UPDATED: The Day Pigs were Slain in Egypt.
There is resistance in pig farms north of Cairo to the decision to kill all the pigs in Egypt. Some pig farmers apparently object to eliminating their entire livelihood, especially since a) swine flu isn't currently spread by pigs, and 2) there hasn't been a case of swine flu in Egypt yet.
I think what we're seeing here has only a tangential relationship to the swine flu near-pandemic. Both Islam and Judaism have, of course, a profound religious taboo against pork. All the pigs in Egypt are raised by Copts, and they do a pretty good job of keeping their pigs away from places where Muslims might come into contact. Pork butchers have to be separate from other butchers, and clearly labeled; they are for obvious reasons in Christian neighborhoods. I remember once going to a pork butcher in Cairo: not only were there plenty of signs to make clear to any Muslim who might venture there that this was not the place he was looking for, but the butcher had up photos and paintings of pigs and an extremely large collection of piggy banks, ceramic, pigs, etc., enough to make your average North Carolina barbecue joint proud. No desire, in other words, to have a Muslim wander in by mistake and be scandalized.
Most of us who have lived in Muslim countries have probably also encountered the phenomenon of Muslim friends invited to lunch or dinner seeking reassurance that we are not serving pork. The fact that it takes a real effort to find pork in Muslim countries and that no one other than a seriously disturbed person would try to sneak pork into the diet of someone for whom it is taboo doesn't seem to compute: there seems to be, among some folks, a fear that Christians will try to sneak pork to Muslims. This must be something inculcated in childhood; I can't actually imagine anyone but a really disturbed person trying to force someone to eat pork unknowingly.
There are plenty of theories about the Jewish/Muslim pork taboo; anthropologists often argue that it is a sign of the ancient rivalry between the desert and the sown: the pig is an animal of settled culture, raised in towns, wallowing in its wallow: no one drives great herds of pigs across the desert. Cattle are raised by nomads, and camels, sheep, and goats, but never pigs. (I believe Sumerians raised pigs but the Akkadians banned them: again the urban/nomadic origins influenced the taboo.) Some modern rationalists think it was a means of protecting people against trichinosis and other diseases of pork in hot climates, making Moses into a sort of Bronze Age Surgeon General. For believers, of course, the word of God is sufficient explanation of the taboo.
And it is a profound aversion. I have known Muslims who insist they do not believe very much in God or practice their faith, wouldn't think of fasting in Ramadan and drink like fish, but who nonetheless admit they would be physically ill if they were confronted with eating pork. The culture sometimes goes much deeper than the faith. And of course that is true for all of us, not just Muslims.
Many countries that are nearly entirely Muslim ban pork entirely, but I've also seen at least one breakfast buffet in Abu Dhabi where an entire table was set aside for foreign visitors with the word "Pork" in Arabic quite clearly displayed. The foreigners would just see bacon or ham, the locals would immediately be warned away.
Israel has always had a limited pork culture for the secular side of the country, always clearly distinguished, and usually not in Jerusalem. Christian towns, in Israel or the Palestinian Authority, serve pork, and a great many years ago in the West Bank Christian town of Beit Sahour (just down the hill from Bethlehem) I was taken to a place known for its bacon cheeseburgers, which offends Muslims with the bacon and Jews not only with the bacon but with mixing meat and dairy. A truly transgressive place, and I suspect with the growth of Islamist fervor and the coming of the Palestinian Authority, it's not there anymore.
Except for such deliberately rebellious or transgressive situations, though, there's just not that much pork in the Middle East. Since no Muslim will go near a pig, alive or slaughtered, I have no idea how the Egyptians think swine flu could be transmitted to the general population. I suspect we are seeing an instance, perhaps subconscious, of the profound cultural taboo against pigs. As I noted in an earlier post, Egypt has had several years of bird flu outbreaks, but hasn't tried to kill all the birds.
Some things are predictable: the fact that the pig farmers whose pigs are being destroyed are Copts will mean there will be new charges of religious persecution against the Copts; radical Islamists may use the whole thing as a reminder that pigs are a Christian presence in Egypt and therefore somehow subversive in their own right; and other rabble-rousing accusations. Lebanon has banned pork imports and Jordan is talking about limiting pig farms; and yet there seems to be no evidence that pigs are a major disease vector in this outbreak! The term "swine flu" refers to the source from which the original strain of human flu of this category originated and does not mean that pigs are causing it today. I really don't know why the Egyptians are doing this, except for pure domestic consumption. But it is a reminder of how profound at least some food taboos can be.
Addendum: Since I've had the word "Pigicide" in the title all day, I won't change it, but it belatedly occurs to me that "mass hamicide" would have been better. (Sorry.)
