As Arab regimes are shaken allies and foes ponder the future

Palm Beach Gardens:
The Arab political coma is over. The spirit of Tunisia is in the Arab psyche. The knees of Arab despots are shaking in North Africa, West Asia and the Gulf states.

It is not only Arabs that are reviewing their priorities and thinking of the future. Israel, having for too long taken advantage of fratricidal regional politics, is now perturbed about Arab awakening. Israel should know that a reforming Arab world would ask for better terms in return for lasting peace.

Claiming to be neutral to Arab revolts, Washington is on the defensive. The White House gives pastoral advice to dictators, while it ignores its complicity in building intimate alliances with the most objectionable of regimes in the region.

Three contagious forms of change are at play today in the Arab world: a grassroots movement targeting oppressive rule in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Jordan; a latent electoral shift in Lebanon and an authorized, electoral initiative to partition Sudan.

For the past five days, an unprecedented uprising has been taking place on the streets of Egypt. Egyptians call for the departure of their last Pharaoh, President Hosni Mubarak. This North African country is the center of the Arab world, a close ally of the US and a frustrated mediator of Arab-Israeli peace.

Mubarak will have to step down as his determined people demand. So far, his army has been friendly to the demonstrators. As the media exposes the scandals of this regime, it is anyone’s guess how long he can retain his post. However, if this revolution is infiltrated by elements paid to loot and spread chaos, the army might intervene and delay the departure of an expired rule.

Washington is hoping for Mubarak staying power. Obama calls on Mubarak to put “meaning into words” by introducing “concrete reform”. The White House should have gone further and stated that the people want real regime change rather than cosmetics. Obama looked so professorial in his televised message to Mubarak. The US president would do well to give “meaning” to his Middle East foreign policy by offering “concrete” steps to a derailed Arab-Israeli peace.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu knows that Arabs will gain power as they reform. Israel now spins the argument that the only alternative to Arab secular autocrats is Islamic theocrats. Are we to assume from this strange logic that Arabs do not learn from the past?

Muslim ideologues are gradually learning that the Koran must not be used as a political handbook or an encyclopedia; that religion does not mix well with politics. The problems of Islamist politics are on display in Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. It is too early to tell for sure, but the spreading revolts appear to be essentially secular and non-ideological.

The course of revolutions is unpredictable; there is always a chance that political Islam will be dominant in some countries. There is no reason to assume that the less Islamic the regime, the better it is. Turkey, Indonesia and Malaysia are Islamic states that allow ample distance between political and religious authority. Each society will learn from its own experience how to integrate religion with governance.

Indeed, if the West does not cooperate with and support emerging reform movements, extreme theocrats may have a better chance of wrenching power from secular parties, especially when state infrastructure is weak, the middle class is thin and civic organization is timid. In any case, people are entitled to shape their own political reform.

Washington is not showing the same neutrality in dealing with Lebanon and Sudan as with Egypt. When the Lebanese government collapsed last week, Washington was eager to dictate policy preferences in the management of a local crisis. Contrary to the US agenda, a populist opposition has already assumed leadership in the forming of the new government. The new cabinet is expected to distance itself from a US- backed, UN-sponsored Special Tribunal for Lebanon. This Tribunal is about to issue an indictment implicating Hezbollah in the 2005 murder of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. The majority of the Lebanese consider the indictment of Hezbollah procedurally compromised and a threat to national stability. Some believe that Washington’s close attention to a six-year old assassination is politically motivated. Many consider Hezbollah’s militia a national defense force. A just solution to the Palestinian problem is a priority for Lebanon; the Lebanese shelter 400,000 Palestinians refugees.

If Egypt is about dethroning a tyrant, and Lebanon is about an ideological shift from the right to the center, Sudan is about the breakup of a country after a long process of ethnic polarization. The US has dominated Sudanese affairs for years through foreign aid.

A referendum has recently authorized the southern region of Sudan to secede from the North. For decades, a tyrannical theocratic regime has hijacked Islam by ruling irresponsibly. For 22 years, the mainly Christian and animist people of the South fought a bloody civil war against the forces of Khartoum. A peace treaty ended the civil war in 2005. The agreement gave the people of the South the right to determine their future. In early January, a referendum revealed an overwhelming desire of the people of the South to secede from the North. If the two sides of Sudan can learn to cooperate as separate entities, they could immensely improve the fate of their peoples. If they continue to work against each other, they will perpetuate agony.

As Arab systems evolve, lessons emerge.

Genuine foreign aid should focus on responding to deserving people rather than sustaining compliant regimes.

