About the Book
This volume addresses the domestic and international politics that have created conditions for contemporary religious cleansing in the Middle East. It provides a platform for a host of distinguished scholars, journalists, human rights activists, and political practitioners. The contributors come from diverse political, cultural, and religious backgrounds; each one drawing on a deep wellspring of scholarship, experience, sobriety, and passion. Collectively, they make a major contribution to understanding the dynamics of the mortal threat to social pluralism upon which the survival of religious minorities depend.
Table of Contents:
Introduction, John Eibner
Chapter 1:The Anatomy of Religious Cleansing: Non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire (1914–1918), Boston, October 22, 2014, Taner Akçam
Chapter 2: Dhimmis No More: Christians’ Trauma in the Middle East, Bern, March 7, 2012, Daniel Pipes
Chapter 3: Syria, the “Arab Spring,” and the Future of Christians and other Religious Minorities, Zurich, June 12, 2012, Habib Malik
Chapter 4: Islamist Majoritarian Democracy in Egypt: What it means for Religious Minorities Zurich, November 28, 2012, Mariz Tadros
Chapter 5: The “Arab Spring” and its Aftermath: Implications for Muslim–Christian Relations, Zurich, May 30, 2013, Michael Nazir-Ali
Chapter 6: Preventing Genocide in the Middle East: The Continuing Relevance of the Turkish Experience and the Problem of Bias within the United Nations, Zurich, May 2, 2013, Hannibal Travis
Chapter 7: Remarks on the “Arab Spring” and Religious Minorities in a Shari’a-State, Zurich, November 19, 2013, Bassam Tibi
Chapter 8: The Impact of the Arab Uprisings on Dhimmitude: Non-Muslims in the Middle East Today, Geneva, March 20, 2014, Bat Ye’or
Chapter 9: The IS Caliphate and the West’s Wars in Syria and Iraq: A Challenge to Religious Pluralism in the Middle East, Zurich, October 8, 2014, Patrick Cockburn
Chapter 10: Religious Pluralism in the Middle East: A Challenge to the International Community, Boston, March 25, 2015, Amine Gemayel
Chapter 11: Revisiting Turkey’s Policy toward Religious Minorities on the Centenary of the Armenian Genocide, Zurich, April 1, 2015, Cengiz Aktar
Chapter 12: Social Pluralism, Religious Cleansing and “Hybrid Warfare” in Contemporary Syria, November 22, 2016, John Eibner
Chapter 13: Saudi Regional Interventions in the Middle East: Consequences for Local Societies, Zurich, October 27, 2015, Madawi Al-Rasheed
Chapter 14: Can Religious Pluralism Survive Sectarian War in Syria and Beyond?, Zurich, March 14, 2016, Fabrice Balanche
Chapter 15: ISIS, Christians, and National Identity in the Middle East, Boston, April 7, 2016, Joshua Landis
Chapter 16: The Persecution of Christians in Today’s Middle East, Zurich, May 4, 2016, Daniel Williams
Chapter 17: The Challenges of Social Pluralism in Post-Revolutionary Egypt, Zurich, June 14, 2016, Mariz Tadros
Chapter 18: Saddam Hussein, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the Islamic State: Can Religious Pluralism Survive the Onslaught?, Zurich, October 25, 2016, William Warda
Chapter 19: The Christians of Lebanon: Surviving amidst Chaos, Boston, November 9, 2016 Marius Deeb
Chapter 20: Christians of the Holy Land–Exodus, Disintegration, and Ideological Necrophilia Zurich, May 22, 2017, Franck Salameh
About the Contributors
About the Author :
John Eibner, PhD, CEO of Christian Solidarity International
Review :
Eibner deserves credit for amassing quite an array of contributions, particularly with respect to the past, present, and future of Christian minority groups in the Middle East.
For more than a century, the delicate fabric of inter-communal relations in the Middle East has been unraveling, at the expense of religious and ethnic minorities. Multiple causes usually involve some combination of strident nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism. While in recent years, Western eyes have understandably been focused primarily on the threat that jihadist terrorism poses to their societies, but the ongoing existential threat to deep-rooted Christian communities and other religious and ethnic minorities is often ignored or accepted as inevitable. This collection of closely argued essays drawn from a cross-section of top-shelf scholars, journalists, human rights activists, and political practitioners highlights both the historical and contemporary dynamics that have placed Christian communities, in particular, under siege. It should serve as a wakeup call to all those who care about religious freedom, political pluralism, and human rights.
Under the capable editorship of John Eibner, this book is a vivid historical document written with precision and passion by twenty scholars about Islam's war against Christians, and other non-Muslims, in the Middle East. Offering penetrating political analyses and a keen sense of moral urgency, the authors detail Christianity's decline and disappearance in Syria and Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt, and elsewhere. A truly must read for anyone concerned about The Future of Religious Minorities in the Middle East.
This truly international collection (from Zürich, Geneva, Bern, Oxford, Boston) of papers, delivered by twenty prominent scholars in Near-Eastern studies, looks at situational developments in the persecution of religious minorities in predominantly Islamic religions. The papers here present, based both on scholarship and on their personal experiences, a properly varied set of perspectives on ‘what is going wrong’. This volume looks religious cleansing in the face, calls it for what it is, and attempts to point most thoughtfully to the factors that may lead to working successfully against the forceful suppression of religious pluralism, even in the heart of an important but troubled region of our world which we can otherwise only ruefully watch coming apart at the seams.