Showing posts with label Reflections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reflections. Show all posts
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Backgrounder: Google's Arabic Efforts and the Diglossia Issue
An interesting piece in yesterday's Financial Times on Google's attempts to increase Internet and web penetration in Arabic (requires a free registration to read) has set me off on a range of musings on the Arabic language and the issue known as diglossia.
First, the article itself. As the article states the challenge:
This is great stuff. Back in the 1970s, I typed my doctoral dissertation on a manual typewriter and had to write the Arabic text by hand, though later I acquired an East German Arabic typewriter cheap. (Good thing I don't need it anymore as I imagine finding East German ribbons is hard these days.) You young whippersnappers have so many cool tools available today . . . why when I was a boy . . .
Although most Google applications, plus Facebook and other media now have Arabic language front-ends that allow people to blog, e-mail, etc. in Arabic, there are still many challenges to fuller Internet penetration. One is the simple one of illiteracy in the Arab world, which is still high by global standards, especially among women. Another is the problem the linguists call "diglossia": the fact that Modern Standard Arabic, the language of newspapers, university instruction, public speeches, etc., is actually no one's first language; Arabs grow up speaking their own local dialect (usually referred to as ‘amiyya or lahja in the East and darija in the Maghreb), which they learn at their mother's knee. They don't just have to learn to read the language they already speak: they have to learn a related but more complex and formal language that no one speaks today, or may ever have spoken as such. It's a deterrent not only to literacy but to entering the public sphere as a journalist, politician, or academic expected to perform in Modern Standard Arabic.
There are some parallels to the European situation in late medieval times when Latin was the language of scholarship, but the romance languages were the spoken language of Western Europe. The differences are considerable though, because the Qur'an's influence is so great that Modern Standard (essentially a simplified classical Arabic) enjoys enormous prestige over the spoken dialects, which lack a standard spelling system and are, in fact, usually taught using Western transliteration or the International Phonetic alphabet. The late Tawfiq al-Hakim and others have written plays in dialect, but they had to invent their own ways to spell things. (Other than some TV soaps, the one printed medium that routinely uses dialect is the political cartoon, interestingly enough.)
The Egyptian author and psychologist Mustapha Safouan, (writing in French to underscore the irony), has argued that diglossia contributes to why the Arabs are "not free," in that only the elites can handle the learned language of power. Here's an article about his work, and here's an excerpt; I haven't read his work other than what you see there. Here's a more scholarly treatment of the subject of diglossia.
Which allows me to mention that MEI's Language department plans to hold a conference on diglossia this fall. I'll post more as the schedule firms up.
I was fortunate to learn a spoken dialect (Egyptian) quite early on, and am an enthusiast for learning the language people actually speak to each other, though a serious student must also know the literary language, of course, and I also had to learn the classical/Qur'anic form, though I'm rusty in it now. When I know how to say something in the local dialect, I do so; when I don't, I'll use Egyptian first, before Modern Standard, because Egyptian films and TV, and Egyptian expatriate workers, mean most Arabs have heard Egyptian. I think everyone learning Arabic should learn both a spoken dialect and the literary language, but that view is not universal. There is an added problem here: it's often hard for Westerners to learn a specific dialect because the Arabic teachers often disdain teaching them: I've had Egyptians tell me that Egyptian dialect is not Arabic, it's just "slang." If so then most people speak "slang" at their mother's knee. If you speak only Modern Standard you're going to have trouble conversing with taxi drivers, doormen, and others who may not be the most literate.
And I have a "flipside" anecdote as well: while many Egyptians are startled when an American or other Westerner uses colloquial instead of Modern Standard to them, and they disdain (officially, while speaking it) the dialect, I once took a newly-arrived scholar in Egypt out for a drink. The waiter, a galabiyya-clad baladi sort who looked remarkably like the mummy of Ramses II, knew me well, and I introduced him to the newcomer, a Ph.D. who hadn't spent much real time in the region. I told the waiter, "my friend can read Arabic but doesn't speak it." The response from the waiter, who probably had the reverse problem, was mish ma‘'ul ("unbelievable": itself colloquial: ma‘'ul is Classical ma‘qul), since to him the literary language was a mystery but the spoken language a necessity of daily life.
For non-Arabist readers, it's hard to explain how much the "dialects" differ, but it can be as much as between Romance languages (and I don't mean Spanish and Catalan here; I mean Spanish and French.) But let me try to offer some examples.
I remember many years ago standing in line at a newspaper kiosk somewhere in Morocco. A Saudi — or other Gulf Arab in full Gulf regalia — was ahead of me in line. He asked the Moroccan how much something was, and the Moroccan replied "kham-SIH," to which the Saudi responded "Khamsin?" ("Five," and "fifty," respectively. The Saudi would say "five" as KHAM-sa.) Since even Arabs can't always understand each other's dialect, it's hardly surprising diglossia is a problem for them and for foreigners learning the language. (Morocco and Algeria long have been wrestling with a different problem: the generation who grew up under French colonial rule spoke only the local dialect and a bit of French: only the post-colonial generation grew up with a capacity for Modern Standard. Time and age are slowly eliminating this problem.) [UPDATE: Check out the first comment below, from the Algerian Blogger The Moor Next Door, on the contemporary Algerian situation].