The ascendance of Hezbollah in Lebanon indicates that the smallest of the Arab countries can sow fear in Israel. The best way for Israel to deal with a political resistance which cannot be eliminated by force is by addressing its legitimate concerns.

Middle Eastern states with ethnic and religious divisions - such as Sudan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen and Cyprus- point to a sobering phenomenon: prolonged unjust rule generates irreversible secession movements.

Political reforms will eventually empower the people of the Middle East. But reform will progress at varying rates and not without setbacks.

It is in Israel’s best interest, to embrace such inevitable reforms rather than opposing them. The Zionist state cannot count on perpetual Arab despair and disunity. In a new context of political reform, Israel will have to offer realistic terms for peace with Arabs.

A new order of global politics has just started.

Mideast Christians have a role in nation building

January 14, 2011.

Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

Facing threats, Christians in the Middle East need not run for cover abroad. They are at home. They are not suffering alone. The poor is the largest minority in Arab society.

News of “Muslim terror” against churches and Christians are bound to give the distorted impression that religious persecution in Arab countries is widespread and systematic. Despite rising incidents of politically-motivated attacks on the Christians of Egypt and Iraq, inter-communal relations in the rest of the region have not changed radically.

Middle East Christians need ample inspiration to stay calm and composed in facing sectarian stress. In societies where the majority of people feel oppressed by poor governance, effective advocacy must be national in scope and secular in Character.

Christians still maintain a strong presence in the Middle East. It is estimated that there are 12 to 15 million Christians in the region. The Arab speaking Christians are for the most part indigenous to the land, not converts or immigrants. Christians are normal citizens in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Palestinian Territories, Israel and Sudan. However, the majority of Christians of North Africa and the Arab Gulf area are expatriates. Iranian Christians are largely of Armenian and Assyrian background. In divided Cyprus, the Christians South is Greek and the Muslim North is Turkish.

The Copts of Egypt constitute about half the Christians of the Middle East. Christian Egyptians feel politically marginalized. In those Egyptian communities where church leadership is deeply integrated in society, religious tension and sectarian harassment is rare. But sectarian incidents are on the rise now, as the insecure Mubarak regime is anxious about the 2011 presidential elections. On one side, fanatic Muslim groups accuse the government of appeasing Christians, and on the other, a politically discouraged Christian community blames the same government for appeasing those fanatic groups.

There were over a million Christians in Iraq before the second American invasion. In a climate of foreign occupation and devastating insurgency-attacks on churches, many Iraqi Christians continue to flee to the northern Kurdish-Iraqi region, to Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria and to some Western countries. In Iraq, many churches were built by land donated by the state. Saddam’s foreign minister, Tarek Aziz, was a Chaldean Christian. Iraq’s Christians are, for the most part, Chaldeans, Assyrians and Oriental. The Chaldeans are Catholic. The Assyrians and Oriental Syrian-Orthodox are distinguished by some of the earliest forms of Christian theology.

Instability has local as well international dynamics: erosion of political freedoms, colonial military intervention and rise of fanatic “reform” movements. For the al-Qaeda-inspired insurgents, “War on terror” is processed as “a Christian war on Islam”. Guilt is established by association: fanatics view local Christians as political agents of the Christian West. Christians become targets for revenge against an imaginary global Christian world. Disturbing minorities is a way to arouse panic in society and send a message that the insurgent retains power. Those targeting Christians in Iraq are among the same disruptive elements that have been targeting Shiites, Sunnites and Kurds.

Ongoing wars leave their scars on identity. Middle East Christians should not be oblivious to souring East-West politics: deteriorating Arab-Israeli relations, an open ended Iraq war, an unresolved Lebanese civil war and an unsettled north-south war in Sudan. In each of these conflicts, religious identity has been manipulated and treated as social barrier.

To slow the demographic hemorrhage of Christians, US Policy in the Middle East must start to creatively address the basic etiology of conflict with Islam and Muslims. With ideas, not weapons, America can support democracy abroad.

In the past, American missionaries supported the people of the Holy Land Christians through schools and hospitals. Today, in foreign assistance, the American soldier, the detached expert and the security agent have largely replaced the teacher, the pastor and the doctor. And the missionary approach has changed from enabling people through social service programs to evangelical and political intervention. Proselytizing has replaced skill-building, politics has replaced care and theological warfare has replaced interfaith dialogue.

Christians of the Middle East can help or hinder their cause by the manner they respond to living under autocratic regimes. These regimes wax and wane in their policies of tolerance for minorities. It is important for Christians not to forget that they are not the only group suffering. If Christians wish to contribute to nationwide struggle for freedom and justice, they must organize in solidarity with other groups, not as Christians, but as citizens.