Yusri Hazran. Journal of the Middle East & Africa. Volume 10, Issue 3, July-September 2019.
Since the late 1950s, Christians’ emigration from the Arab Middle East has been a basic phenomenon affecting the political and social landscape of the region as well as a fundamental dynamic behind the depression of its Christian demography. This article shows that the intensive departure has been the result of structural and historical factors related to the performance of the modern Arab nation-states in the post-colonial era. Instead of the generalized and simplistic explanations that are often advanced that link the Christians’ emigration to Islamic revivals, the main dynamic of this out migration instead can be found in the policies of the modern Arab state and the outbreak of communal and regional conflicts.
In 2012, the American academic Juan Cole published online a brief article in which he argued that, in contrast to the prevalent view that there is a Christian exodus from the Middle East, Christianity was in fact flourishing demographically, with Christians from the region numbering around 21 million and constituting more than the total Christian population of Australia. Cole also stressed that Christians constitute the largest minority in Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon (where they make up 22 percent of the total population). The geographic distribution that Professor Cole used was misleadingly broader than the Middle East; however, and included the Horn of Africa as well as Ethiopia. Moreover, Cole’s argument does not conform to the irrefutable fact that historic Christian communities in the Arab Middle East have undergone a steep and continuous decline in recent decades. Indeed, other sources indicate that Christians, who constituted 13.6 percent of the Middle East’s population in 1910, had declined at least to 4.2 percent in 2010. According to the data provided by Samir Abdo, the number of Christians in the Arab world in 2003 was between 12 and 13 million souls, the vast majority of whom lived in Egypt, Lebanon, and Sudan. (It should be noted that all the data presented here relate to the period before the events of the Arab Spring.) Therefore, Christians constituted no more than 3.4 percent of the total population of the Arab world in 2003 in Abdo’s estimation. Immigration to the Western world is certainly one main reason for this process of decline. While it is beyond any doubt true that there is no single explanation for this development and that a marked decrease in the birth rate among Christians should not be ignored, still, emigration on a wide scale from the Arab Middle East has been a basic phenomenon in the political and social landscape since the late 1950s. Indeed, such emigration is a fundamental dynamic behind the depression of Christian demography in the region.
Contra Cole’s apologia, this study indicates that since the 1960s a consistent drain of Christians has been evident in the Arab Middle East, and the decline is primarily due to massive emigration to the West. This work will address the various historical processes that explain the exodus of the Christian-Arab population from the region. Although many scholars maintain that the increasing religiosity of the region has fueled the dynamic, a closer and deeper examination of the data reveals that while this phenomenon has played a major role in the Christian exodus, it is merely a necessary but not a sufficient explanation. The prevailing view is that the processes of increasing religiosity and Islamization are the main dynamics generating the mass exodus of Christians from the Arab Middle East. This study intends in the first place to refute the apologetic argument about the prosperity of Christians in the Middle East, but equally importantly, it will further show that the mass departure began even before the processes of Islamization that the region experienced from the early 1970s. Rather, this article will demonstrate that this migration was the result of structural and historical factors that are related to the performance of the modern Arab states in the post-colonial era.
Christian emigration: A historical overview
Historically, Lebanese Christians have been the pioneers of immigration to the West. The Christian exodus in significant numbers began in the second half of the nineteenth century, and was directed towards two principal destinations—Egypt and the United States. One can link the emigration from Lebanon in the first place to the conflictual reality of Mount Lebanon during the nineteenth century. Still, migration did not cease in peacetime and, in general, it was economically motivated. Charles Issawi’s comprehensive study on the subject determined that the regional conflicts and communal strife that Syria and Lebanon witnessed in the first few decades of the nineteenth century was the main impetus for immigration. Nevertheless, this should not diminish the significance of economic factors, such as demographic growth and Lebanon’s integration in the world economy. Nor should one ignore social aspects such urbanization, the spread of modern education, the formation of a middle class, and conscription by the Ottoman Empire. Furthermore, Lebanese emigration was in some ways a continuation of the modern education enterprise among the Christian communities of Greater Syria. Thanks to historical contacts with the Roman Catholic Church as well as the educational activities of Western missionaries, Lebanon gained a head start over other countries of the Arab Middle East with respect to modern schooling. The acquisition of Western education opened new horizons for the educated class, which set off to the West seeking self-realization and searching for better opportunities.
It is impossible to give more than a rough estimate of the number of emigrants or their descendants, but it is no exaggeration to assume that some hundreds of thousands left Lebanon during the second half of the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth century. Massoud Dahir’s comprehensive and well-documented study of emigration demonstrates that Egypt was a sought-after destination for myriads of Syrian and Lebanese Christians. He calls this the hijrat al-shawam migration, identifying its source in the liberal atmosphere and economic openness that characterized nineteenth-century Egypt. The foreign companies operating in Egypt at the time were in need of the skills possessed by Syrian and Lebanese Christians, especially their mastery of European languages. In time, these migrants became a vital mediator between the local populace, Egyptian authorities, and foreign companies. This fact aroused antagonism amongst local Copts, or Egyptian Christians, due mainly to the fact that the immigrants quickly became wealthy, and formed an affluent class in Egyptian society that held itself aloof, with very few of the immigrants marrying into the Coptic community. During the first half of the 1900s, the immigrant Christian population in Egypt numbered close to 100,000. All signs indicate that the Christian immigrant communities from the Greater Syria area became fully integrated into the social, cultural, and economic life of monarchic Egypt, with nearly 500 (of whom 125 were Lebanese Maronites) receiving the title of pasha from the Egyptian royal court.