Consider something so simple as asking, "How are you?" In Modern Standard Arabic, which no one would ever actually use except in an international meeting or a language course, it would be Kayfu haluka? An Egyptian will say, izzayak?; a Lebanese Kifak? or Kifak inta? or Kif Halak?; an Iraqi may ask Shlonak? and a Moroccan La Bas? (Forms will differ if addressing a female or a group: these are singular male forms.) The answer could be kwayyis, zayn, mnih, tayyib (that one is cognate with Hebrew tov), or in Morocco, La Bas again, not to mention lots of other possibilities. Practically every dialect has a different way of saying "what do you want?" as well, and even such a seemingly essential word as "now" can vary from dilwaqti to hala to the classical al-an. The differences are actually greater for the simplest greetings and daily conversation; when one is talking about computers or political economy, the literary language naturally gives a certain unity, but when one is talking about ordering a meal, the words may differ. Even so basic a vocabulary word as bread (khubz versus ‘aysh) or milk (halib or laban, with the added complication that in halib countries laban means yogurt) varies.
"Isn't it so?" that essential question that French handles with n'est-çe pas?, Spanish with ¿Verdad?, German with Nicht Wahr?, and American English with "idnit?," would be a laysa ka-dhalika? in Classical Arabic, but mush kida? in Egyptian, mush hayk? or mu hayk? in Levantine, and so on.
One of the reasons there are so many ways of tranlsliterating Mu‘ammar al-Qadhafi's name is that Libya itself straddles a dialect line, with eastern Libya (Benghazi and surroundings) tending towards Egyptian, western Libya (Tripoli) tending towards Tunis and the Maghreb, and the area in between (where Qadhafi comes from) tending towards a Saharan dialect. So it can be pronounced as Gazafi or Qaddafi or several other things even in his own country. (Many of us call the cultural line that divides Libya the "couscous line," since it's also where the standard grain changes from bulghur wheat to couscous.)
In the Levant and elsewhere, the cities' dialects are similar to each other, but the rural and bedouin dialects are quite different. Someone from ‘Amman and someone from Damascus will sound pretty similar, but a tribesman in a black tent in between them will speak something quite distinct.
I imagine this subject will come up again. It's one that some Arab scholars (such as Safouan cited above) are becoming more cognizant of. It isn't limited to Arabic — diglossia is also a problem for Greeks, Chinese, and a number of other peoples — but it's one that isn't usually well appreciated by Westerners who don't know Arabic, in part because Arabs themselves don't talk about it that much.
First, the article itself. As the article states the challenge:
Among other Google innovations, they mention ta3reeb, a cool application I've played with before which lets you type Latin transliteration characters (they call them "English characters" but you know what they mean) and it then gives it to you in Arabic script. The "3" character is a popular Internet way of transliterating ‘ayn (ع), and sure enough if you use ta3reeb to convert its own name you get تعريب, just as you should. [NOTE: I've discovered these are showing up as separate letters on some browsers, though just fine on the laptop I posted from. I obviously am doing something wrong. If it doesn't look like a connected word, I'll keep working to fix it.] (On this blog I follow the scholarly convention of transliterating ‘ayn with the little single open quote you see here, but 3 is seemingly catching on. It looks a bit like a reverse of the Arabic character, using 3 for ع.) (Transliteration is a whole different issue, and I'll address it another time.)When it comes to the internet, the Arab world punches well below its weight.
Less than 1 per cent of the internet’s content is in Arabic, while the world’s approximately 370m Arabs form more than 5 per cent of the global population.
Internet usage has jumped 1,000 per cent over the past seven years in the Middle East, yet it still lags well behind other regions. Overall internet penetration has reached 10 to 12 per cent, although with the region’s large number of shared connections, up to 50 per cent of the population is estimated to have access to the net.
This is great stuff. Back in the 1970s, I typed my doctoral dissertation on a manual typewriter and had to write the Arabic text by hand, though later I acquired an East German Arabic typewriter cheap. (Good thing I don't need it anymore as I imagine finding East German ribbons is hard these days.) You young whippersnappers have so many cool tools available today . . . why when I was a boy . . .
