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Protesters were so angry over Syria’s latest and most brutal crackdown on dissent—more than 200 people were killed in Homs over the weekend—and the failure of the United Nations to pass a resolution calling on President Bashir al-Assad to step down, that they attacked seven Syrian embassies all around the world Saturday. The embassy in Cairo was set on fire, and mobs trashed the diplomatic offices in London and Canberra, Australia. Similar scenes played out in Athens, Berlin, Kuwait, and Libya. Russia and China’s veto of the U.N. resolution has been called shameful, and the Syrian opposition said it amounts to providing the Assad regime a “license to kill.”

Lebanon’s Maronites, threatened by Sunni power, will be the bellwether of the Mideast’s Christians. Could they face the same fate as the region’s Jews?

By Lee Smith www.TabletMag.com

Being Christian in the Middle East has never been easy, but the wave of uprisings that has swept the region over the past year has made the situation for the region’s Christian minority almost unbearable. Violence against Egypt’s Coptic Christians—particularly church burnings, which have become routine—has gotten the most attention. But for the best bellwether of where things are headed, look to Lebanon’s Christians.

Lebanon’s Maronite community has long been the region’s Christian citadel. “It used to be that when Christians around the region looked at the situation in Lebanon, it cheered them,” Elie Fawaz, a Lebanese political analyst, told me this week in Beirut. “They saw that here the Christians were equal to their Muslim counterparts. They were citizens and had the same rights as Muslims.” The citadel is now tottering. If Lebanon once served as a beacon for the region’s other Christians, the dimming of this light is making Christians in unstable countries like Iraq, Syria, the Palestinian territories, and Egypt even more vulnerable.

Lebanon’s Christian community comprises up to a third of the country’s total population. It is made up largely of Maronites but also includes Greek Orthodox and a number of other sects, like Armenian Orthodox, Armenian Catholic, Greek Catholic, and Roman Catholic. Christians were likely never a majority in Lebanon, and yet, says Fawaz, a Greek Orthodox, “the Christians didn’t act like a minority. They pushed their vision for an independent and sovereign Lebanese state.”

Historically, Lebanese Christians have provided some of the region’s most influential intellectual leaders, like Charles Malik, who helped write the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Michel Chiha, one of the authors of Lebanon’s 1926 Constitution. In the wake of Lebanon’s independence in 1943, the Christian vision was to build a sovereign state that would bring political and cultural modernity to the country and, eventually, to the broader Middle East.

That project stalled for a number of reasons. First, there was the relative demographic decline of the Christians in the post-independence period, due to the accelerated birth rates of Sunnis and Shiites. The French authorities that oversaw Lebanon during the mandate period created a power-sharing agreement that allotted Christians 50 percent of the parliament—the other 50 percent was split between Shia and Sunnis—and this struck Lebanon’s growing Muslim population as unfair. Most significantly, in addition to these domestic problems, the Christians were unable to protect Lebanon from the region’s furies, which culminated in the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) that pitted a number of different domestic players, as well as regional and international actors, against one another.

One of the main causes of that 15-year conflagration was the support of Lebanese Sunnis for the Palestinian cause, which attached these Sunnis to a larger Arab regional identity with a shared goal of eradicating Israel. The Sunni community’s political, diplomatic, and financial support of the Palestinians set them squarely against the Maronites, who resisted turning Lebanon into a forward operating base for the P.L.O. They sought to preserve their vision of a Lebanon free from the region’s destructive political currents and to avoid the Israeli reprisals they rightly feared.

What’s instructive is that the Christians fought in the war. “In 1975, mothers sent their kids to fight the Palestinians,” says Fawaz. “They had a vision for Lebanon.”

That changed when political calculation and greed shifted Christians’ focus from their war against the P.L.O. and Yasser Arafat’s allies to each other. The Christians split into different factions that faced off during the civil war. Two decades after the end of the war, the Christians are still plagued by this fissure, and they are still represented by the same political leaders who took them to war against one another more than 20 years ago. The result, says Fawaz, “is that today the Christians have no vision. They are definitely a numerical minority and acting like one—reactive and fearful.”