As for Syria specifically, the actual percentage of Christians as part of the total population during the last century is a matter of great disagreement and confusion between Syrian and Arab sources on the one hand and Western ones on the other. According to Johnson and Zurlo, Christians constituted some 15.6 percent of the total Syrian population in 1910; this percentage dropped significantly to 8 percent in 1970, (or to 9.9 percent according to the 1978 census). In contrast, Syrian historian Michel Shammas argues that Christians constituted nearly one-third (30 percent) of Syria’s population in 1967, while being reduced to 10 percent by 2011. Compared to the latter, the data provided by Anna Poujeau contends that on the eve of the 2011 uprising, Christians constituted no more than 6 percent of the Syrian population. Clearly, these figures are exaggerated. Still, they provide an indication of the dimensions of immigration. Other sources present more realistic data, according to which Syrian-Christians constituted 14 percent of the total population in 1948, and their percentage declined to 7.9 percent in 1960.
In historical perspective and by way of comparison, the emigration of the Copts from Egypt has occurred in three main phases. The first followed the rise to power of Nasser’s revolutionary regime after 1952, which directly and indirectly forced rich and upper-middle-class Copts to leave the country. The second phase began during the early 1970s, sparked by the state’s Islamization policies under President Anwar al-Sadat, which were accompanied by violent sectarian clashes and confrontations between Muslims and Copts. The third phase, which is still ongoing, began after the January 25 Revolution and the collapse of the state’s authority. Rough estimates state that between January 2011 and up to the end of 2012, 136,000 to 200,000 Egyptian Copts left Egypt.
Determining the number of Copt emigrants is a real source of perplexity. The key problem facing those studying the emigration of the Copts from Egypt is that of obtaining reliable statistics relating to their dispersion. Thus, Brinkerhoff and Riddle assert unequivocally that no accurate data regarding the Coptic distribution in the Western world are available. According to those published by the International Organization for Migration for 2010, some 2.7 million Egyptians were living outside Egypt, around 71 percent of whom were resident in other Arab countries versus around 30 percent—i.e., close to 533,000—who were in Western countries.
According to updated data provided by Father Abd al-Masiḥ Faḥim, the United States constitutes the main center for emigrants, numbering 420,000, followed by Canada—where about 200,000 Copts are living—and Australia, in which there are 100,000 Copts. In addition, communities numbering a few thousand are found in Germany, Latin America, and most recently, Georgia. The formation of the Coptic Society in Jersey City in 1964 was the first indication of a growing community of Coptic emigrants in the United States, who had started leaving Egypt in the late 1950s. In the same year, too, they established the first Coptic church in the United States. The correlation between escalating sectarianism since the 1970s and Coptic emigration is most reflected in the fact that Coptic churches began to spread throughout the US, Latin America, Europe, and Australia during the last three decades of the twentieth century.
The fate of the various communities of Iraqi-Christians has not been different. Since the early 1980s, they have experienced a cruel process of population decline. According to some sources, the Christian population in Iraq has declined by half its number following the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, and has left about 400,000 Christians in the war-torn country.
The states’ policies
There can be no argument about the fact that mass emigration from Egypt began following the rise to power of the Nasserist, pan-Arab, revolutionary regime. The dissolution of the country’s political parties was followed by nationalization laws, which excluded the old Coptic elite from both the public and political spheres. In this sense, the early seeds of sectarianism were sown during the Nasserist period, and were an outcome of the state’s policies. The socioeconomic policy adopted by the revolutionary government reinforced the feelings of alienation amongst the upper- and middle-class alike. Both Coptic and foreign sources concur that the Copts comprised its primary victims. Some 75 percent of those suffering from the nationalization of the transport, banking, and industrial sectors were from the Coptic community. Missionary and foreign schools were also subjected to strict and uncompromising inspection at the hands of the revolutionary government.
The change that the ruling elite and its political orientation underwent following Nasser’s death led to a fundamental transformation in the former’s attitude towards religion. Rather than exploiting it as a means for gaining legitimacy for the revolutionary ideology of the state, religion now became an ideological-moral tool in the internal struggles within the elite as well as a weapon with which to meet the challenge of Nasserite and left-wing/Communist factions. The first significant indication of the sectarian problem in Egypt emerged in 1972 in what became known as the El-Khaniqah events in al-Qalyubiyya, when a Muslim mob set fire to a Coptic church, which led to violent clashes between the two communities. A decade later, violence against Copts peaked in an unprecedented bloody explosion in the poverty-ridden Cairo suburb of al-Zawiya al-Hamra. The clashes between Muslims and Copts known as “the Fitna of al-Zawiya al-Hamra” resulted in scores of casualties, hundreds of arrests, and dozens of shops and public places being ransacked or destroyed.