Although most Google applications, plus Facebook and other media now have Arabic language front-ends that allow people to blog, e-mail, etc. in Arabic, there are still many challenges to fuller Internet penetration. One is the simple one of illiteracy in the Arab world, which is still high by global standards, especially among women. Another is the problem the linguists call "diglossia": the fact that Modern Standard Arabic, the language of newspapers, university instruction, public speeches, etc., is actually no one's first language; Arabs grow up speaking their own local dialect (usually referred to as ‘amiyya or lahja in the East and darija in the Maghreb), which they learn at their mother's knee. They don't just have to learn to read the language they already speak: they have to learn a related but more complex and formal language that no one speaks today, or may ever have spoken as such. It's a deterrent not only to literacy but to entering the public sphere as a journalist, politician, or academic expected to perform in Modern Standard Arabic.
There are some parallels to the European situation in late medieval times when Latin was the language of scholarship, but the romance languages were the spoken language of Western Europe. The differences are considerable though, because the Qur'an's influence is so great that Modern Standard (essentially a simplified classical Arabic) enjoys enormous prestige over the spoken dialects, which lack a standard spelling system and are, in fact, usually taught using Western transliteration or the International Phonetic alphabet. The late Tawfiq al-Hakim and others have written plays in dialect, but they had to invent their own ways to spell things. (Other than some TV soaps, the one printed medium that routinely uses dialect is the political cartoon, interestingly enough.)
The Egyptian author and psychologist Mustapha Safouan, (writing in French to underscore the irony), has argued that diglossia contributes to why the Arabs are "not free," in that only the elites can handle the learned language of power. Here's an article about his work, and here's an excerpt; I haven't read his work other than what you see there. Here's a more scholarly treatment of the subject of diglossia.
Which allows me to mention that MEI's Language department plans to hold a conference on diglossia this fall. I'll post more as the schedule firms up.
I was fortunate to learn a spoken dialect (Egyptian) quite early on, and am an enthusiast for learning the language people actually speak to each other, though a serious student must also know the literary language, of course, and I also had to learn the classical/Qur'anic form, though I'm rusty in it now. When I know how to say something in the local dialect, I do so; when I don't, I'll use Egyptian first, before Modern Standard, because Egyptian films and TV, and Egyptian expatriate workers, mean most Arabs have heard Egyptian. I think everyone learning Arabic should learn both a spoken dialect and the literary language, but that view is not universal. There is an added problem here: it's often hard for Westerners to learn a specific dialect because the Arabic teachers often disdain teaching them: I've had Egyptians tell me that Egyptian dialect is not Arabic, it's just "slang." If so then most people speak "slang" at their mother's knee. If you speak only Modern Standard you're going to have trouble conversing with taxi drivers, doormen, and others who may not be the most literate.
And I have a "flipside" anecdote as well: while many Egyptians are startled when an American or other Westerner uses colloquial instead of Modern Standard to them, and they disdain (officially, while speaking it) the dialect, I once took a newly-arrived scholar in Egypt out for a drink. The waiter, a galabiyya-clad baladi sort who looked remarkably like the mummy of Ramses II, knew me well, and I introduced him to the newcomer, a Ph.D. who hadn't spent much real time in the region. I told the waiter, "my friend can read Arabic but doesn't speak it." The response from the waiter, who probably had the reverse problem, was mish ma‘'ul ("unbelievable": itself colloquial: ma‘'ul is Classical ma‘qul), since to him the literary language was a mystery but the spoken language a necessity of daily life.
For non-Arabist readers, it's hard to explain how much the "dialects" differ, but it can be as much as between Romance languages (and I don't mean Spanish and Catalan here; I mean Spanish and French.) But let me try to offer some examples.
I remember many years ago standing in line at a newspaper kiosk somewhere in Morocco. A Saudi — or other Gulf Arab in full Gulf regalia — was ahead of me in line. He asked the Moroccan how much something was, and the Moroccan replied "kham-SIH," to which the Saudi responded "Khamsin?" ("Five," and "fifty," respectively. The Saudi would say "five" as KHAM-sa.) Since even Arabs can't always understand each other's dialect, it's hardly surprising diglossia is a problem for them and for foreigners learning the language. (Morocco and Algeria long have been wrestling with a different problem: the generation who grew up under French colonial rule spoke only the local dialect and a bit of French: only the post-colonial generation grew up with a capacity for Modern Standard. Time and age are slowly eliminating this problem.) [UPDATE: Check out the first comment below, from the Algerian Blogger The Moor Next Door, on the contemporary Algerian situation].
Consider something so simple as asking, "How are you?" In Modern Standard Arabic, which no one would ever actually use except in an international meeting or a language course, it would be Kayfu haluka? An Egyptian will say, izzayak?; a Lebanese Kifak? or Kifak inta? or Kif Halak?; an Iraqi may ask Shlonak? and a Moroccan La Bas? (Forms will differ if addressing a female or a group: these are singular male forms.) The answer could be kwayyis, zayn, mnih, tayyib (that one is cognate with Hebrew tov), or in Morocco, La Bas again, not to mention lots of other possibilities. Practically every dialect has a different way of saying "what do you want?" as well, and even such a seemingly essential word as "now" can vary from dilwaqti to hala to the classical al-an. The differences are actually greater for the simplest greetings and daily conversation; when one is talking about computers or political economy, the literary language naturally gives a certain unity, but when one is talking about ordering a meal, the words may differ. Even so basic a vocabulary word as bread (khubz versus ‘aysh) or milk (halib or laban, with the added complication that in halib countries laban means yogurt) varies.
