The impact of Dhimmitude upon the spiritual lives of the Palestinian Christians.
A recent article by Dexter Van Zile began: “[In July],
the United Church of Christ (UCC)’s General Synod passed a “peacemaking”
resolution that declared Israel guilty of sins against the Palestinian people.
The resolution repeats the narrative offered about the evils of the Jewish
state broadcast by Palestinian Christians in the West Bank and eastern
Jerusalem, who have been demonizing Israel for decades.”[1]
This western church, like numerous others, was
attacking Israel on the basis of information provided by Palestinian Christians.
This raises the important question: “how should we view Palestinian Christian
statements about their situation in Israel/Palestine?” Given that western
churches are acting upon this advice, this is an important question for them to
consider. The discussion begins with the concept of dhimmitude.
Dhimmitude
was the contract entered into between the
Muslim conquerors and the conquered Christian and Jewish populations. Basically,
it treated them as rubbish in exchange for not murdering them. They had to
promise not to speak badly about Islam, not to preach the Gospel, and to accept
endless humiliations and contempt from the ruling Muslims. The Christian communities
have been suffering under this system for 1300 years!
“Dhimmis can appear to collude to conceal their own condition, finding themselves psychologically unable to critique or oppose it. The psychology of gratitude and inferiority can manifest in the dhimmi as denial or concealment of the condition. … the psychology of inferiority can mean that people from a dhimmi background are themselves the least able to analyse or expose their own condition. A powerful silence rests over the whole subject like a thick blanket or a strong dose of anaesthetic.”[2]
“Christian communities native to the Middle East today exhibit the scars of centuries of inferiorization and marginalization. They constitute living relics of the ravages of a system that, although technically abolished in many modern Arab states, continues on the level of official as well as popular attitudes and practices. The Christians of the Holy Land, for example ‘Palestinian Christians’ are symptomatic of this dhimmi genre and its attendant complexes.”[3]
Sadly, the Palestinian Christian communities, their leadership, and many of their members, witness to this internalized oppression all too frequently. They may well rationalize it by believing that by agreeing with the Muslims, they are protecting their communities from even greater harm, but their calling is to preach the truth, not to fear men. Life truly has not been easy for them!
Examples of life under Muslim rule from Palestinian Christian history
In 1785 Constantin de Volney wrote; “Faithful to the spirit of the Koran, it [the government] treats the Christians with a severity which displays itself in varied forms. ... All kinds of public worship is prohibited the Christians, … The cannot build any new churches; and if the old ones fall into decay, they are not allowed to repair them, unless by a permission which costs them very dear. A Christian cannot strike a Mahometan without risk of his life, but if a Mahometan kill a Christian, he escapes for a stipulated price.”[4] As the Mufti of Jerusalem said in a fatwa issued in 1853, “It is against the honour of the Moslem religion to permit Christian Churches to be erected.”[5] In 1823, after an elderly Christian peasant from Beit Jalla was shot and beheaded, his head was stuck on a pike in Jerusalem and the local Muslim boys spat and threw rubbish at it for three days while the local Christians were unable to rescue it or show any grief. The early Anglican priest, Michael Kawar mentioned in his autobiography that anti-Christian riots in Nazareth had forced his father to flee to Lebanon in the 1820s.[6] In 1828, in Nazareth, a Christian girl who refused the advances of a Muslim man was killed by being dragged through the streets behind a horse. This would have served as a reminder to all other Christian girls not to resist a Muslim. Indeed, prior to 1845, James Finn wrote that Christian women were “dishonoured with impunity.” As Colonel P. Campbell, A Visit to Israel's Holy Places (1839) wrote; “The Mussulmans [of Syria-Palestine], … from the bottom of his heart he believes and maintains that a Christian, and still more so a Jew, is an inferior being to himself.”[7]