Anwar Sadat’s rise to power was accompanied by an ever-growing trend towards Coptic withdrawal from Egyptian public life that reached the point of their virtual exclusion. Donald Bergus, the Principal Officer of the US Interests Section in Egypt, thus observed in 1971 that the Copts were in fact being excluded from public life, and their representation was confined to a few high-ranking positions in the political establishment. Not a single Copt could be found amongst the list of governors. The nature of Coptic subjugation took a new direction under Sadat’s reign, but it remained derived from the state’s policies. The new regime’s legitimacy crisis led Sadat to promote the Islamization of media, university campuses, professional unions, and the legislation process. Consequently, Coptic elites who had been characteristically excluded under Nasser, faced new adversity during Sadat’s rule in the form of discrimination with respect to public service as well as increasing sectarian violence.
An escalation of confrontations between the regime and Islamic militant groups marked the Mubarak period from 1981 through 2011. Again, these developments affected Copts severely. Thus, Egyptian Christians sought to take advantage of the Declaration of Minority Rights by the United Nations in 1991, which encouraged civil society organizations to assemble a conference on Cyprus to address issues related to the Copts. Unfortunately, presenting Coptic grievances within the context of minority rights served only to deepen the rift that existed between them and the Egyptian state. In recent decades, Coptic complaints of what they regard as a systematic policy of discrimination and exclusion have increased. In a petition delivered at the end of 1998 to former President Husni Mubarak on behalf of the Diaspora Coptic communities, the Christians stated that had had no representation among the country’s top-ranking officials, and not a single Copt could be found amongst university heads, district governors, the police force, the military command, newspaper editors, etc. They were poorly represented in the government, parliament, and the legal system as well.
All complaints advanced by either by Coptic organizations within Egypt or in the Diaspora focused on four key aspects of their travails, all of which related to state policies. The first had to do with the discrimination by government and local administrations against the Egyptian Copts. Coptic immigrant organizations frequently complain about the marginal representation of Copts in state institutions, especially their lack of senior positions in the military and administrative systems. Their representation is likewise negligible in the supreme command of the police, and not a single Copt can be found as a district governor, president of a university, or among the editors of the important newspapers.
Ignoring Coptic contributions to Egyptian history has been the second frequent grievance against the authorities. For a long time, Coptic leaders—religious and lay educated figures—have complained about the disappearance of Copts from the government-supervised curricula. The education curriculum has been a burning, controversial issue between the Egyptian government and the Coptic Diaspora in the West. Copts have long blamed the education curriculum of consistently ignoring the Copts’ role and contribution to Egypt’s history. An examination of Egyptian textbooks fully confirms this conclusion. Dealing with Egypt’s history since the end of the First World War, history texts do emphasize the broad notion of national unity by indicating the accord between Muslims and Christians during the 1919 revolution. Nevertheless, nothing is said of the conspicuous role played by the Copts in Egyptian politics between the two World Wars. As for the 1919 Revolution itself, only one reference was found in the history textbook for secondary schools, which states that, “all classes of the people participated in it, as Muslims and Copts also participated [together] for the first time in Egypt’s history.” Another example of ignoring the Copts can be found in the history book for elementary schools, which mentions not a single historical Coptic personality among Egypt’s leading historical figures. All textbooks of Arabic literature for high schools focus on historical Islamic figures exclusively, and do not elaborate on topics common to Muslims and Christians.
Third, Coptic complaints deal with the restrictions imposed by the government on building new churches in Egypt, which still derive from the Ottoman Noble Rescript, or Khaṭṭ-i Hümayun, of 1856 as confirmed by the ten conditions issued by al-Izbi Pasha, who was the director of the Interior Ministry in 1934.
Finally comes the demographic issue. The question of the Copts’ numbers is another matter of controversy between the regime and the Coptic organizations, especially those of the Copts in exile. While the official figures produced by the regime tend to downplay the place of Copts in the population, the sources associated with the Coptic Church tend to magnify their numbers, and claim that they constitute close to 10 percent of Egyptian society. The 1996 census was a novelty in the sense that for the first time no reference was made to the religious affiliation of the Egyptian population. It seems that the Egyptian government fears that the data will be used as a means of putting pressure on the state. The complaints and petitions raised by Coptic civil society organizations against the Egyptian regime shed light on the processes that have led the Copts to emigrate from their country.
The historians Yvonne Haddad and Joshua Donovan recognize two narratives concerning Copts in Egypt and the Diaspora. They contend that the primary and mainstream interpretation is one of equal citizenship, which is elaborated by the Egyptian Church, and which finds an echo among many in the Diaspora. Haddad and Donovan claim that only a minority of activist Copts in the Diaspora, inculcated with ideas of Islamophobia and neo-conservatism, challenge the mainstream view. Nonetheless, the fact that the latter narrative of persecution has been limited to some Coptic organizations in the Diaspora should not obscure the crucial role played by the state through its social and political policies in driving many Copts to leave Egypt.
Turning next to Syria, it is noteworthy that Christians there have tended to see the Ba’ath regime, which has been in power for more than half a century, as the protector of Christian communities. The party’s secular approach contributed to the inclusion and integration of Christians into politics and society under Ba’ath control.