"Isn't it so?" that essential question that French handles with n'est-çe pas?, Spanish with ¿Verdad?, German with Nicht Wahr?, and American English with "idnit?," would be a laysa ka-dhalika? in Classical Arabic, but mush kida? in Egyptian, mush hayk? or mu hayk? in Levantine, and so on.
One of the reasons there are so many ways of tranlsliterating Mu‘ammar al-Qadhafi's name is that Libya itself straddles a dialect line, with eastern Libya (Benghazi and surroundings) tending towards Egyptian, western Libya (Tripoli) tending towards Tunis and the Maghreb, and the area in between (where Qadhafi comes from) tending towards a Saharan dialect. So it can be pronounced as Gazafi or Qaddafi or several other things even in his own country. (Many of us call the cultural line that divides Libya the "couscous line," since it's also where the standard grain changes from bulghur wheat to couscous.)
In the Levant and elsewhere, the cities' dialects are similar to each other, but the rural and bedouin dialects are quite different. Someone from ‘Amman and someone from Damascus will sound pretty similar, but a tribesman in a black tent in between them will speak something quite distinct.
I imagine this subject will come up again. It's one that some Arab scholars (such as Safouan cited above) are becoming more cognizant of. It isn't limited to Arabic — diglossia is also a problem for Greeks, Chinese, and a number of other peoples — but it's one that isn't usually well appreciated by Westerners who don't know Arabic, in part because Arabs themselves don't talk about it that much.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Egypt Now Blaming Lebanese Officials: Is Egypt Now Overreaching, As Hizbullah Did?
Egypt's propaganda drumbeat against Hizbullah for the cell supposedly plotting attacks in Egypt had already broadened to include denunciations of Iran and protests to the head of Iran's interest section in Egypt. In the last day or so, the net has widened to include allegations that Lebanese government officials were involved in the plot. Variants of the story appear here, here, and here. The "complicity" of Lebanese authorities seems to consist of issuing a passport in a false name to the head plotter.
The way Egypt is handling this story is, I think, a reflection of the current deep divisions in the Arab world between the states we tend to label "moderate" (Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia) and the states more closely aligned with Iran (Syria, Lebanon, sometimes Qatar). In quieter times these sorts of stories tend to be swept under the rug, but at the moment Egypt has chosen to use the story as a weapon to bash Iran and now, it appears, Lebanon.
There may be some pitfalls in the continuing propaganda campaign, however. Hizbullah seems to have overreached by meddling in the internal affairs of another Arab state, and Egyptians of all political leanings have a natural inclination to reject external interference in Egypt, which evokes memories of European colonial rule. But two other elements are in play here that could ultimately backfire on the government, which may itself now be overreaching in its overreaction. The first is that Egyptians have a longstanding tendency to distrust government accounts of anything (if it's in the newspaper, it must not be true: trust what you hear at the coffeehouse instead), and despite some suspicions of Hizbullah's Shi‘ite identity and Iranian links, there is also a latent admiration of Hizbullah for its taking the full force of Israeli wrath in 2006 and surviving. While I think that this post suggesting that most Egyptians sympathize with Hizbullah is overstated (I suspect most Egyptians don't think about it very much), the Muslim Brotherhood's Supreme Guide has expressed similar sentiments, and there is a potential for alienating public opinion if the government keeps up the drumbeat. Hasan Nasrallah's defense of his agent was to insist that Hizbullah was only trying to provide arms to Gaza, and that is a popular cause in Egypt. The government, I think, may itself be guilty of overreach.
The way Egypt is handling this story is, I think, a reflection of the current deep divisions in the Arab world between the states we tend to label "moderate" (Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia) and the states more closely aligned with Iran (Syria, Lebanon, sometimes Qatar). In quieter times these sorts of stories tend to be swept under the rug, but at the moment Egypt has chosen to use the story as a weapon to bash Iran and now, it appears, Lebanon.