The Christian community here is suffering from a number of symptoms of minority psychosis. Consider that the head of the Maronite church has spoken out in defense of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Patriarch Beshara Butros Rai called Assad “open-minded” in a September interview. “I am hoping Assad will be given more chances to implement the reforms he already launched,” Rai added. An unfortunately all-too-typical Christian fear and hatred of Sunnis has convinced many Lebanese Christians—as well as Syrian ones—that only Damascus’ Alawite minority regime can protect the region’s Christians from Sunni Islamists.

Obviously, a regime that has slaughtered protesters for almost a year hardly embodies the sort of values promoted in the gospel, or warrants the faith of a cleric. But more to the point: This is the same Syrian regime that waged an open-ended campaign of terror against Lebanon’s Christians starting in 2005. Christian politicians and journalists were assassinated; bombs detonated in Christian regions of the country. And the official head of Lebanon’s Christian community is now appealing to Assad for protection?

The Maronites had always distinguished themselves as among the region’s most stubbornly independent of confessional sects. But fear, resentment, and short-sighted political calculation have led them today to seek protection and patronage from the Middle East’s most dangerous and retrograde elements: Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah. Recently, Fawaz explains, senior church officials came out in favor of the arms of Hezbollah’s Islamic resistance. “The Maronite church,” Fawaz says, “has taken a position defending the party that stands accused of killing the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafiq Hariri.” Fear has compelled the Christians to abandon logic as well as moral scruple.

In the aftermath of the February 2005 assassination of Hariri, Damascus withdrew its troops from Lebanon after almost 30 years. That represented a golden opportunity for the country’s Christians. “They’d been resisting Syrian hegemony in order to regain a free and independent Lebanon,” Fawaz says. “With Syria out, the Christians had what they always said they wanted: Sunni leadership that had a Lebanon-first policy.” Some Christian parties did ally themselves with the largest Sunni party, led by the late Hariri’s son Saad. But the majority, under the leadership of Michel Aoun, the former head of the Lebanese army, partnered with Hezbollah instead.

In other words, today’s Christians seem less motivated by their vision of an independent Lebanon than by their hatred of the Sunnis. It’s true that Lebanese Christians, like other minority groups here, including the Shiites, suffered terrible persecution at the hands of the Sunnis, who for centuries treated them as second-class citizens (at best). But Lebanon’s current Sunni leaders are not Ottomans, never mind jihadists. Like the Christians themselves, the Sunni leadership here promotes liberal values and a liberalized economy.

By openly siding against the Sunnis and allying with Hezbollah—and by extension Iran—the Christians have let identity politics and ideology, rather than interests and values, drive policy. The Sunnis are the regional majority, and no matter what sort of revolutionary project Iran has in store for the Middle East, the Sunnis aren’t going anywhere.

The question for the Christians is how to respond to the upheavals that have reshaped the region over the last year. Lebanon’s Christian population has the power to set the agenda for the rest of their regional co-religionists. Either they can identify and work with those Sunnis who share their same vision for Lebanon and the rest of the region, or they can let ancient wounds dictate a strategy of resentment that will ensure their demise.

Those inclined to discount the possibility of a Christian-free Middle East would do well to remember that Jews, in the recent past, had a significant place in the Ottoman Empire and Iran. Were it not for the birth of a sovereign Jewish state that took in Jewish refugees thrown out by countries that turned against them, this regional minority might well have disappeared half a century ago. Without an Israel of their own, if the Christians don’t get it right their era in the Middle East may be coming to an end.

By Dore Gold www.IsraelHayom.com

The Saudi-owned Arabic daily Asharq Alawsat published an analysis by a Jordanian commentator last week that asked an important question: How has Bashar Assad continued to stay in power for nearly a year since the revolt against his regime began, while the Tunisian and Egyptian leaders were overthrown in just a few weeks? True, Moammar Gadhafi fell from power because of external intervention, but his regime collapsed in a relatively short period of time. According to the Asharq Alawsat article, the difference between these cases and the revolt against the Syrian regime is the Syrian Army, whose officer class has a large contingent of Alawis belonging to the same religious minority as the Assad family. It makes sense that these officers understand they are fighting not only for Assad’s political survival, but for the Alawis’ very future in Syria.