Following the Second World War and Syrian independence, a new Ba’athist elite arose that was formed at the expense of the old, urban elite, part of whom emigrated from the Syrian state. Onn Winckler gives the number of Syrians living in North and South America in 1953 as 810,000, of whom about 650,000 were in Brazil and Argentina alone. During the decade from 1958-68, the records Winckler presents show that almost 350,000 Syrians emigrated abroad. In this period, the majority of the immigrants to the United States were Christians. It is obvious that the political instability and military coups that the first two decades of independence witnessed explains the decline of the Christians’ percentage of the Syrian population from 14.1 percent in 1943 to 8.3 percent according to the 1963 census. Between 1870-1970, the majority of immigrants from the Middle East to South America were Christians in search of new economic opportunities or fleeing clashes between Muslims and Christians in various places in the Middle East. The 1960s and the 1970s saw large-scale emigration from Syria of the middle class and professionals. The Christians were represented in large numbers in these two groups, although there are no exact numbers for the emigrants and their destinations. A significant change concerned the emigration of Muslim populations in these years, which occurred on a far smaller scale than previously.
Although membership in the Ba’ath regime provided Syrian-Christians with another means of breaking away from the status of minority, the state’s policy of nationalizing private, missionary and religious schools harshly affected Christian communities. Furthermore, while an exodus did not take place before 2011, for those who left Syria, considerations of social and economic mobility were the real impetus for emigration. In general, many Christians believed that the prevailing milieu in Syria was one of tolerance and coexistence and that “they were largely tolerated and did not have to live in fear of religious persecution.” Therefore, the Christian preference for the urban Muslim middle class came along with the latter’s inducing an atmosphere of religious tolerance within Syrian society.
The rise to power of Ḥafez al-Assad, a member of the Alawite, minority was the cause of Christians’ losing their influence and relevance according to the Syrian-Christian historian Michel Shammas. Previously well-represented in cultural and educational fields, Syrian Christians have lost their relevance within centers of political power since the 1960s, along with the Ba’ath’s rise to power. Despite the fact that former president Ḥafez al-Assad and his son Bashar, who succeeded him upon his death in 2000, were surrounded by Christian counselors, including Iskandar Luqa, Jubran Khuriyya, George Jabur, Kulit Khuri, Jihad Makdisi among others, the Christians of Syria have not really participated in decision-making in the political and economic fields. In fact, the social and political policies of the Ba’ath regime since 1963 have pushed more and more Syrian-Christians to emigrate. As Shammas points out:
Until 1963, Christians ran all the banks in the country; after nationalization, they have completely lost this role. The regime involved the rich classes of the other religious denominations’ elites in managing power and resources, bringing about increasing marginalization of the Christians on the political level.”
The regime’s method of dealing with missionary and communal schools affected Christian communities in particular. Closing or converting such educational institutions to governmental ones encountered opposition from ecclesiastical and clerical ranks, but nevertheless proceeded apace under the Assads. In addition to having occupational and professional expectations, which were not met in society, Sabella attributes emigration from Syria to the nature of the state and society. The uncertainty about the future of the regime and the absence of civil society became a push factor for emigration.
It is reasonable to assume that the suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood movement in the early 1980s calmed understandable concerns among Syrian-Christians as well as other minorities in Syria. Nevertheless beyond the stick that the Ba’athist state wielded against the Islamists, it is more important to note that the regime’s policies of reconciliation with the Sunni urban middle-class represented a carrot for those who might corroborate with it, and came about at least to some extent at the expense of the Christians.
A concurrent account related by a middle-class Syrian-Christian woman to a Canadian diplomat Illustrates this point. The affair involved a Syrian lecturer of English literature at Damascus University named Ilham Msarre who was married to a Christian, Syrian army officer. Ms. Msarre informed her interlocutor that she was thinking of emigrating to Canada because of the regime’s policy of giving preferential treatment to Sunni Muslims. Such favoritism was not limited to governmental appointments, but also extended to religious affairs. Accordingly, “the head of the English Department at the University had been told that he was to be dismissed because a Muslim wanted his job, and the Alawites did not dare to refuse him.” Furthermore, “more mosques had been built under the Alawites than ever before because the regime did not dare to refuse the demands of the Muslim community.” This statement by an ordinary, middle-class Syrian-Christian citizen underscores the social and economic crisis that had driven the regime to demonstrate its willingness to go to extraordinary lenghts to court the urban, Sunni middle-class.
The 1980s were years of political and economic turmoil because “the traditional middle class, the Sunni middle classes suddenly became dissatisfied and that one suddenly had the traditional problems of inflation and a lowering economy within Syria which caused social unrest.” Against this background and the Muslim Brotherhood movement’s direct challenge to its legitimacy the state sought reconciliation with the urban middle class as the only way out of the crisis. It did so even though the bargain came at the expense of other segments of Syrian society including the Christians.
To summarize, the Christians’ emigration from Syria reaches back to the early 1960s following the Ba’ath’s rise to power, and shows remarkable similarities to Egyptian historical developments related to the Copts. Syrian-Christian emigration was not only a result of the Ba’ath’s political totalitarianism, but was especially affected by the intensifying economic crisis that afflicted Syria during the 1980s. Christian emigration in the period preceding the 2011 uprising was in fact a willing emigration that was limited to the educated and professional class. In this regard, the Syrian-Christians’ emigration was part of the brain drain that affected most Arab republics. Since the late 1950s, Christian emigration in reality has been inherently connected with state politics. Policies of national radicalization, nationalization, socialism, exclusion of the veteran elite, and creeping Islamization of the public sphere as well as the deterioration of economic conditions left Christians with no option but to leave their countries.
