Let's talk about Israel and Palestine...

[orthodoc]

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

As far as converting them to Christian as was mentioned in a recent joke, the Islamization of Gaza has put increasing pressure on the tiny Christian minority. Following the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007, Abu Saqer, leader of Jihadia Salafiya, a rival group to Hamas, announced the opening of a "military wing" to enforce Muslim law in Gaza. "I expect our Christian neighbors to understand the new Hamas rule means real changes. They must be ready for Islamic rule if they want to live in peace in Gaza." Sheik Saqer has asserted that there is "no need" for Christians in Gaza to maintain Christian institutions and demanded that Hamas "must work to impose an Islamic rule or it will lose the authority it has and the will of the people."

In October 2007, Rami Khader Ayyad, owner of Gaza's only Christian bookstore, was abducted, beaten and murdered, after his bookstore was firebombed by an unidentified group attacking targets associated with Western influence. According to Ayyad's family and neighbors, he had regularly received anonymous death threats from people angered by his missionary work.

No one on this board ever comments on the suffering of Christians in the Middle East. It's the dirty little secret that no one acknowledges, because it's fashionable to ascribe the sins of European Roman Catholics who lived centuries ago to people today who have never been Catholic, but who have continued in a faith handed down to them for two millennia.

Christian populations predate Muslims in all of the Middle East and North Africa. Of course they do. And, while Christianity spread peacefully in the first few centuries CE, Islam, as it came into being in the 6th century, spread in the way it does today - through violence, enslavement, and genocide. The Christians of the Middle East are the forgotten minority; they are all Orthodox (or a variant); and they deserve more notice, and concern, from the West.

Big Sarge is the first person who has mentioned anything about Arab Christians. If anyone is interested, investigate what has become of the former Christian populations in Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries.
They have been decimated, driven out, and exterminated.

I spent a great deal of time with Muslim residents in WV during the past two years. They were diverse in opinion and level of devotion, as any group would be who held a common religion but had come from different backgrounds. It was a learning opportunity that I appreciated.

Dana, I've not encountered nor read about any Christian group that practiced/practices FGM. Can you provide a reference? If such a thing has ever been documented, it would be such an anomaly, such an outlier, that it should be noted as such. That is not the case in the many Muslim populations that practice FGM. Even if it predated the adoption of Islam by those populations, even if that could actually be confirmed, it was retained as compatible with Islamic mores and practice. That can't be said for Christian communities in general, in the Middle East and Asia.