AP News, December 23rd, 2006
The U.S.-led coalition's "shortsightedness and ignorance" in Iraq have endangered the lives of Christians across the Middle East, the Archbishop of Canterbury said in a scathing commentary Saturday.
Christians are now seen as "supporters of the crusading West" _ making them the target of attacks by Islamic radicals and forcing many to flee their homelands, wrote Rowan Williams, the Anglican spiritual leader, in a commentary in The London Times.
In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. on Saturday, Williams said the situation for Christians in Iraq is worse than it was when Saddam Hussein was in power.
Williams, who was on a Christmas pilgrimage to the Holy Land with other British church leaders, has been an outspoken critic of the war.
A statement by Foreign Office said Britain's Middle East policies were not to blame for the plight of Iraqi and Middle Eastern Christian communities.
Instead, the government said, Christians and moderate Muslims were both the victims the "intolerant extremism of people who want to cause pain and suffering and chaos."
The Archbishop accused the coalition, in which Britain plays a major role, of ignoring requests before the Iraq war to develop a strategy to help protect Christians from an expected backlash.
That failure, he wrote, has led to an exodus of Christians from the region.
"Iraq's Christian population is dropping by thousands every couple of months, and some of their most effective leaders have been forced to emigrate," he wrote. "In Istanbul, the Orthodox population is a tiny remnant, and their Patriarch is told by some of the Turkish press that it's time he left.
"The first Christian believers were Middle Easterners," he wrote. "It's a sobering thought that we might live to see the last native Christian believers in the region."
The Anglican leader wrote it was imperative to reach out to moderate Muslims.
"We need to confront it, not by weighing in with firepower, but by making real relationships with the communities there and working at trustful contacts with those Muslims who understand their own history and want to live in a lively, varied culture," he wrote.
The Archbishop also wrote that some Israeli policies have hurt traditional Christian communities, citing in particular the security barrier in the West Bank.
Israel says the barrier is meant to stop Palestinian suicide bombers, but Palestinians see it as land grab. Williams wrote that it has divided Christian from Muslim.
"There are some disturbing signs of Muslim anti-Christian feeling, despite the consistent traditions of coexistence" in the town of Bethlehem, Williams wrote.
The plight of Christians, he wrote, "is made still more intolerable by the tragic conditions created by the 'security fence' that almost chokes the shrinking town _ the dramatic poverty, soaring unemployment and sheer practical hardship of traveling to school, work or hospital.
"This Christmas, pray for the little town of Bethlehem, and spare a thought for those who have been put at risk by our shortsightedness and ignorance," the archbishop wrote.
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the Catholic archbishop of England and Wales, traveled with Williams and agreed that Christians are suffering in the Middle East.
"The effects on the Christian minority ... are very great indeed," he told the BBC Saturday. "Christians are an important part of this land and we don't want them to diminish."
Churches in the West, he said, should demonstrate their solidarity with Christians in the region.
"We feel that this forgotten church needs to be supported," he said. "More pilgrims need to come to the Holy Land."
In its rebuttal to Archbishop William's broadside in the Times, Britain's Foreign Office said many Middle Eastern Christians were caught up in "indiscriminate" attacks by extremists, rather than targeted in Iraq.
"The only way out of this is for us to work closely with the democratically elected government in Iraq in order to create a society in which the rights of Christians and all are protected," the statement said. "That is exactly the opposite of the society those who inflict the suffering want."