Conflictual realities and their effect on emigration
Christian emigration cannot be disconnected from the internal and regional conflicts that have engulfed the post-colonial Arab Middle East. To locate this reading within recent historical context, one should note that there have been a host of upheavals including the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict, the Lebanese Civil War from 1975 through 1990, the wars in which Ba’athist Iraq was involved culminating in the American invasion of Iraq and the insurgencies that have followed, and, of course, the “Arab Spring.” All of these were foundational events that accelerated the mass emigration of Arab Christians. As Mathew Baker has aptly put it: “Given such vicissitudes, it is not surprising that their [the Christians’] recent history has also been characterized by demographic decline.”
The Palestinian Christian communities have been heavily affected by the conflict between the Palestinian national and Zionist movements. The Arab-Israeli War of 1948 resulted in a mass exodus of Palestinian Christians with some 50,000–60,000 of the estimated 726,000 Palestinians who were forced to leave their homes in Palestine being Christians. Many of the Christian refugees eventually found their way to the Americas and Australia. The Christian population of Jerusalem provides a specific example of the catastrophic effects of the 1948 War and the prolonged conflict on Arab Christians. In 1944, the Christian population of the city was estimated at more than 29,000. By the end of the 1990s, it numbered less than 10,000, and estimates are that it is 5,000 today. The same is true of Jaffa after its occupation by Israeli forces. There only 3,000 Muslim and Christian Arabs remain from a pre-1948 population of 71,000 of which Christians had constituted more than a quarter of the city’s inhabitants (17,000 out of a total of 71,000). According to Bernard Sabella, at the end of the British Mandate, Palestinian Christians had numbered 156,000, but only 34,000 remaining within Israeli territory.
It suffices to compare the number of Palestinian Christians in Jerusalem and the district of Bethlehem in the period between 1945 and 2007 to show the extent of the demographic decline of the Christian population. While in 1945 the Christians comprised 46,000 souls, by 2007 their number had decreased to 32,000. According to Sabella, the Christians in the West Bank and Jerusalem by 2007 should have numbered at least 100,000 by 2007; accordingly, the Christian population in the occupied territories has decreased by half since 1967. Sabella presents the absence of mass emigration from Israel by indigenous Christians as another substantiation of the thesis of the economically motivated emigration of Christians from the West Bank.
In an Israeli census conducted in 1967, the Christians in East Jerusalem comprised 26.8 percent of the total Christian population in the West Bank (16.5 percent of the population of East Jerusalem). In the years 1967–1972, the number of Christians in East Jerusalem did not grow, due to the high number of Christian emigrants from the city. In the years 1972–1988, the Christian population in East Jerusalem increased by 1.4 percent annually—still less than the Muslim annual growth rate of 3.4 percent. Emigration continued under the Israeli occupation, and between the years 1967 and 1993, 11,000 out of 338,000 Palestinians who left the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were Christians, which was 20 percent of the total Christian population.
The optimism that was the by-product of the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, broke down with the outbreak of the Second Intifada (2000-2005), when military activity stopped the normal pace of life, and Christians, who had the opportunity to emigrate to the West, increasingly did so and left the Palestine Authority. Today, Palestinian Christians constitute 1 percent (around 46,000) of the population in the Occupied Territories, while a decade ago they formed 2 percent.
The Palestinian case reveals a complicated picture with regard to the status of Christians in the West Bank. They suffer from a host of problems from Israeli restrictions and from the consequences of changes in Palestinian society. The economic difficulties that beset the West Bank, the internationality of their Christian identity, and their low birth rate as compared with the Muslim community are other issues that they face. The bottom line is that the Christian community in the West Bank is getting smaller and smaller each year so that what was a significant minority after World War I has become a much-diminished minority comprising about 2 percent of the Palestinian population nowadays.
A survey conducted in 1993 that included 964 Christian families from Jerusalem and its surroundings showed a pronounced inclination to emigration among middle-class families who were, motivated primarily by economic considerations. Following the eruption of the Second Intifada, some 600 Palestinian-Christians have been leaving every year. This number should not be taken too lightly, given the fact that the total number of Christians in the areas conquered in 1967 is around 50,000.
Sabella further contended that the rising empowerment of Islamic movements in the West Bank should not be included as one of the causes for Palestinian-Christian emigration. Instead of this general explanation, Sabella posits that the political and economic reality in the West Bank—which includes daily life under occupation, poor economic conditions, and the absence of political stability—is the main factor in Palestinian-Christian flight. Nonetheless, Sabella turned from his apologetic approach with respect to the effect of religious extremism on Christian emigration following the eruption of the “Arab Spring” uprisings. To wit, in an article published in 2015, he addressed Islamic extremism as a factor that has urged Christians to emigrate.