There may be some pitfalls in the continuing propaganda campaign, however. Hizbullah seems to have overreached by meddling in the internal affairs of another Arab state, and Egyptians of all political leanings have a natural inclination to reject external interference in Egypt, which evokes memories of European colonial rule. But two other elements are in play here that could ultimately backfire on the government, which may itself now be overreaching in its overreaction. The first is that Egyptians have a longstanding tendency to distrust government accounts of anything (if it's in the newspaper, it must not be true: trust what you hear at the coffeehouse instead), and despite some suspicions of Hizbullah's Shi‘ite identity and Iranian links, there is also a latent admiration of Hizbullah for its taking the full force of Israeli wrath in 2006 and surviving. While I think that this post suggesting that most Egyptians sympathize with Hizbullah is overstated (I suspect most Egyptians don't think about it very much), the Muslim Brotherhood's Supreme Guide has expressed similar sentiments, and there is a potential for alienating public opinion if the government keeps up the drumbeat. Hasan Nasrallah's defense of his agent was to insist that Hizbullah was only trying to provide arms to Gaza, and that is a popular cause in Egypt. The government, I think, may itself be guilty of overreach.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Saint Patrick's Day Special: Patrick and the Irish-Egyptian Connection
Happy Saint Patrick's Day everyone, an appropriate wish here since the Irish Church Patrick founded seems to have been the religious and monastic daughter of the Church of Egypt (the Coptic Church).
Ah, you're thinking: he's really reaching this time, trying to find a way to work Saint Patrick's Day into a blog on the Middle East. My name is, after all, Michael Collins Dunn, and I'm therefore rarely assumed to have Greek or Japanese ancestry, but actually it's not a reach to find a reason for a Saint Patrick's Day post on the Middle East, since Irish Christianity has ancient, if somewhat hard to document, links to Egypt, and Saint Patrick himself may have studied alongside Egyptian monks. They say everyone's Irish on Saint Patrick's Day, but I'm going to explore how Egypt and Ireland have links dating back to the earliest days of Christianity in the West. And while some of the evidence is a bit hazy, none of this is crackpot theory. I warned you that I started out as a medievalist, and still have flashbacks sometimes. Forgive me if I can't footnote every statement here.
Anyone who has ever seen one of the standing crosses that are a familiar feature of medieval and post-classical Irish Christian sites will know what the Celtic Cross or "wheel cross" looks like; anyone who has ever set foot in a Coptic Church will know what a Coptic Cross looks like; unfortunately the illustrations at Wikipedia's Coptic Cross site don't include a precise example, but the wheel cross is common among Egyptian Copts as well, and can be seen on many churches in Egypt today. The wheel cross is not an obvious derivation of the Christian cross, and many think it is an adaptation of the ancient Egyptian Ankh symbol, so what is it doing on those Irish standing cross towers?
Sure, iconography can repeat itself: both Indians in India and Native Americans used the swastika long before Hitler did, and so on. But the Celtic Cross/Coptic Cross similarity is not the only link. There is pretty decent evidence that Christianity in Ireland, if not immediately derived from Egypt, was closely linked to the Egyptian Church. An ancient litany in the Book of Leinster prays for "the seven holy Egyptian monks, who lie in Desert Ulaidh." The place mentioned is somewhere in Ulster, with many placing it in Antrim: perhaps suggestively, "desert" or "disert" in Irish place names meant a place where monks lived apart from the world as anchorites, modeled on the Desert Fathers of Egypt and Syria. "Ulaidh" just means Ulster.Who these seven holy Egyptian monks were is unclear, but they died in Ulster and were sufficiently venerated to be remembered in a litany.
It is often said (I haven't got a firm cite though) that holy water bottles found in Ireland carry the twin-camel emblem associated with the Shrine of Saint Menas west of Alexandria. (Menas was one of the major patron saints of Egypt, his shrine a major pilgrimage center, and his cult extended far beyond Egypt.) If so, I don't think the Irish were using local camels as models. There are also said to be tombstones in old Irish ogham writing that refer to the burial of so-and-so "the Egyptian." The earliest Irish forms of monasticism included anchorite communities who withdrew from the world and venerated the tradition of Saint Anthony of Egypt; the early Irish church used an Eastern rather than a Western date for Easter; some aspects of ancient Celtic liturgy resemble eastern liturgies, and there are archaeological evidences (mostly probable Egyptian pottery in Ireland and British — Cornish? — tin in Egypt) of trade between Egypt and the British Isles. "Double" monasteries — where a monastery for monks and a convent for nuns were adjacent — first appeared in Egypt, and were common in Ireland. The evidence may be circumstantial, but there's a lot of it.
I've also heard (but can't Google up the reference just now) that somewhere in the Irish monastic literature there is a pilgrimage guide to the Desert of Scetis, the Egyptian desert region of Coptic monasteries today known as the Wadi Natrun. That, along with the Saint Menas holy water bottles, suggests Irish monks made pilgrimages all the way to Egypt. And obviously those seven holy Egyptian monks in Ulster made the trip the other way.
But do these connections between Egypt and Ireland, tenuous as they may seem, really connect in any way with Saint Patrick, justifying this as a Saint Patrick's Day post? I'm glad you asked.