Ottoman reforms granting civil rights to Christians and Jews in the nineteenth century upset this centuries old pattern, and provoked a savage backlash for the Muslim community. The American Protestant missionary, Henry H. Jessup, wrote that; "the new liberties granted to the Christian sects, … had kindled [among the Muslims] fires of fanatical hatred."[8] In 1853 in Nablus, the sight of a Syrian Christian official sitting in a chair (!!) roused a Muslim mob to shout; “kill him, kill him. Did you ever see a Christian like that before?” In 1856, Muslim riots in Nablus left a number of Christians dead and forced the expulsion of the entire Protestant community. The Nablus Protestants wrote to the Sultan. They spoke of “their afflicted and calamitous state … the injuries inflicted on them, the loss of their freedom, the insecurities of their lives, property and families, all of which they presently endure (and for the previous 5 months). Since the issue of the Firman (February 1856) declaring religious liberty, the Mohammedans of Nablus have been filled with rage against the Christians.” On Friday, April 4th, most of the Ulamahs of Nablus assembled in one of the Mosques … after this the call was given by one of them going through the streets; “Oh religion of Mohammad, attack the Christians.” At the same time, all the Mohammedans being assembled for prayer, the Ulamahs stopped the Muazzins and made them come down from the Minarets, saying there shall be no prayers for the religion of Muhammad is dead.” They aroused the populace “to fury, that they might fall upon the Christians.” They destroyed the school of bishop Gobat, and the attached chapel. They also killed a number of Christians, burying one boy in lime. The shouts of the mob were “frightful, together with those of the females who shrieked on the terraces to excite and encourage them.” The Greek Orthodox “from fear, have appeared outwardly satisfied with the Mohammedans, and have made no claim [of] satisfaction for the injuries done.”[9] [That is, the local Christians, from fear, did not even attempt to gain compensation through the court, but simply accepted the murder, violence, robbery and destruction of property they had been subjected to. Such was their life under Muslim rule. Note also the cry from the crowds that if they are unable to persecute Christians, then Islam is dead.]
The Rev. Arthur George Harper Hollingsworth wrote in 1852; “No Christian is secure against insult, robbery, and ruin.”[10] In 1858 the two villages of Zebabdeh and Likfair (where the inhabitants were all Christian) “were utterly sacked, men and women stripped even to their shirts and turned adrift.” “whereas many villages in the district of Nablus have a few Christian families located in each, such families were subjected in every direction to plunder and insults.” Also in 1858, James Finn wrote from Jerusalem; “daily accounts are given me of insults in the streets offered to Christians and Jews, accompanied by acts of violence. ... there is no clear case yet known of a Christian’s evidence being accepted in a court of justice, or in a civil tribunal against a Moslem.” In 1876, P.J. Newman wrote that in nearly all parts of Palestine, “the Christians are cringing and fearful.”[11] Christians were forbidden from entering or praying at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, or Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron.
One reads of “the talk” that black parents give their children in America, and Jewish parents give their children world-wide. Christian parents in Muslim lands also rightly pass down their fears and nightmares. Najib Awad describes how beneath the rich history of plurality for eastern Christians, there hides a “parallel history of suffering, uncertainty, fear, pressure, difficulty, death and perpetual strife for survival as a minority in a non-Christian majority world.”[12] Christian strategies of Arab nationalism and anti-Zionism cannot be fully understood apart from this overwhelming fear, a fear which for obvious reasons is rarely mentioned in public.
In 1923, Dr. Alexander Paterson reflected in general upon the inter-communal relations: “It was this age-long incompatibility, this irreconcilable enmity, that was more potent for evil than any other single factor, and harder to be dealt with than any other obstacle to mission work. The Moslem and Christian hated the Jew for denying and slaying the Messiah, the Christ. The Moslem and Jew hated the Christian for worshipping three gods. The Jew and the Christian hated the Moslem for his arrogance and fanaticism and oppression, from which they never felt safe. Of course, they commonly existed in an armed truce; life otherwise were impossible. But an anniversary or an indiscreet word, an un-equal deal in business, or a false report, and their passions were in full cry, too often the cry for blood.”
The sentence from the above quote is important; “Of course, they commonly existed in an armed truce; life otherwise were impossible.” Concerning the Jewish community during Ottoman times, Yaari writes; “subjected throughout to severe disabilities, restrictions and humiliations, they were as a rule not seriously molested.” Conditions did vary, both from place to place and over time. There were positive relations between members of the different communities, but everyone still understood the rules and knew the boundaries. Decent Muslims hid Jews during the 1929 Hebron massacre, but still the Muslim mob murdered 67-9 Jews. Likewise, during the 1834 pillaging of the Safed Jewish community, it is reported that Rabbi Menachem Mendel fled to the house of a Christian to escape the mob. These positive, welcome exceptions do not nullify the more general situations described above.