Contrary to the common assumption that the emigration of Iraqi Christians began after the American invasion and the collapse of the Ba’ath regime, it is well-documented that thousands of Iraqi-Christians had already left Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War between 1980-1988. At that time, around 50,000 out of 400,000 Catholic Chaldeans left Iraq for the United States. Following the First Gulf War, a new wave of Christian emigrants, estimated at around 150,000, or a sixth of the total Christian population in Iraq, quit the country. While the Ba’ath regime in Iraq advocated a semi-secular political line and formally advanced the principle of equality as core values, the reality was otherwise. It is true that, despite their subordinate position, Christians, like other minorities, were secure from social discrimination and religious persecution. Still, the common assumption that the Ba’ath regime afforded prosperity and protection to Christians requires qualification and revision. In fact, Christians in northern Iraq suffered displacement, demographic change and discrimination as a result of the regime’s policies and attempts to suppress Kurdish rebellion and separatism. Thus, more than 200 Christian villages were destroyed under the Ba’ath. The 1988 Anfal Campaign against the Kurds, in particular, caused the destruction of about 120 Christian villages as well as many ancient churches.
The drastic decline in the number of Christians in Iraq and Syria illustrates, more than any other cases of Christian emigration, the destructive effect that the collapse of the state can have on minorities. According to the data presented by Samir Abdo and based on the 1978 Iraqi census, there were 1.4 million Christians living in the country at that time. At the end of the first decade of the third millennium, these were reduced to between only 300,000 and 350,000. Despite the fact that these figures can not be independently verified, it is clear that the implosion of the Iraqi state that followed the 2003 US occupation was the main cause of the mass emigration of Christians from Iraq. The abrupt and rapid collapse of the state apparatus, against the background of the decision by the occupation authorities to dismantle the army, the party, the intelligence services, and the administration, left Christians—like all civil society in Iraq—exposed to attacks from various quarters.
Likewise, the popular uprising that began in Syria as part of the “Arab Spring” undoubtedly constitutes a most crucial turning point in the history of Syrian Christianity. The breakdown of the state’s authority, following the militarization of the uprising and the rise of jihadist organizations, brought about an unprecedented exodus of Syrian-Christians. Christian emigration since 2011 has not been limited to middle-class or economically able people, but includes all social segments of Syrian-Christians. No credible data are available about the Christians specifically, but updated reports make clear that hundreds of thousands of people have left Syria since the eruption of the 2011 uprising. According to a report by the Society for Threatened People, within the first two years of the uprising, about 100,000 Syrian-Christians took flight from Syria, out of 2.3 million Syrians who fled to neighboring countries. Before the Civil War broke out, many considered Syria an exception in the large area dominated by Muslim majorities that lies between Morocco and Pakistan, as its churches operated without restrictions. With the eruption of the uprising, however, Christianity has become at risk of disappearing from its biblical heartlands. Based on data provided by organizations identified with “the Christian cause,” between half a million and a million Syrian-Christians have been forced or have chosen to leave the country. Thus, for example, some 80 percent of Aleppo’s Christians have fled, and the same can be said about other Syrian cities.
The spate of upheavals that has swept the Arab world since 2011 similarly has done little to improve the Copts’ situation. Acts of violence against these Christians and their churches in Egypt have increased since Mubarak’s fall, and some reports indicate that close to 200,000 Copts fled the country after Muhammed Morsi’s election. Christians became easy prey for governmental anarchy and the violence that spread across lands experiencing the “Arab Spring.”
Turning next to Lebanon, one needs to go back to the Civil War that broke out in 1975 to understand the dilemmas that Christians have faced in that country. Here the question arises as to why Christians perceived the conflict as an all-out war against their existence in Lebanon? The answer lies in the radical political discourse presented by the anti-establishment leftist front during the war’s first two years as well as in the uncompromising military strategy adopted by the forces under the command of the Druze leader, Kamal Jumblatt.
The anti-Maronite dimension of Kamal Jumblatt’s activity became clear in the second year of the war, particularly following the publication of the constitutional document in February 1976, which challenged the confessional status quo and the long-standing Christian position in Lebanon. When the Syrians attempted to impose a compromise on the two sides, Jumblatt decided to escalate the conflict with the Maronites, and this manifested itself not only in his rhetoric but also in his actions. Initially, the Druze leader had been satisfied with efforts merely to isolate the Christian Phalangists, and he presented his plan as an exclusive model for any future resolution of the crisis. After the publication of the constitutional document, however, he began to adopt a more militant approach, and systematically called for a military solution. While Jumblatt’s reform plan was intended to eliminate the confessional system, his insistence on a military resolution of the crisis reflected his strong desire to defeat the Maronites, and thereby avenge the humiliation suffered by the Druze in the 1860 Civil War following great powers’ intervention in support of the Christian-Maronites. In a historic speech delivered on July 20, 1976, Syrian president Hafez al-Assad referenced the extent of Jumblatt’s hatred for his Maronite rivals and his desire for vengeance against them. Assad quoted Jumblatt’s words from a decisive March 1976 meeting in Damascus, where the Druze leader declared, “Let us educate them [the Maronites]—there is no way out of a military solution. They have been controlling us for more than 140 years and we want to be free of them.” Astounded by Jumblatt’s words, Assad remarked: “At this moment I realized that all gloves had been removed. The matter wasn’t a struggle between the Right and the Left, between progressive and reactionary, or between Muslim and Christian, but one of revenge reaching back 140 years.” Jumblatt never denied these statements. On the contrary, on several different occasions he gave them clear confirmation. In an interview, he was asked to relate to President Assad’s accusations and emphatically affirmed them saying, “Yes, I work toward the elimination of the separatist Maronite State in Lebanon … I seek to remove the limited Crusader nature from our homeland because we want it to be for all our citizens without distinction and we want to destroy political confessionalism.” Thirty years earlier, the same Jumblatt had expressed more understandable and tolerant reading of Christians.