Who are the Alawis and why might they be at risk if Assad falls? The Alawis are a relatively small minority in Syria, making up at most 12 percent of the population. In comparison, Sunni Muslims are roughly 75% of the Syrian population. Their faith provides a special role for the fourth caliph of Islam, Ali, and because of their name Alawis – or followers of Ali – are often thought to constitute a legitimate branch of Islam. But aside from their use of the Koran, Alawis rely on their own holy book that is not recognized by other Muslims. Their religious faith is based on revering a trinity of three individuals as divine manifestations: Muhammad, Ali, and a third individual named, Salman al-Farisi, a Persian Christian who became a Muslim and knew Muhammad in Medina. Their actual religious rituals are kept secret. They do not build mosques. Yet, in the 1970s, Lebanese Shiite leader Imam Musa Sadr issued a proclamation that the Alawis were legitimate Muslims.

Unlike Imam Musa Sadr, Sunni religious clerics have viewed the Alawis over the centuries as heretics who are not part of the Islamic world. They were not even defined as “people of the book,” like Jews and Christians under the Ottoman Empire. They sought to isolate themselves in the Nusayriya mountains in western Syria, above the city of Latakia. When Ottoman rule over Syria was replaced with French rule, the Alawis had an opportunity to improve their standing. They backed the French mandatory authorities and as a result were recruited into the Syrian military in disproportional numbers along with other minorities, like the Druze and the Ismailis. After Syria’s independence, the Alawis were attracted to the military because it provided them with a vehicle for upward social mobility to escape poverty. The Alawi officers launched massive recruitment drives of fellow Alawis, whom they could trust. In the meantime, the Alawis were attracted to the secular orientation of the Ba’ath party in Syria, which first came to power in 1963, since in a secular state, religious sectarianism would be expected to matter far less. Between the Syrian Army and the Ba’ath party, the Alawis had a firm grip over Syria, despite their small numbers.

The rise of the Muslim Brotherhood across the Middle East during the recent insurrections undoubtedly must influence Alawi calculations to defeat the revolt against Assad at all costs. Over the last 30 years, Saudi Arabia has been promoting Wahhabi Islam in the Sunni Muslim world, by many times employing Muslim Brotherhood networks. The Salafi movements that have arisen as a result of these efforts take an even more hostile view of the Alawis than traditional Sunni Islam. The Saudis’ Wahhabi religious leaders have seen their role as one of cleansing Islam from any traces of polytheism, like saint worship, by giving them nearly divine status. Saudi Arabia’s grand mufti in the 1990s used to call the Alawi-dominated Ba’ath party “Hizb al-Shaitan,” meaning “party of the devil.”

The Muslim Brotherhood is less visible in the Syrian opposition today compared with its role in insurrections in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood is stronger outside of Syria than inside. This might be explained, in part, by their having been decimated in February 1982 by Hafez al-Assad, in the city of al-Hamma, where the Syrian Army massacred more than 20,000 civilians. Whatever the reason for the lower profile of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, Bashar Assad’s Alawi officers have to assume that should they be defeated–leading the Sunni majority to take over Syria–a bloodbath would ensue against the Alawis.

Despite the war of the Assads against the Muslim Brotherhood, other Islamists have managed to penetrate Syria over the last decade, who could magnify traditional antipathy to the Alawis. Because Syria served as a rear base for Sunni volunteers entering Iraq to fight the U.S., many extremist religious groups took root in the Syrian countryside. For example, back in 2007, the Syrian army already had to use helicopter gunships against al-Qaeda affiliates that were attacking its units, like Jund al-Sham.

In recent months, Alawis were reminded of how Sunni clerics from Islamist circles view them. Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Global Muslim Brotherhood, called the Assad government “a heretical regime.” Sheik Adnan al-Arour, a Syrian Sunni religious leader, appeared on a Saudi television network in June and addressed his words specifically to the Alawis who were opposing the Syrian uprising: “I swear by God we will mince them in grinders and feed their flesh to the dogs.”