Ongoing effects
According to Muslims themselves, the purpose of dhimmitude
was a killing of the soul: [The dhimmi] “is commanded to put his soul,
good fortune and desires to death. Above all he should kill the love of life,
leadership and honor. [The dhimmi] is to invert the longings of his
soul, he is to load it down more heavily than it can bear until it is completely
submissive.” Ibn ‘Ajibah
Dhimmitude entails a
spiritual as well as a social enslavement. Being subservient, keeping quiet,
submitting to countless minor humiliations, not resisting even when beaten or
community members are raped, all of this has profound effects upon the
self-image of those subjected to it. They come to believe that they are indeed
inferior, that Muslims are indeed superior. The dhimmi
was in fact made to feel gratitude towards the Muslims for not killing him.
There are obvious similarities between this and the appalling ‘battered wife
syndrome.’ Dhimmis lose all self-respect, come to believe they deserve
their fate. As seen, they also will not speak out against Islam.
All of these characteristics can be seen in the Palestinian Christian leadership today. Being generally better educated, and at the same time, desperate to ingratiate themselves, Palestinian Christians have indeed often taken the lead in defending Islam to the west. Western Christians all too often view such Christians as co-religionists, an unbiased but knowledgeable reference for all things Muslim, especially on the treatment of Muslims to non-Muslims. They also trust their views on the Arab Israeli conflict for the same reasons.
And the Palestinian Christians continually tell their
Christian brothers and sisters in the west how well they and the Muslims get
on, how happy they always were together, and how Islam is a religion of peace.
“In the Palestinian
historiography today the discrimination in past and present of the Christian
Palestinians and the periodical tensions among the Muslims and Christians are
regarded as taboo.”[13] Bat Ye’or notes how
Syrian Christians have “dedicated themselves to extolling at both a political
and a literary level the greatness and tolerance of Islamic civilization.”[14] This is also seen in
Palestinian Christian Edward Said’s book Orientalism.[15] Muslim/Christian relations have “all too often
been mythologized by intellectuals and clergymen who never tire of insisting
that harmony has always prevailed between Muslims and Christians in Palestine.
The Anglican Bishop of the Diocese of Jerusalem Riyah Abu-‘Assal stated
emphatically to this author: ‘The entire history of Palestine never witnessed
any religious conflict between Christians and Muslims.’”[16]
Likewise in 2011, Father Manuel Musallam, head of Gaza’s Catholics, met with Hamas leader,
Mahmoud al Zahar, and declared that “Christians are not threatened by Muslims.”[17]
They know this is false and some must despise themselves for what they do. They don’t cry out to warn their Christian brothers and sisters of the horrors they have experienced, rather they carry water for their tormentors, and betray fellow Christians. Dhimmitude is submission to Islam, and that is a sin.
As Mark Durie in his excellent book “Freedom from
Islam and Dhimmitude through the Cross” shows, they need to repent of
being dhimmis, break the power of Islam over them and step out into the
freedom and truth of Jesus.
Contemptable behavior and false hopes
Palestinian Christian leaders also know that
Palestinian Christians receive better treatment from Israel than any other
minority in the Middle East, and that the only Christian community in the
Middle East which is thriving is in Israel. They also know that Israel, the
Jewish state, treats Christians and Muslims far better than Christians and
Muslims ever treated Jews when they were in the minority. Yet no words of
gratitude are heard. Instead, groups like Christ at the Checkpoint spend all
their time and energy, not preaching the Gospel, but attacking Israel.
Palestinian Christians need to wake up! A democratic, secular state is not going
to happen. Sure, they have wanted this since the 1830s and the Ottoman Tanzimat
reforms, because it gives them, as a tiny minority, advantages/protections
from the reality of dhimmitude. But it offers no advantage to the Muslim
majority, rather it conflicts with a fundamental aspect
of Islam. Indeed, Muslim fury at
Christians being given equal rights (viewed by them as blasphemous) provoked
the 1894-1924 genocide of 1.5 million Christians across Turkey. The best the
Palestinian Christians might hope for is to be in a situation similar to that
in Jordan.
