[dodger]

The World (& the UN -- of course) is silent amid such patent ethnic-religious 'cleansing'. Ever on toward the Ummah, one supposes!!

[Frwy]

Oh, they'll survive quite nicely. Just not here. That's a whole eternity of surviving that no one else has if they do not accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Don't have to do it, but it beats the alternative all to hell.

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]

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[happygrl]

It was a Syrian Christian, Michel Aflaq, who founded the nationalist Baath movement in 1940, a career ladder for Iraqi Christians until 2003 and still a political safe haven for many Syrian Christians today. Former Egyptian President Gamal Abd al-Nasser had no qualms about paying homage to the Virgin Mary, who supposedly appeared on a church roof in a Cairo suburb after the defeat of Egypt in its 1967 war with Israel. And former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who died in 2004, insisted on sitting in the first row in Bethlehem Church of the Nativity during the annual Christmas service.

But those days are gone. The last prominent Christians — Chaldean Tariq Aziz, the foreign minister of Saddam for many years, and Hanan Ashrawi, the education minister of Arafat — have vanished from the political stage in the Middle East.

UH, those "Christians" were nothing to brag about. The Baath Party is in a direct line from the Nazis.

And whether Nassar or Arafat paid homage to Christian Signs and Wonders or Services, it made on difference in their conduct.

And since the election victories of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Hamas in the Palestinian Authority, the rise of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the bloody power struggles between Sunni and Shiite militias in Iraq, the illusion that Christian politicians could still play an important role in the Arab world is gone once and for all.

Yup.

A Middle East scholar during visits to the capital of the nation last year warned that the lost of religious minorities in the region would adversely affect Islamic moderation.

Dr. Habib Malik, professor of history and cultural studies at the Presbyterian-founded Lebanese American University in Beirut, said that Christians provide a "dimension of universality — openness towards other culture" that help Muslims in the region become more accepting of others different from themselves.

For example, Christian beliefs such as respect for women rights, acceptance of religious pluralism, rejection of suicide bombings and religious domination can facilitate Islamic moderation when the two groups co-exist in the region.

Christianity has had 1400 years to "moderate" their Muslim neighbors.

The trend has been decidely Not Moderate Lately.

I'd say, Get the Hell Out Before the Brimstone Starts Falling.

And Shake Your Sandals as you Leave Town.