Saint Patrick's life has been much encrusted with mythology (the snakes, the Shamrock, etc.) and all we can really say for certain is what he himself told us in his autobiographical Confession: he was born somewhere on the western coast of Roman Britain (so the Apostle of Ireland was British, but before there was such a thing as an Englishman since the Angles and Saxons were not yet present: he probably spoke old British, an ancestor of Welsh), was kidnapped and enslaved in Ireland, later escaped and joined the church, and returned as the apostle of Ireland. But very ancient biographies (though not his own autobiographical account, one of the few vernacular Latin works to survive from the period) say that he studied for the priesthood at the Abbey of Lérins off the south coast of France. This was a Mediterranean island abbey much influenced by the church of Egypt and the rule of Saint Anthony of Egypt, and according to some accounts, many Coptic monks were present there. There's no certainty that Patrick ever studied there, but then, he studied somewhere, and this is the only place claimed by the early accounts. So Patrick himself may have had direct links to the Egyptian church. (And remember that until the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD — by which time Patrick was already a bishop in Ireland, himself dying in 461 by most accounts — the Coptic Church and the rest of Christendom were still in full communion.)
There may be even more to it than this. A few linguists believe that the Celtic languages, though Indo-European in their basic structure, have a "substratum" of some previous linguistic element that is not found in other Indo-European languages, only in Celtic, but some aspects of which are also found in Afro-Asiatic languages, particularly Berber and Egyptian (of which Coptic, of course, is the late form). I'm certainly not qualified to judge such linguistically abstruse theories, and know neither Irish nor Coptic, and they seem to have little to do with the question of Egyptian-Irish Christian influences. But it helps remind us that the ancient world was more united by the sea than divided by it, and that the Roman Empire stretched from the British Isles to Mesopotamia.
While the links are tenuous, they appear to be real. Irish historians accept some level of Egyptian influence in the Christianization of Ireland, and Coptic historians love to dwell on the subject, since it lets them claim a link to the earliest high Christian art and culture of Western Europe. If Irish monasticism preserved the heritage of the ancient world and rebuilt the West after the barbarian invasions, and if the Irish church is a daughter of the Egyptian church, then tbe West owes more to Egypt than most would imagine.
I first heard a discussion of this in a presentation by the Coptic Church's bishop in charge of ecumenical outreach, Bishop Samweel, back in the early 1970s. I later ran across several references to it in British orientalist literature (Stanley Lane-Poole seems to have been particularly fond of it, and I think he places Desert Ulaidh near Carrickfergus), and continue to find it intriguing, if never quite clear enough to nail down precisely.
Bishop Samweel, mentioned above, met an unfortunate end by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, by the way. When Anwar Sadat deposed Coptic Pope Shenouda III in 1981, Sadat named Samweel — considered one of the Coptic church's leading figures after Shenouda — head of a council of bishops to run the church while the Patriarch was in exile. Due to this appointment, Bishop Samweel was seated on the reviewing stand behind Sadat on October 6, 1981, and died in the volley of fire which killed the President.
Like much of the earliest history of any culture or country, the links between Irish and Egyptian Christianity are fairly well-delineated but their precise origins are untraceable, but tantalizing. Since this is little known to most Westerners or even to Egyptians who aren't Copts, it seemed appropriate to mention it on Saint Patrick's Day.
Erin go bragh. Misr Umm al-Dunya.
Ah, you're thinking: he's really reaching this time, trying to find a way to work Saint Patrick's Day into a blog on the Middle East. My name is, after all, Michael Collins Dunn, and I'm therefore rarely assumed to have Greek or Japanese ancestry, but actually it's not a reach to find a reason for a Saint Patrick's Day post on the Middle East, since Irish Christianity has ancient, if somewhat hard to document, links to Egypt, and Saint Patrick himself may have studied alongside Egyptian monks. They say everyone's Irish on Saint Patrick's Day, but I'm going to explore how Egypt and Ireland have links dating back to the earliest days of Christianity in the West. And while some of the evidence is a bit hazy, none of this is crackpot theory. I warned you that I started out as a medievalist, and still have flashbacks sometimes. Forgive me if I can't footnote every statement here.
Anyone who has ever seen one of the standing crosses that are a familiar feature of medieval and post-classical Irish Christian sites will know what the Celtic Cross or "wheel cross" looks like; anyone who has ever set foot in a Coptic Church will know what a Coptic Cross looks like; unfortunately the illustrations at Wikipedia's Coptic Cross site don't include a precise example, but the wheel cross is common among Egyptian Copts as well, and can be seen on many churches in Egypt today. The wheel cross is not an obvious derivation of the Christian cross, and many think it is an adaptation of the ancient Egyptian Ankh symbol, so what is it doing on those Irish standing cross towers?