Interestingly, between 1947 and 1967, Palestinian Christians gained some experience of living under Jordanian rule. During that time, the Christian population of Jerusalem dropped from over forty-five thousand to twenty-eight thousand. (It had more than doubled during the British Mandate.) Christian institutions were barred from purchasing or even renting land in the Old City of Jerusalem. This was due to increasing Muslim demands. Local Christians were again made to feel inferior, and dependent upon the diminishing goodwill of the Muslim majority. Christianity was attacked in Friday sermons, on radio and also physically, especially during times of crisis such as 1956 and 1966-7. In 1966, the violence was so bad that the Latin and Greek Catholic bishops in Amman issued a rare public protest against the “official policy of discrimination and assaults on Christians.”[18] Between official government restrictions and popular antipathy, Palestinian Christians during the Jordanian period again experienced the reality of living as a despised minority within a Muslim majority population. And all that was while they were under the protection of King Hussain, who was a moderate, pro-western due to his education, wife and allies, and generally viewed as a buffer to the increasingly anti-Christian legislation and acts of the government and population. There would be no king Hussain in any future Palestinian state.
In fact, within
Palestine, the Christians have known since the 1920s that there will be no
secular state, and they have been left always backing the least Islamic of the
various Muslim contenders. Having spent the past 40 years backing the PA, many
are now turning in despair to Hamas,[19] and hoping that they can
ingratiate themselves sufficiently to survive.
More recent Palestinian Christian history – still being treated as dhimmis
The above photo was
taken 2015 at the entrance to the to the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth.
In 2005, a Christian village, Taiba was “ransacked” by more than 500 Muslim men chanting “Allahu akbar” because a Christian man from that village had a romantic relationship with a Muslim woman.[21] Also in 2005, Justus Reid Weiner investigated the human rights of Palestinian Christians living under the Palestinian Authority. He reported that “there is a widespread distrust of religious leaders among Palestinian Christians, who ‘obfuscate the situation as it affects their constituents.’ One Christian man said, ‘our leaders are liars: They tell the newspapers that everything is OK. But when Christians go to the market they’re afraid to wear crosses.’”[22] See also https://israelbehindthenews.com/2008/01/09/bethlehem-churches-bear-brunt-of-religious-hatred-final-piece-in-five-part-series/
In 2019, on April
25, Christian village of Jifna near Ramallah asked the PA to protect them after
they were attacked by dozens of Muslim gunmen. The violence erupted after
a woman from the village submitted a complaint to the police that the son of a
prominent, Fatah-affiliated leader had attacked her family. The attackers threw
petrol bombs while shouting curses, and caused severe damage to public property. They also called on the residents to pay jizya. Despite the residents’ cries for help, the PA
police did not intervene. According to the BESA Centre, Fatah regularly exerts
heavy pressure on Christians not to report the acts of violence and vandalism
from which they frequently suffer.[23]
The wider impact of dhimmitude – the moral and spiritual nakba of Palestinian Christianity as revealed by ‘the Jewish question’
“and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” (James 1:15)
Having (in their eyes) been humiliated by the Jews for over 100 years, if Islam (Hamas/Hezbollah/PA whatever) succeeded in taking back control of Jerusalem, will they want this to be seen as a triumph of western democratic secular values, or as a triumph of Islam?? Palestinian Christians need to think about this, they know the answer! Wake up, there is not going to be a secular, democratic state of Palestine. “The fact is that if the Islamists ever fulfilled their dream of defeating the Israelis and hurling the Jews into the sea, they would hardly be predisposed to share power with Palestinian Christians, secular or otherwise. … the mirage of Palestinian nationalism will not save the Christians from the oppression that awaits them at the hands of the radical Islamists who are increasingly calling the shots in Palestinian society.”[24]
How Christians deal
with their own persecution is up to them. In light of the second Commandment, the
real question Palestinian Christian leaders need to ask themselves (given that
they are working tirelessly to harm Israel) is; “If [God forbid!!] Islam
triumphs, how will it treat the defeated Jewish population??”