Given the prevalence of these sentiments, the revolt in Syria has all the trappings of an existential war for the Alawi minority, which explains, but hardly justifies, the reprehensible policies their army has adopted. Moreover, the ultimate consequences of the Syrian civil war have not been lost on the Israel Defense Forces. They also could explain why Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz told the Knesset Foreign and Defense Committee this week that Israel must prepare for a wave of Alawi refugees who might seek refuge in Israel as the conflict continues in Syria.

Egypt Independent www.almasryalyoum.com

The Central Cairo Prosecution has referred Coptic businessman Naguib Sawiris to trial over charges of defamation of religion.

In June, Sawiris posted a picture depicting Mickey Mouse wearing a beard and Minnie Mouse wearing a face veil on his Twitter account, a cartoon that many Muslims considered offensive.

Sawiris later apologized for posting the cartoon, however, his apology did not manage to calm the anger of Salafis who filed a report accusing him of defaming religion.

Salafi groups also launched a one-month campaign to boycott companies that Sawiris owns or is a partner in, such as Mobinil and Al-Masry Al-Youm, causing heavy losses, particularly for his mobile phone company.

On 25 June, Mamdouh Ismail, the lawyer for Jama’a al-Islamiya, and 14 other lawyers filed a suit over the incident, accusing Sawiris of intentionally ridiculing Islamic icons and attire.

According to the paper, Ismail said Sawiris has openly said he rejects Article 2 of the constitution, which states that Islam is the religion of the state, Arabic is its language, and Islamic Sharia is the main source of legislation.

Ismail added that Sawiris previously expressed his rejection of the veil, which he said provides proof that the former intentionally derides Islamic dress.

Other Islamist movements also criticized Sawiris after he posted the cartoon.

In July, Mohamed Morsy, the head of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, criticized Sawiris and described him as “a corrupt icon from the former regime.”

In August, meanwhile, Sawiris accused Islamists of “hijacking the 25 January revolution” and later said liberal forces will not allow Islamists to control the process of writing the new constitution.

By John Sainsbury, OttawaCitizen.com

Egypt’s Coptic Christians are carrying a heavy burden this Christmas, which they observe on Jan. 7. What should be a joyous occasion also follows closely on the first anniversary of a church bombing in Alexandria, which killed 23 people and left close to a hundred injured. Bloody confrontations between Copts and Muslims followed, even as Muslim leaders, including the Muslim Brotherhood, denounced the bombing and appealed for calm.

The perpetrators of the bombing have never been identified, compounding Coptic anxieties. The Mubarak government was quick to blame “foreign elements,” specifically a shadowy Palestinian-based organization called the Army of Islam.

But no group has taken responsibility for the attack, and the official investigation was so badly bungled that conspiracy theories quickly acquired currency. Accusing fingers point to the Mubarak regime itself, then on its last legs, as the perpetrator. Its alleged motive was to sow discord between Muslims and Christians and then step in as the only force capable of restoring peace.

In the bewildering climate of rumour and counter-rumour, the one sure thing is that sectarian violence at Christmas has become depressingly routine. On Jan. 7, 2010 (Christmas Day in the Coptic calendar), gunmen murdered eight Christians in Nag Hammadi as they were leaving midnight mass. This year tension is high in the province of Asyut after a Coptic student allegedly posted pictures of the Prophet Mohammed on Facebook, an act of blasphemy in Muslim eyes. An angry mob threatened to lynch the student and, reportedly, some Coptic homes have been burned down.

What are the larger implications of these events for the future of Egypt’s Copts, who represent a substantial minority, variously estimated as numbering between 10 percent and 20 percent of the country’s total population? There are two possible scenarios. The first is optimistic. It contextualizes sectarian violence as part of an enduring and essentially stable pattern of relations between Egypt’s religious communities, one that includes as many instances of friendly co-operation as it does of hostile confrontation.