Although history provides numerous examples of wars the results of which differed significantly from the causes that sparked them, the political consequences of this second Lebanese civil war indicate conclusively that Jumblatt’s behavior was more improvised than planned. Whereas, Jumblatt, described as the uncrowned prince of the left, intended to create a secular political structure from the ruins of the confessional system, the conflict ended in the jarring political and military defeat of the anti-establishment camp and Jumblatt’s own assassination. More to the point of this study, the war had meanwhile led to the collapse of state institutions and the disintegration of the fabric of Lebanese society, of which Christian emigration was the most prominent feature.
The historical declaration made by the Maronite-led, right-wing Lebanese Front in 1982 under the title “The Lebanon We Want to Build Up” tried to present an ideological and political alternative to the secular discourse advanced by the anti-establishment left. More importantly from this study’s perspective, it demonstrates clearly the fear of an existential threat that prevailed among Lebanese Christians, particularly Maronites, during the Civil War. The growth of the anti-establishment left under the leadership of Kamal Jumblatt gave rise to Maronite dread that the destruction of the confessional system would inevitably lead to the gutting of their privileged political position and even bring an end to Christian dominance in Lebanon.
The Christians’ fear was fueled by the fact that they were no longer the preponderant demographic group in Lebanon. In other words, from a Christian-Maronite perspective the anti-establishment left was not waging war to establish a new and secular Lebanon, but to eliminate the Christians’ very existence in Lebanon. An ominous sense of threat lies at the core of the following lines from the 1982 declaration:
The Christian society in Lebanon occupies a special position owing to the fact that it has been free and has enjoyed a continuous history down the centuries. For this reason the Lebanon we want to build up is anxious that the Christians in it remain free, secure and masters of themselves and of their own values and destiny, exactly as Christians are in any country in the world where they are in fact free, secure and masters of themselves and of their own values and destiny. Lebanon considers this charge as one of its most sacred trusts.
By the same logic, the pronouncement emphasizes that the Christians’ political position in Lebanon should not be reliant on “any demographic consideration or any political orientation.” Such a statement leaves no doubt that the Christian-Maronite political elite feared the consequences of their demographic decline in Lebanon. Therefore, and against this background, came the decisive demand for Lebanese Christians abroad to “reject, every attempt at severing the Lebanese overseas, whether sentimentally or culturally or economically or politically or administratively from Lebanon, their fatherland.”
The last speech delivered by Bachir Gemayel, who commanded Phalangist forces early in the Civil War and was assassinated after his 1982 election to the presidency, faithfully presents this complex of fear, as well as a way out of this labyrinth. According to the Maronite leader, Lebanon should belong to all Lebanese of all different religious affiliations and be a refuge for Christian society in the East. Hence, Bachir Gemayel presented this vision as the other side of the coin to emigration by declaring: “We are not prepared to immigrate to America and we are not prepared to immigrate to Europe.” Following this logic, Gemayel conceived of a fusion between civilization and the Christians in Lebanon as another justification for keeping his country, not merely as a Christian national home, but as a:
real country for the Christians in which they would raise their heads to heaven and walk upright. We will never accept to put any sign on our chests or our hands to be recognized as Christians, [we will not accept] to be citizens living under the Dhimmi protection of the others [meaning the Muslims]. We refuse to be under the Dhimmi protection of any one!
Following repeated defeats in Beirut and the Lebanon Mountains during the early months of 1976, Joseph Abu Khalil described the Christian Maronites’ conditions as living in an isolated ghetto as follows:
Thus, the Christians had only the sea to breathe through, but where was the air? The emissaries of the Vatican, France and America are no help in breaking the siege imposed on Christian areas. Their advice was not of the kind that Christians expected and were comfortable with. Christians thought the West would not abandon them. They did not believe that the world has changed and that their affairs in Lebanon and the East for the Western world are minor and very negligible. Nor did they believe that when necessary, they would sacrifice themselves and Lebanon itself.
Hazim Saghiya, who during the 1970s was a prominent leftist-intellectual, confirms the existence of this “no exit” syndrome among Lebanese-Maronites. Inspired by the revolutionary and mobilizing effect of the Palestinian resistance organizations, and achieving reinforcement and empowerment from the Palestinians’ military presence on Lebanese land, Kamal Jumblatt strove to achieve a military determination of the war. The slogan declared by the Palestine Liberation Organization leader Salaḥ Khalaf that “the way to Palestine passes through Juniyya” was synchronized with the imposition of a military siege on the Christian part of Mount Lebanon. The belligerent rhetoric, together with the determined military activism by the leftist-Palestinian coalition, brought many Christians to believe that their enemies were relentlessly fighting for the physical destruction of the Christians in Lebanon and to conclude that Syria was their only savior. Nevertheless, others considered the entire chain of events that occurred during the first two years of the second civil war, including the Syrian military intervention, as a malevolent war against the Christians, leaving the latter with only one option: emigration via the sea.
