ARAB CHRISTIANS: A LOST MODERNITY
By Tarek Osman for openDemocracy.net

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>From openDemocracy
Sept 4 2007
Switzerland

Arab Christians for centuries played a pivotal role at the heart of
Arab societies. The last generation has seen the beginning of a great
retreat. Tarek Osman maps the forces that have shaped an epic story.

"With steps such as this, your majesty’s wisdom and vision would take
Egypt to lead modernity in the east," said Nubar Pasha, a prominent
civil servant (later Egypt’s first prime minister) whose family had
settled in Egypt in the early 19th century. The addressee of the remark
was the Khedive of Egypt, and the occasion was the inauguration of
the Cairo opera house in 1869 – only the fourth in the world, and
the first anywhere in the middle east, Africa and Asia.

Nubar Pasha, the obsequiousness to a ruler aside, was not
exaggerating. The era was one of great social progress in Egypt,
marked by the establishment of new educational institutions, factories,
publishers that translated foreign books, and cultural bodies. Nubar
was among those who pioneered this wave of modernity; part of the
small, region-wide army of visionaries, business and community leaders
and officials who had helped the ruling Mohammed Ali family in Egypt,
the feudal masters of Mount Lebanon and the Beys of Tunisia (among
other leaders of Arab states) to take their countries forward. Nubar
Pasha, like many of those luminaries, was Christian (in his case of
Armenian origin).

Arab Christians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries –
specifically in Egypt and the Levant – were at the forefront of the
Arab renaissance that propelled the Arab states toward a cultural
and economic resurgence. The process was inspired by Europe, and
particularly by the original agent of the Arab world’s enforced
opening to the modern world: France.

A creative force Much of it happened in Cairo – and in
Alexandria. Al-Ahram, Egypt’s leading daily newspaper (and for decades
the Arab world’s too) was in 1875 founded by an Arab Christian family,
the Taklas. Arab cinema and theatre proper were born at roughly the
same time, their midwife a group of artists in which Arab Christians
such as George Abyad were the most prominent. The second printing
machine in the middle east arrived in Egypt with Napoleon in 1799
(Maronite bishops and priests in Mount Lebanon were the recipients
of the first, in 1589).

It was Arab Christians who conceived Fouad Al-Awal University (later
Cairo University), the first western-style educational institution
in the Arab world. The Levant’s Dar al-Hikma (House of Wisdom),
a 19th-century educational icon, was founded and funded by Arab
Christians. Arab Christians such as Salama Moussa and Abd al-Nour
Pasha guided the leap from a religion-based teaching doctrine toward
a more liberal educational system.

The first banking, translation, and automated manufacturing facilities
in the region were also the brainchildren of Arab Christians – again
mainly in Egypt and the Levant. Most leading figures in the Egyptian
economy, for example, were Christians from al-Saeid (Upper Egypt),
or scions of Levantine and Armenian families that had settled in
Egypt decades before.

The legal and political realm as well as the cultural and
socio-economic one felt the effects of Arab Christians’ creativity.

Their influence neared the political core of their societies in the
early 20th-century when leading Christian families (the Andrawe and
Ghali in Egypt, the Edda and Khazen in the Levant) provided royal
confidantes and advisors. The modern concepts of civil rule, and of
the separation of state and religious authority, found their strongest
advocates among two leading Lebanese Christians: the political icon
Emile Edde, and the inspiring former head of the Maronite church,
Patriarch Arida.

The leading Arab political parties in the most vibrant decades of
the 20th century – which to a large extent inspired the struggle
against European colonialism and the formation of Arab nationalism –
were the al-Wafd party in Egypt and the Ba’ath party in the Levant;
their intellectual leaders were two towering Arab Christian figures,
Makram Ebeid Pasha in Egypt and Michel Aflaq in the Levant.

An east-west bridge For an entire century – from the dawn of the Arab
renaissance in the second half of the 19th century until liberalism’s
decline in the Arab world from the mid-1970s – Arab Christians played a
prominent role in the region’s development. Their presence crossed the
boundaries of the Arab world: north Africa (particularly Tunisia) and
Iraq also had well established and influential Christian communities.

The prominence of Christian figures and families was the outward sign
of more important realities: that Arab Christians were an integral
part of their societies’ fabric; that Christians saw the societies
in which they were born and bred as the natural environment for them
to build careers and fortunes; that Arab societies were inherently
tolerant; that these Arab societies were held together by the shared
notion of belonging to one nation, irrespective of religion; and
(crucially) that personal identity was, to a large extent, defined
by that national belonging.

That belonging and identity instilled coherence. Arab Christians had
for centuries performed a variety of vital roles: as intellectual link
between the east’s predominantly Islamic civilization and Europe; as
agents of progress; as representatives of the dynamic diversity at the
heart of the Islamic world; as guardians of the richness and plurality
of Arab identity. "I am Egyptian by nationality, Muslim by culture":
the famous slogan of the Christian Egyptian, Makram Ebeid Pasha,
is perhaps the most succinct definition of the way enlightened Arab
Christians saw their identity, cultural affiliation, and social role.

Ebeid Pasha (who was elected more than six times to the Egyptian
parliament) here recognized that the Arab world is – by history and
demography – Islamic; yet he also affirmed the responsibility that Arab
Christians have carried in protecting the Arab Islamic civilization
from the danger of seclusion and withdrawal, opening it to the world,
and acting as a cultural bridge between it and the west.