The second is pessimistic. It sees growing hostility to Copts–marked out as scapegoats for the country’s perilous economic and political condition–reaching a tipping point that will see the steady stream of Coptic migration from Egypt swell into a full-scale exodus.

I witnessed some inspiring examples of religious co-operation when I lived in Egypt in the 1980s, most memorably during a visit to the monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai. Inside the monastery’s massive walls there is a mosque, where Bedouin tribesmen come to pray and barter with the monks. But, sadly, this model of religious harmony has little application to the rest of Egypt. The monastery is Greek Orthodox, not Coptic, and because of its geographical isolation it has always enjoyed immunity from the religious strife that afflicts the larger region.

There is another possible basis for optimism. For centuries, Muslims and Christian Copts in rural Egypt have shared each other’s religious festivals–often unaware of a meaningful distinction between them–and mingled courteously at weddings and funerals. But the very urgency with which anthropologists have been exploring these religious customs suggests that they are examining a dying-village culture, terminally eroded by the rising tide of religious intolerance.

Optimism about the future of Egypt’s Copts smacks of an exercise in straw clutching. Reasons for pessimism, by contrast, are compelling. The Maspero demonstrations in October, called to protest the burning of Coptic churches in Aswan, elicited a brutal response from an unholy alliance of the ruling military and Islamic militants, the latter being urged on by the state media to protect the army from “Coptic violence.” The prospect of closer ties between the armed forces (or a faction of them), desperate for a populist support, and the Islamist Salafi faction, eager for political power, is a clear and present danger for the Copts.

It is an indication of the rise of religious extremism in Egypt that the Muslim Brotherhood, once the bane of secularists, is able to represent itself as a moderate voice. With its plurality of votes in the current elections, the Brotherhood, in the guise of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), is on course to form Egypt’s first post-revolution civilian government.

The Brotherhood is making soothing overtures to the Copts. In a statement to the Al Ahram newspaper, an FJP official says that, “the party has no objection to promulgating legislation guaranteeing recourse to their religious laws with respect to personal status issues.”

But there is no enthusiasm among Copts for being constitutionally defined as a religious minority in an Islamic state. Their goal, as defined by Coptic entrepreneur Naguib Sawiris–a leader of the secularist Egyptian Bloc party–is religious freedom securely protected within a secular civil society. That goal was nearly attained in the 1920s, but the chances of it happening now are about as remote as the possibility that the Western-oriented Egyptian Bloc will ever come to power.

John Sainsbury is a professor of history at Brock University in Ontario, Canada.

http://www.albawaba.com

Syrian rebels insist that Iranian mercenaries are trying to help the Syrian regime in the suppression of the uprising. A brigade of the “Free Army” had taken five Iranian hostage, said Colonel Abd al-Razaq Tlass, one of the commanders of the rebels in the city of Homs.

The rebels have shown a German reporter the Iranian passports and identity cards. They were dressed as civilians, but were taken up in a combat zone, said Tlass. According to him, the five were also appear in images wearing military uniforms. The Syrian rebels claim these five Iranians are actually officers in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

The Iranian embassy in Damascus announced last month that the five Iranians were technicians working in a power plant in Syria. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast on Wednesday called for their release, saying “according to the latest information we have…they are in good health.”

On Tuesday, an unknown group calling itself “The Movement against Shiite tide in Syria” claimed responsibility for kidnapping the five Iranians, adding “we take upon ourselves the task of detecting and hit all the forms of support provided by both Iran and Hizbullah to the offender.” The statement said that the kidnapping is a “first warning to Iran and Hizbullah for their continued support of the Syrian regime in suppressing the revolt.”

By Paul Schemm Associated Press

RABAT, Morocco – The victory of an Islamist Party in Morocco’s parliamentary elections appears to be one more sign that religious-based parties are benefiting the most from the new freedoms brought by the Arab Spring.

Across the Middle East, parties referencing Islam have made great strides, offering an alternative to corrupt, long serving dictators, who have often ruled with close Western support.

The Justice and Development Party dominated Morocco’s elections through a combination of good organization, an outsider status and not being too much of a threat to Morocco’s all-powerful king.