Boutros Labaki, a scholar who has researched Lebanese emigration, presents a thesis that highlights the drastic implications of the Lebanese Civil War on Christian emigration from Lebanon. Labaki theorizes that emigration has been a salient feature of Lebanese history during the last two centuries. Furthermore, emigration from Lebanon declined between the two World Wars, and this tendency did not change dramatically during the 1940s and 1950s when emigration from Lebanon was indeed limited to individuals. According to Labaki, about one million Lebanese have left the country permanently, but he makes no reference to their religious affiliation. While Labaki is endeavoring, in his essay, to locate emigration from Lebanon within a global migratory trend and within a multi-sectarian emigration, it is obvious that the great majority of Lebanese emigrants during the civil war years were Christians. This can be learned from the data provided by Labaki himself and from other sources as well. Taking the Lebanese community in Australia between the years 1971–1981, Christians constituted two-thirds to three-quarters of this population. Furthermore, according to Theodor Hanf, some 790,000 Lebanese citizens were forced to leave their homes, of whom 630,000, or 80 percent, were Christians and 157,000 were not. The two most affected Christian communities were the Maronites and the Armenians, of whom 500,000–600,0000 quit Lebanon in the years following the war. Emigration destinations constitute another indication of the religious identity of Lebanese emigrants. In the two decades from 1975–1994, about a quarter of the Lebanese population left the country, heading to Western countries like the United States, Australia, Canada, and France.
The effect of the Civil War on Christian emigration can be gleaned from the statistic that 75 percent of emigrants in 1978 were Christians. By the same token, the fact that the vast majority of refugees and emigrants left during the first years of the conflict leaves no doubt that by many Lebanese Christians viewed the fighting as a war of extermination directed against Christians in Lebanon. The Lebanese left’s goal of militantly secularizing the state proved the driving momentum for Christian emigration long before Islamization took root in the region.
Conclusions
The rise of Islamism has increased alienation and estrangement among Christian communities. Still, Christian emigration long preceded the Islamic revival. When it was related to Islamization processes, it came about because of the policies and actions of the state and not those of Islamic movements. The historical record clearly shows that Islamist movements did not instigate systematic or indirect persecution of the Christians. Indeed, this study demonstrates that the theory concerning the impact of rise of the Islamists does not offer a comprehensive historical explanation for all cases of Christian emigration. Just like the emigration of Christians, so also the rise of Islamism presents a clear and additional indication of another, more profound crisis. Rather the explanation for these phenomena can be found in the policies of the modern Arab state and with the outbreak of communal and regional conflicts. Policies espoused by the state in the post-colonial era, have been the main dynamic that lies behind Christian emigration. The failure of social and economic structures built by revolutionary regimes in modern times has been the reality from which upper- and middle-class Christians have escaped. Later, state Islamization policies and the Islamization of the public sphere served to accelerate the process of emigration. By the same logic, it has been the poor performance and collapse of the state mechanism as well as the associated regional and communal conflicts that have engulfed Arab states that have generated the Christians’ mass emigration from the Arab Middle East.
It is certainly reasonable to rebut the interpretation that the rise of Islamic movements proved the main impetus for Christian emigration, given the fact that this development began many years before the 1970s, the period in which Islamic movements became an integral part of the social and political landscape in the region. Still, the Islamization of the public sphere as a state policy in Egypt, and to a limited extent also in Ba’athist Syria, did intensify alienation among Christians in both countries.
Communities absorbing immigration that have been created in Western countries, such as in the Lebanese and Egyptian-Coptic cases, undoubtedly constitute a factor encouraging further out migration. Nevertheless, one should understand Diaspora communities as constituting a part of the emigration process itself and not as an element that invigorates immigration, since the immigration process itself began even before the formation of such communities in the West, and was essentially the product of a dynamic related to the immigrants’ country of origin and not necessarily to the country of destination.
To put this another way, the conflictual reality in which Arab Middle Eastern modern states have been involved since the late 1940s drove great parts of the Christian communities in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria to leave the region. The collapse of the state’s authority following the “Arab Spring” has culminated the process of Christian demographic demise in the Arab Middle East. In fact, the popular uprisings and their byproduct, the Christians’ exodus, are yet another testament to the failure of the modern Arab state in its current form.
Analysts generally agreed that the recent popular uprisings in the Arab world constitute a formative event in the history of the Arab peoples in the Middle East, one that is still ongoing and that is likely to reshape the geopolitical map of the region as a whole. It may also be said to mark a turning point in the history of the Christian communities in this space, threatening not only their identity but also their very survival. In 1945, Kamal Jumblatt was quoted describing the Christians’ positioning as “casting themselves as cultural intermediaries; hyphens and bridges, as it were, between East and West; transmitting to the Western world to the faintest pulsations on the Eastern and Arab worlds.” Contrary to this sympathetic and admiring reading, in our days, it is not the Christians’ status that is a matter of dispute, but rather their very existence in the region is at stake.