The Arab World’s Vanishing Christians. Who is at fault?

[Viking]

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/middle-east-christians-minorities-by-christian-c--sahner-2014-12

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Few words about causes of the situation.

1987 1.4 Million Christians in Iraq (before Operation Desert Storm)
2003 1 Million Christians in Iraq (before The Iraq war)
2014 less than 300 000

In God we trust.
Really?

[The Mikado]

William Dalrymple's 1997 book From the Holy Mountain, a travelogue where he explores the former lands of the Byzantine Empire to see what remains of Eastern Christendom in the lands that were once its core, is very insightful on the fate of the Christians of the East and is something of a must-read. He even predicted that within 20 years there wouldn't be Christians in the Middle East outside of Lebanon and Egypt, which is starting to look like a safe-ish bet.

The most compelling moment in my opinion is when he's visiting Turkey and witnesses multiple Armenian cemeteries bulldozed to build something else on top of them. Not only are the Armenians gone, but any trace that they ever were there is unwelcome and to be eliminated.

Also, when he was in IIRC Izmir (formerly Smyrna), the local authorities hold a bikini competition in a former Orthodox Church abandoned since 1919. When Dalrymple questions the propriety of this, everyone's simply baffled.

EDIT: his basic thesis is that the elimination of Christianity in the region is a long-standing, slow-moving campaign beginning in the late Ottoman Empire ("Protecting Christians" became the excuse de jure to meddle in Ottoman affairs, so pushing them out became desirable), hit its stride in the Armenian Genocide and the post-WWI population transfers, and has been proceeding ever since. Efforts by Christians to turn back this tide, like the Lebanon War of the 1970s-1990s, have actually accelerated it, and Christians are nowhere worse off than the Palestinian Christians, now treated as undesirable Arabs by the Israelis and fifth columnists by the Palestinians. He rails to no end about the destruction of Christian historical sites in Israel/Palestine dating back to either Late Antiquity or the Crusades while artifacts from the days of Herod or earlier are zealously defended.

[ingemann]

I think Mikado's answer was interesting, through unless Assad lose I doubt we will see the Christians disappear in Syria.

Through interesting in Turkey and Algeria, while the traditional non-Muslim religious minorities has almost completely disappeared, it seem to be some conversion to Christianity (primary protestant groups). In Algeria conversion should be relative common among the Berbers (primary the Kabyle). There's also the rumour about "mass" conversions in Iran, but honestly when there's death penalty for conversion, it's hard to know the scale. But it's interesting than these things happen away from the Arabic core.

[Viking]

William Dalrymple's 1997 book From the Holy Mountain, a travelogue where he explores the former lands of the Byzantine Empire to see what remains of Eastern Christendom in the lands that were once its core, is very insightful on the fate of the Christians of the East and is something of a must-read. He even predicted that within 20 years there wouldn't be Christians in the Middle East outside of Lebanon and Egypt, which is starting to look like a safe-ish bet.

The most compelling moment in my opinion is when he's visiting Turkey and witnesses multiple Armenian cemeteries bulldozed to build something else on top of them. Not only are the Armenians gone, but any trace that they ever were there is unwelcome and to be eliminated.

Also, when he was in IIRC Izmir (formerly Smyrna), the local authorities hold a bikini competition in a former Orthodox Church abandoned since 1919. When Dalrymple questions the propriety of this, everyone's simply baffled.

EDIT: his basic thesis is that the elimination of Christianity in the region is a long-standing, slow-moving campaign beginning in the late Ottoman Empire ("Protecting Christians" became the excuse de jure to meddle in Ottoman affairs, so pushing them out became desirable), hit its stride in the Armenian Genocide and the post-WWI population transfers, and has been proceeding ever since. Efforts by Christians to turn back this tide, like the Lebanon War of the 1970s-1990s, have actually accelerated it, and Christians are nowhere worse off than the Palestinian Christians, now treated as undesirable Arabs by the Israelis and fifth columnists by the Palestinians. He rails to no end about the destruction of Christian historical sites in Israel/Palestine dating back to either Late Antiquity or the Crusades while artifacts from the days of Herod or earlier are zealously defended.

So, the majority of Americans are Christians. I think that the number of Christians in the US is more then number of Democrats or Republicans or fat cats. Yeh? So, why do the US government still support Al Qaeda and ISIS? Yeh, officially America has declared war on but actually Al Qaeda and ISIS are supported by the US allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia. 

[seb_pard]

Well, this is an interesting topic from my perspective because my country (Chile) has a sizable Arab christian population (particularly Palestinian and Lebanese).

I think there a lot of reasons of the decline of christian Arabs, first is the sectarian conflicts, but this affects Muslims too, but for a christian is less attractive to move to another Arab country than a Sunni or shii and some of then prefer to move to other regions.

The Arabs started to emigrate to Chile because of some conflicts I don't remember but they were actually very successful here and accumulate some wealth and they created some powerful networks and then some Arabs started to came here for economic reasons. In today's Chile the Palestinian are over represented in the upper classes.

The Palestinian/Arab community in Chile always try to bring some refugees from the middle east and in the last years started to arrive not only christian refugees but Muslims too. So I think the main reason of christian population's decline in the middle east is because for a christian refugee is more attractive to move to a christian majority country than another  with a majority Muslim population.

An interesting fact is that the chilean Arab population is very supportive of the Palestinian cause and even the chilean right wing parties are not very friendly to Israel's policy.

(Sorry about my english but I hope to contribute to the discussion).