By taking 107 seats out of the 395 seats, almost twice as many as the second place finisher, the party ensured that King Mohammed VI must pick the next prime minister from its ranks and to form the next government out of the dozen parties in Morocco’s parliament.

It is the first time the PJD – as it is known by its French initials – will be part of the government and its outsider status could be just what Morocco, wracked by pro-democracy protests, needs.

Although it didn’t bring down the government, the North African kingdom of 32 million, just across the water from Spain, was still touched by the waves of unrest that swept the Arab world following the revolution in Tunisia, with tens of thousands marching in the streets calling for greater freedoms and less corruption.

The king responded by modifying the constitution to give the next parliament and prime minister more powers, and held early elections.

But there was still a vigorous movement to boycott the elections. There was only a 45 percent turnout in Friday’s polls, and many of those who went to vote turned in blank ballots or crossed out every party listed to show their dissatisfaction with the system.

Election observers from the U.S.-based National Democratic Institute estimated that up to a fifth of the ballots they saw counted had been defaced in such a way.

In the face of such widespread distrust of politics, historian and political analyst Maati Monjib said a government led by a new political force could be the answer.

“If the PJD forms a coalition in a free and independent way and not with a party of the Makhzen,” he said referring to the catch-all phrase for the entrenched establishment around the king, “this will be a big step forward for Morocco.”

In Tunisia, Morocco, and on Monday most likely also Egypt, newly enfranchised populations are choosing religious parties as a rebuke to the old systems, which often espoused liberal or left-wing ideologies.

“The people link Islam and political dignity,” said Monjib, who describes himself as coming from the left end of the political spectrum. “There is a big problem of dignity in the Arab world and the people see the Islamists as a way of getting out of the sense of subjugation and inferiority towards the West.”

Like the Ennahda Party in Tunisia, the PJD is also from the more moderate end of the Islamist spectrum. The party’s leader, Abdelilah Benkirane, supports a strong role for the monarchy and the movement has always been careful to play the political game.

The party doesn’t describe itself as “Islamist” but rather as having an Islamic “reference,” meaning that its policies follow the moral dictates of the religion.

The PJD has also avoided focusing on issues like the sale of alcohol or women’s headscarves that have obsessed Islamist parties elsewhere in the region, and instead has talked about the need to revamp Morocco’s abysmal education system, root out rampant corruption and find jobs for the millions of unemployed.

Mohammed Tozy, a professor of politics and prominent expert on Islamic movements, said the party has always had support in society, but in this election it managed to broaden its appeal.

“What they lacked before was the confidence of the public and now they have been able to go beyond their traditional constituency and give assurances to the business and middle class that they weren’t totally Islamist,” he said.

Part of the new success of Islamist parties across the region is due to the Turkish model. An Islamist party has been in power in Turkey for almost a decade now and has shown that “modernity and Islam can be allied effectively,” said Tozy.

In Morocco, the PJD is widely acknowledged as being the best organized in the country, relying on grass roots networks to promote candidates rather than just enlisting prominent local figures to attract votes.

It also benefited from the push for change in the country and the discrediting of the parties closely associated with the status quo. In particular, the Party of Authenticity and Modernity formed by a friend of the king, which was the largest in the outgoing parliament, lost seats in the new elections.

The PJD has had an ambivalent relationship with the activists of the pro-democracy movement. Several high-ranking party officials joined the street demonstrations and expressed their solidarity, while Benkirane himself warned against the protests – possibly to stay in the palace’s good graces.

It would not be the first time that Morocco’s kings have looked to the opposition for help. In the final years of his reign, the current king’s father, Hassan II, brought the leftist Union of Progressive Socialist Forces into the government for the first time, even letting its leader serve as prime minister.

Little changed and the party lost much of its cachet in society and has since plummeted in the polls.

Monjib said, however, that if Morocco is going to make it out of its current political crisis, this kind of manipulation must end.

“The palace can’t keep playing the game of emptying the parties of their substance, marginalizing them with the citizens, giving them the semblance of power, but not real power so they lose credibility,” he said.