Again, they need to
think about this, because deep down, hidden under layers of servile dhimmitude,
they know the answer. Genocide. The Muslim Palestinians make no secret about
it! Sermons about trees telling Muslims to kill Jews behind them, “the army of
Khaybar” etc etc etc! You know this! The PA have stated that there will be no
Jews within any territory they control. They reward with large sums of money
any Palestinian who murders Israel civilians, including 3-month-old children.
Statues are put up of, streets and soccer clubs are named after Palestinians
who murder Israelis. Listen to Hamas sermons about killing Jews worldwide. They
are not trying to hide this.
So Palestinian
Christians, think clearly. Palestinian Christian organizations like CATC exists
to weaken western Protestant evangelical support for Israel. This is largely to
show to the Muslim majority that you have value, so you will not suffer the
same fate as the Christian communities of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon Egypt
etc. They exist to harm/weaken Israel. Shamefully, this is not just their dhimmitude
in action. As well as that, far too many Palestinian denominations, like Christian
denominations worldwide, have yet to acknowledge and repent of their own anti-Semitism.
The question you need
to ask is “am I working and doing all of this year in and year out, is what
I am doing enabling, empowering Genocide???”
Remember, one day, each
one of you will have to answer to the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the
God of Jacob. You do not want to face him with that on your resume! I do not
think it will happen, but that is the goal you are working to further.
The other option,
taught by your Anglican founders, proclaimed God’s faithfulness to the Jewish
people. When the Muslims were defeated by the Jews in 1948, and again in 1967,
they knew something spiritual had happened. They interpret reality in
spiritual terms. Had you spent the previous 100 years proclaiming God's
faithfulness to the Jewish people as part of the Gospel, they would not have
liked you (they don't anyway) but they would have been given the means to
understand what was happening. Had you warned them, “do not oppose this return,
for God is in it and you will not succeed”, the path of the Lord would have
been straightened. Many might have repented. But they never heard it explained to
them by you.
So rather than attacking God’s grace in rescuing and
restoring the Jewish people to the land he promised to them, Palestinian
Christian leaders and their western allies need to repent, break the chains of dhimmitude,
ask forgiveness from the Jewish people and bear fruits of repentance.
[1] https://www.camera.org/article/camera-op-ed-time-to-put-the-united-church-of-christ-on-trial-for-antisemitism/?fbclid=IwAR2XVooi5U-fHPkbFr-34gsu6ckAmVZKgfTWITNLTvg-7iuqwqw8C_JeHCU
[2] M. Durie, The Third Choice, 181.
[3] https://www.firstthings.com/article/1999/01/003-christians-in-the-land-called-holy
[4] Bat Ye’or, 1985; The Dhimmi, 214-17.
[5] Bat
Ye’or, 1985; 244-5.
[6] Farah, In Troubled Waters, 11.
[7] Bat
Ye’or, 1985; 224.
[8] Freas, Muslim-Christian Relations in Palestine During the British Mandate Period, 39.
[9] Bat
Ye’or, 1985; 246-8.
[10] Hollingsworth, Remarks on the present condition and future prospects of the Jews in Palestine, 1852, 4.
[11] Emmett, Beyond the Basilica: Christians and Muslims in Nazareth 29.
[12] Ashdown, Christian–Muslim Relations in Syria, 11.
[13] Kimmerling,
Processes. Quoted in Frantzman, 23.
[14] M. Durie, 201.
[15] See M. Durie, 201-2.
[16] https://www.firstthings.com/article/1999/01/003-christians-in-the-land-called-holy
Written by a Lebanese Christian, this whole article is well worth reading.
[17] https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4203818,00.html
[18] Tsimhoni, Christian Communities in Jerusalem and the West Bank since 1948. 1993, 14.
[19] https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/07/14/palestinian-christians-defends-hamas/
[21] M. Durie, 160.
[22] M. Durie, 203.
[23] https://besacenter.org/persecution-christians-palestinian-authority/
[24] https://www.firstthings.com/article/2002/06/the-body-and-the-blood-the-holy-lands-christians-at-the-turn-of-a-new-millennium-a-reporters-journey
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