The attitudes of Christian religious leaders in the Middle East and North Africa towards the Arab Spring have differed since it erupted in 2011. While these religious leaders in Egypt and Syria opposed the 2011 uprisings, their counterparts in Iraq and Lebanon have been supportive of the second wave of protests that has been ongoing since 2019.
They can see that unless there are political reforms, Christianity has no future in the region. In 2011, Egypt’s Coptic Church asked its followers not to participate in the 25 January protests against the regime of Hosni Mubarak. Bishop Markus, then head of the Information Committee of the Holy Synod, said: “These demonstrations do not know their purpose, nor do we know their details and who is behind them.” He said that the Orthodox Church called on its “children” not to be led by calls to join the demonstrations.
In Syria, the Council of Bishops in Damascus issued a statement in March 2011 insisting that “what is happening in our country is a foreign conspiracy in which, unfortunately, internal actors have been mixed up and the malicious media outlets have tried to distort the bright image that Syria enjoys at home and abroad”.
However, the second wave of uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa that started in 2019, notably in Lebanon and Iraq, have received more support from the Christian leadership in the two countries. In Iraq, Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako, patriarch of the Chaldean Church, visited the main sit-in at Tahrir square in Baghdad and expressed his support for the protestors’ demands, saying that “a new Iraq is being born”.
Fear of chaos
Leaders of the Maronite, Catholic, Orthodox and Evangelical churches in Lebanon issued a common statement in October 2019 expressing solidarity with the peaceful uprising. And the bishop of Beirut, Paul Abdel-Sater, spoke at a mass in February 2020, in the presence of the Lebanese President Michel Aoun and other senior officials, where he requested that they listen to the demands, adding that “otherwise, the most honourable thing to do is to resign”.
Despite their differing political attitudes, the Church leaders in these four countries share the same concerns when it comes to political change in the region. First is the fear of chaos, and its consequence on the security of minority groups, such as Christians. Following this logic, for the Church, an authoritarian state that puts restrictions on the Christian community is still better than no state at all, where minority groups would likely be the ones to pay the highest price. Secondly, there is the fear of Islamisation and the consequences if Islamic groups reach power.
These two concerns led the Church leadership in both Egypt and Syria to stand against the call for political change in 2011. On the one hand, they feared that these popular uprisings would lead to the same kind of state collapse that occurred in Iraq after Saddam Hussein was brought down in 2003.
On the other hand, they believed that the main alternative to both Bashar al-Assad’s and Mubarak’s regimes were likely to be Islamic hardliners because they were the most organised opposition group. They feared that once in power, Islamists would Islamise both the state and society. The increasing influence of Islamic groups in both countries only served to confirm these fears.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
