he serves seem bent on the destruction of Israel and acquiring nuclear weapons for that purpose.
There has been a more immediately bloody reminder of the quilted pattern of Middle Eastern religion over this Christmas period with murderous attacks on Christian families and churches in Iraq and in Egypt.
Both countries have substantial Christian minorities.
At the time of the American led invasion of Iraq in 2003 the Christian population of the country was estimated to be up to a million out of a total of 27.3 million.
In Egypt, the Christian presence is even stronger with the up to 11 million people of the Coptic Orthodox Church comprising up to 16 per cent of the country's nearly 69 million people.
Until quite recently Christians were the majority in Lebanon, but civil war and rising militancy among factions of the Muslim population have prompted emigration. Christian Lebanese now make up about 40 per cent of the country's four million people.
That is the common picture throughout the Middle East. While the region may still display a spectrum of religions, the story of the last 100 years is of growing intolerance and persecution of minority religions by states professing Islam.
In the modern context this shift began with the defeat and carving up of the usually tolerant Turkish Ottoman Empire after the First World War.
To a significant degree we are still struggling with the confusion that collapse created. France and Britain attempted to fashion subservient nation states with little or no regard for the aspirations of the people involved.
The result, after the Second World War, was a storm of Arab nationalism led by Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser.
That regional nationalism was largely ethnic in its impetus, which brought it up against the creation of Israel as a Jewish state in 1948.
There used to be substantial Jewish populations throughout the Middle East, but especially in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, North Africa and - even more than now - Iran.
But to a great or lesser degree all those countries have engaged in pogroms, persecution and intimidation aimed at eradicating the Jewish populations or forcing them to leave.
The switch from persecution based on nationalism to purges based on religious intolerance started with the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. It has spread throughout the region as Islamic radicalism has taken over from nationalism as the driving force of the extreme wings of regional politics.
For the last 20 years, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has been brutally effective in keeping a lid on the rise of fundamentalism in his country, symbolized by the Muslim Brotherhood.
But Mubarak is nearly 83 years old, reportedly seriously ill, and presidential elections are due in September.
The concern now must be that the bombing of the Christian church is the opening salvo in an attempt to make Egypt, the key Arab country of the Middle East, into a radicalized Islamic state.
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