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When we talk about the conflicts ravaging the Near East and the Middle East, we often overlook those who are closest to us, namely, the Christian communities of the region, direct descendants of the first disciples of Christ.
Since the so-called “Arab Springs,” we have witnessed a worsening of the persecution against those who maintained their Christian faith long before the birth and expansionism of Islam, observing how Copts, Chaldeans, Greek-Melkites, or Maronites, among others, have no alternative but exile, with many arriving in countries such as Canada, the United States, or Australia.
That said, the exile of “Arab” Christians had already begun during the First World War, with many Syrian and Lebanese Christians arriving in Brazil, Argentina, and other Ibero-American countries:
When we talk about the conflicts ravaging the Near East and the Middle East, we often overlook those who are closest to us, namely, the Christian communities of the region, direct descendants of the first disciples of Christ.
Since the so-called “Arab Springs,” we have witnessed a worsening of the persecution against those who maintained their Christian faith long before the birth and expansionism of Islam, observing how Copts, Chaldeans, Greek-Melkites, or Maronites, among others, have no alternative but exile, with many arriving in countries such as Canada, the United States, or Australia.
That said, the exile of “Arab” Christians had already begun during the First World War, with many Syrian and Lebanese Christians arriving in Brazil, Argentina, and other Ibero-American countries:
Many arrived with Ottoman passports and were labeled as “Turks,” something that greatly irritated them since they were fleeing that Muslim power, which particularly targeted Armenians and Greeks.
This exile, unfortunately, has never stopped, intensifying in our days and also reaching Europe:
However, looking back and relying more on history, the example of North Africa—a “region” that once had 600 dioceses and gave rise to saints of the stature of Augustine of Hippo—seems as illustrative as it is painful:
Yet, we do not see indigenists, progressives, and their ilk protesting these foreign religious impositions, which also had a cultural impact against the natives.
These so-called progressives also do not protest how this has occurred in European geography, from Constantinople to the Balkans; Spain being a unique case in history, having recovered from the Islamic conquest.
The woke contradiction is nothing short of curious: They condemn the conquest of America but celebrate Islamic conquests and remain silent or outright deny that, for centuries, multitudes of Christians of various ethnicities were enslaved by Muslims.
They also remain silent or deny that, for centuries, native Hispanic Christians (redundancies aside) were treated as second-class citizens in wide areas of their Peninsula:
As the Texan historian Stanley Payne says regarding the Hispanic case (which he knows quite well due to his specialization): “There has been no other case in which, after a significant territory was conquered by Islam—or by another civilization—subjugated and deeply transformed by that foreign civilization, with nearly all its inhabitants converted to an alien religion, it was finally, centuries later, recovered by the small remnants of the originally conquered kingdom.
And furthermore, that the reconquerors did not merely impose themselves on the invaders but restored their own culture throughout the territory, eradicated the attacking civilization, and reinstated the original religion, establishing a new version that succeeded, albeit partially, the same extinguished civilization.
The Reconquista was such a great and singular feat that, for this reason alone, the history of Spain is entirely different from all others.”
Regarding the Reconquista, Stanley Payne projects this history with universal consequences, defining it as “…a history of expansion that lasted over a thousand years and concerns a very considerable part of the world […] one of the greatest milestones in universal history […] a culture of tenacity and resistance that scarcely has an equivalent in history”; adding that “the world owes Spain the recovery of the Peninsula for Christian Europe, as well as the extension of Western culture to the rest of the world following the Discovery of America. Also, the first seeds of International Law.”
However, the aforementioned Texan Hispanist also warns that “over the last two centuries, and especially today, the great myth has been created that Al-Andalus in the medieval era was a paradise of tolerance and multiculturalism, a view that is anachronistic and false.”
It must be clarified that “Al-Andalus” is not synonymous with “Andalusia,” since “Al-Andalus” refers to all the Iberian Muslim territory; and that this rosy Islamophile legend began to take shape in the late 18th century and exploded during Romanticism as an appendage to the anti-Spanish Black Legend; that is, “the evil, dark, and backward Christian Spain that deprived us of tolerant, cultured, and progressive Islam…”; a myth far more widespread than it seems, both in Spain and Hispanic America, as the professor of Arabic Literature and Americanist historian Serafín Fanjul has long warned:
Eastern Christians have always kept the Spanish Reconquista very much in mind, as for many of them, it is a history they wish had been applied to their own lands.
Lebanon was an especially dramatic case, as many dreamed it would be the only Christian republic in the region, yet, ravaged by multiple conflicts, we see how many Lebanese—whether in Brazil, Argentina, the United States, Australia, or wide areas of Europe—no longer even think of returning to their homeland, with its Christian population increasingly dwindling.
As stated: Since the “Arab Springs,” Christians in the Near and Middle East are increasingly cornered, and let us hope that both in Europe and America, awareness grows that they are our greatest and best allies; for without the perseverance of their ancestors, the faith that permeates our culture would not have been passed down to us.
And with this awareness, we should act accordingly.
With all this “Orientalism” in “search of exoticism” that we’ve indulged in since Romanticism, we would do better to look to the East—but as we ought to look, that is, through a Christian lens.
Original article from Gateway Pundit.
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