September 23, 2006 01:33 AM
WONDER LAND
By DANIEL HENNINGER
Hosni Mubarak
Should Call
Benedict XVI
September 22, 2006
Who says the world lacks leaders? After again expressing his "respect" for Islam, Pope Benedict XVI at his weekly Vatican audience two days ago moved one of his knights forward on the global chessboard of Islamic politics.
Amid amped-up security in St. Peter's Square, the pope said: "I trust that after the initial reaction, my words at the University of Regensburg can constitute an impulse and encouragement toward positive, even self-critical dialogue both among religions and between modern reason and Christian faith." Setting aside the impeccable understatement of "the initial reaction" -- churches torched world-wide -- it is close to thrilling in a world of persistent confusion about the intentions of contemporary Islam to see the pope step forward, not back, and speak without apology on behalf of "modern reason." It is being widely said, mainly among his expectable Western critics, that the quotation from Manuel II Paleologus was a "mistake." Really? I'd say Benedict is right about where he hoped to be after Regensburg: The whole world saying that a serious conversation between the pope and Islam is necessary. My guess is Benedict would clear his calendar if the Muslim Arab leadership said it is ready to talk. And the talk won't be about who meant what in the 14th century. It will be about the here and now. The pope has a Muslim problem alright. It is the hammering that Christian communities have been taking for years and are getting now in Islamic countries all over the world, but especially in the Middle East.
Across the region (with some exceptions), non-Islamic minorities
-- which by and large means Christian minorities -- are being driven out through physical abuse, legal iscrimination, murder and the destruction or confiscation of homes, businesses and churches. Call it religious cleansing.
It is a political strategy that would eventually give Iran, Iraq, Egypt and the Holy Lands of Palestine a cultural omogeneity that has never existed in human history, before or after Christ.
Chairing a congressional hearing on this subject in July, GOP Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey described the problem in historic terms that are acutely immediate to Benedict XVI: "There are dozens of Christian groups with rich histories, ranging from the ancient Syriac and Syro-Chaldean churches which still speak the
(Aramaic) language of Jesus Christ, and Coptic churches in Egypt who preserve the language of the pharaohs. . . . There are followers of John the Baptist in Iraq and Iran. The Zoroastrians of Iran go back perhaps 3,000 years. It was under their power and influence that the great king of Persia, Cyrus, ended the Babylonian captivity of the children of Israel." Fundamentalist Islam is pressuring all of these. Many simply leave.
Iran's population has doubled since the revolution of 1979, but its Christian population has fallen to 100,000 from 300,000. The war in Iraq (Mesopotamia was evangelized by St. Thomas) has accelerated the emigration of Chaldo-Assyrian Christians, but non-Muslims were leaving even before the U.S. invasion. In 2000, the U.N. estimated that Iraq was Europe's second source of refugees, after Yugoslavia.
The oppression of Egypt's Coptic Christians, who are 10% of the population, is brutal. During Easter Week this April, knife-wielding Muslims in Alexandria attacked worshipers at several Coptic churches. Afterward, Copts shouted: "Hosni Mubarak, where are you?" Good question. Typically, local Egyptian officials prevent the Copts from rebuilding their churches. In August, a Coptic woman named Hala Helmy Botros started a blog to draw attention to such incidents. She was shut down and her father beaten: "This is a present from your daughter." In the holy land, the Christian populations of Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem have emigrated under duress in past decades. The U.S. State Department says the Palestinian government has colluded to extort property there from Christian landowners.
The exodus (and falling birth rates) of Christians in the Middle East is a well-documented, much-analyzed phenomenon extending back into the last century. After Vatican II, Pope Paul VI created the Secretariat for the Non-Christian Religions to address these matters. In a dramatic attempt to heighten awareness, Pope John Paul II made a historic pilgrimage to Syria in 2001 and held some 60 meetings with Muslims.
Observably little sustainable progress has resulted. If anything, Islamic fundamentalists have ramped up their anti-minority aggression and spread it -- to Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, Indonesia and Pakistan (where members of the Ahmadi Muslim minority have been gunned down as apostates).
And so Pope Benedict has decided it is time to act, no matter that it may hurt the sensibilities of Islamic believers or Western elites ever alert to the delicacies of language. In this Benedict deserves the world's political support. The Middle East is being purged of a historically enriching diversity that will surely kill its ability to thrive. What will remain is a homogenous, self-proclaimed threat to the rest of the world. As Nina Shea of the Center for Religious Freedom argues, the pathologies and methods directed against unprotected minorities will be used next against other Muslims and governments. It is no exaggeration to suggest that the maltreatment of these local Christians is rightly seen as a proxy for the world.
The world's standard political institutions have proven unable to address this problem. The U.N. is compromised and hapless.
The U.S. is distrusted, Europe is supine, China is cynical.
There would be no better venue for seeking a way out than the Vatican.The Vatican doesn't want oil. Hegemony is long gone from its vocabulary. The Vatican's only brief is a modus vivendi, a global reality Islam must eventually acknowledge. The governments of Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia should open the dialogue Benedict XVI is seeking. In March, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak met with Benedict at the Vatican. He would be the obvious choice to take the lead. More than these Arab governments realize, their future could use the support of the pope's famous divisions.
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ABOUT DANIEL HENNINGER
Daniel Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's
editorial page. Mr. Henninger joined Dow Jones in 1971 as a
staff writer for the National Observer. He became an
editorial-page writer for the Journal in 1977, arts editor in
1978 and editorial features editor in 1980. He was appointed
assistant editor of the editorial page in 1983 and chief
editorial
writer and senior assistant editor in October 1986, with daily
responsibility for the "Review & Outlook" columns. In November
1989 he became deputy editor of the editorial page.
Mr. Henninger was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in editorial
writing in 1987 and 1996, and shared in the Journal's Pulitzer
Prize in 2002 for the paper's coverage of the attacks on
September 11. He won the Gerald Loeb Award for commentary in
1985. In 1998 he received the Scripps Howard Foundation's Walker
Stone Award for editorial writing, for editorials on a
range of issues, including the International Monetary Fund,
presidential politics and cloning. He won the 1995 American
Society of Newspaper Editors' Distinguished Writing Award for
editorial writing, and he was a finalist in that award in 1985,
1986 and 1993. A native of Cleveland, Mr. Henninger
graduated from Georgetown University with a bachelor's degree
from the School of Foreign Service.
Mr. Henninger invites comments to henninger@wsj.com