Islamism and Christianity Today, the role of Arab Christians is
diminishing. A number of factors have combined since the 1970s to
produce this outcome: the waning (if not defeat) of Arab nationalism
and the meteoric rise of Islamism; the missionary spread of zealous
Saudi Wahhabism, backed by unprecedented wealth; and the reorientation
of millions of Egyptians and Levantines who traveled to the Gulf in
pursuit of better work opportunities.

The accumulating result was a change in the psyche of the Arab
world: nationalism retreated, leaving significant ground to religion;
national identity retreated and the religious advanced; the traditions
that were imported from the west during the decades of modernization
and enlightenment were gradually replaced by values centered around
religion, spirituality and conservatism; political Islam became the
force which young people started to identify with and advocate.

The once potent liberal forces withdrew to marginalized forums
and salons; Arab societies (Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Algeria and
elsewhere) shifted their gaze from Paris and London towards Riyadh,
Kuwait and Abu Dhabi – and this at a time when those capitals where
far more inward-looking than today. Moreover, the ascendancy of
Islamism triggered the shy but in its own way equally potent rise of
"Christianism" – a conservative, defensive social force aiming to
preserve its identity and way of life in face of the Islamic tide.

This was very far from the cosmopolitanism of old. Between them,
Islamism and Christianism dissected Arab societies on a religious
basis.

It has been telling to witness in Egypt (for example) the rapid
weakening of civil-society’s historic institutions (trade unions,
professional associations, social salons, charities) when confronted by
the exponential growth of the religion-based juggernaut. It has also
been striking to see the dramatic rise in the power of the religious
establishment in media, universities and the professions.

For the last quarter of a century, syndicates of lawyers, teachers,
engineers, doctors and journalists (as well as students unions in all
the major universities) have been controlled almost continuously by
groups of obtrusively Islamic orientation.

Among the 15 percent of Egypt’s population that is Christian, solid,
insular religion-based groupings have emerged in private educational
institutions, medium-sized businesses, and specialized professions –
all with strong links to the church. The Sunday schools too have
regained their popularity after falling away during the1950s and
1960s; Christian-based newspapers, social clubs and charities have
mushroomed. At the same time, sectarianism has begun to acquire a more
dangerous dimension. In 2006, a play alleged to be ridiculing Islam
was the occasion of violent clashes in Alexandria; and the conversion
of a Christian lady to Islam sparked violent riots, fiery articles,
and a potent sign of displeasure from the ultra-influential Egyptian
Coptic pope (in 2007, an attempted conversion in the opposite direction
provoked equal passion).

A retreat from belonging There is no alarming sectarian divide in
Egypt. But the country is experiencing the conspicuous withdrawal
of a substantial body of its Christian citizens from the core of its
socio-economic life. This, and associated phenomena – emigration and
"clustering" – does not bode well for Egyptian society as a whole.

The decline in the active participation of Arab Christians in
politics and central social movements in the country is a severe
loss, both because of the community’s demographic weight and because
it represents a retreat from active engagement that an Arab society
with great development problems can ill afford.

Arab Christians still hold disproportionate economic power in almost
all the societies in which they have a presence (the tragic experience
of Iraq is a special case). However, that economic power is confined:
it does not translate into active participation in shaping the
society’s future. Indeed, the opposite is happening: significant
Christian interests are steadily being channeled outside their
home countries. A senior Lebanese private banker has commented that
swathes of Arab Christian money are poised for transfer at any hint
of serious trouble. True, across the world capital abhors uncertainty
and is typically conservative. Yet, the fact remains that much Arab
Christian economic power has come to see its markets as just that:
as markets, no longer as homes.

Diversity’s new challenge The diminishing role of Christians is not
just an Egyptian problem.

Lebanon faces a massive challenge in building real bridges between
its different confessional communities. The decades since the
mid-1970s – marked by destructive civil war and wars with Israel,
severe sectarian divides, and the dramatic rise of Islamism (most
notably the Hizbollah movement) – has heightened Lebanese Christians’
self-awareness and self-assertion. Christian Syrians, Palestinians,
Jordanians, and Yemenis are acutely marginalized. Iraqi Christians are,
quite simply, deserting their country; more than 200,000 have left
the country since the start of war in 2003, and few will ever return.

In Beirut, the Syrian Protestant College was the first institution
ever to teach the Bible in Arabic – in effect "Arabising" eastern
Christianity and integrating it into Arabic culture, as well as weaving
Arabism into eastern Christianity. It seems that great institutions
retain their greatness. The college, which mutated into the American
University in Beirut, continued for many years to illuminate, educate
and inspire; among the leading intellectuals it housed was Edward
Said, the Arab Christian who created a new way of viewing both east
and west from the "other" side, and who remains a symbol of a cultural
bridge between the Arab world and the western one.

Diversity is a symbol of richness and a source of vigor within
societies. The Arabs’ – and Islam’s – most illuminating societal
example is al-Andalus, medieval Spain. This had its finest hour when
it was a thriving community that integrated Muslims, Christians and
Jews, was open to creative, liberal, progressive ideas, and was –
crucially – tolerant. Islam has proved, throughout its history, that
it is progressive enough to encompass – even nurture – the "other".

There is no doubt that the Islamic political forces will continue
to exert significant influence over the future of the Arab world –
from the Gulf to the Maghreb. The salient test will be whether,
once victorious, political Islam will appreciate the role of Arab
Christians and propel them to the role of full partner; and whether
the Arab Christians who remain will want to undertake that role.

Osman is an Egyptian investment banker covering the Gulf and UK
markets.