Sure, iconography can repeat itself: both Indians in India and Native Americans used the swastika long before Hitler did, and so on. But the Celtic Cross/Coptic Cross similarity is not the only link. There is pretty decent evidence that Christianity in Ireland, if not immediately derived from Egypt, was closely linked to the Egyptian Church. An ancient litany in the Book of Leinster prays for "the seven holy Egyptian monks, who lie in Desert Ulaidh." The place mentioned is somewhere in Ulster, with many placing it in Antrim: perhaps suggestively, "desert" or "disert" in Irish place names meant a place where monks lived apart from the world as anchorites, modeled on the Desert Fathers of Egypt and Syria. "Ulaidh" just means Ulster.Who these seven holy Egyptian monks were is unclear, but they died in Ulster and were sufficiently venerated to be remembered in a litany.
It is often said (I haven't got a firm cite though) that holy water bottles found in Ireland carry the twin-camel emblem associated with the Shrine of Saint Menas west of Alexandria. (Menas was one of the major patron saints of Egypt, his shrine a major pilgrimage center, and his cult extended far beyond Egypt.) If so, I don't think the Irish were using local camels as models. There are also said to be tombstones in old Irish ogham writing that refer to the burial of so-and-so "the Egyptian." The earliest Irish forms of monasticism included anchorite communities who withdrew from the world and venerated the tradition of Saint Anthony of Egypt; the early Irish church used an Eastern rather than a Western date for Easter; some aspects of ancient Celtic liturgy resemble eastern liturgies, and there are archaeological evidences (mostly probable Egyptian pottery in Ireland and British — Cornish? — tin in Egypt) of trade between Egypt and the British Isles. "Double" monasteries — where a monastery for monks and a convent for nuns were adjacent — first appeared in Egypt, and were common in Ireland. The evidence may be circumstantial, but there's a lot of it.
I've also heard (but can't Google up the reference just now) that somewhere in the Irish monastic literature there is a pilgrimage guide to the Desert of Scetis, the Egyptian desert region of Coptic monasteries today known as the Wadi Natrun. That, along with the Saint Menas holy water bottles, suggests Irish monks made pilgrimages all the way to Egypt. And obviously those seven holy Egyptian monks in Ulster made the trip the other way.
But do these connections between Egypt and Ireland, tenuous as they may seem, really connect in any way with Saint Patrick, justifying this as a Saint Patrick's Day post? I'm glad you asked.
Saint Patrick's life has been much encrusted with mythology (the snakes, the Shamrock, etc.) and all we can really say for certain is what he himself told us in his autobiographical Confession: he was born somewhere on the western coast of Roman Britain (so the Apostle of Ireland was British, but before there was such a thing as an Englishman since the Angles and Saxons were not yet present: he probably spoke old British, an ancestor of Welsh), was kidnapped and enslaved in Ireland, later escaped and joined the church, and returned as the apostle of Ireland. But very ancient biographies (though not his own autobiographical account, one of the few vernacular Latin works to survive from the period) say that he studied for the priesthood at the Abbey of Lérins off the south coast of France. This was a Mediterranean island abbey much influenced by the church of Egypt and the rule of Saint Anthony of Egypt, and according to some accounts, many Coptic monks were present there. There's no certainty that Patrick ever studied there, but then, he studied somewhere, and this is the only place claimed by the early accounts. So Patrick himself may have had direct links to the Egyptian church. (And remember that until the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD — by which time Patrick was already a bishop in Ireland, himself dying in 461 by most accounts — the Coptic Church and the rest of Christendom were still in full communion.)
There may be even more to it than this. A few linguists believe that the Celtic languages, though Indo-European in their basic structure, have a "substratum" of some previous linguistic element that is not found in other Indo-European languages, only in Celtic, but some aspects of which are also found in Afro-Asiatic languages, particularly Berber and Egyptian (of which Coptic, of course, is the late form). I'm certainly not qualified to judge such linguistically abstruse theories, and know neither Irish nor Coptic, and they seem to have little to do with the question of Egyptian-Irish Christian influences. But it helps remind us that the ancient world was more united by the sea than divided by it, and that the Roman Empire stretched from the British Isles to Mesopotamia.
While the links are tenuous, they appear to be real. Irish historians accept some level of Egyptian influence in the Christianization of Ireland, and Coptic historians love to dwell on the subject, since it lets them claim a link to the earliest high Christian art and culture of Western Europe. If Irish monasticism preserved the heritage of the ancient world and rebuilt the West after the barbarian invasions, and if the Irish church is a daughter of the Egyptian church, then tbe West owes more to Egypt than most would imagine.
I first heard a discussion of this in a presentation by the Coptic Church's bishop in charge of ecumenical outreach, Bishop Samweel, back in the early 1970s. I later ran across several references to it in British orientalist literature (Stanley Lane-Poole seems to have been particularly fond of it, and I think he places Desert Ulaidh near Carrickfergus), and continue to find it intriguing, if never quite clear enough to nail down precisely.
Bishop Samweel, mentioned above, met an unfortunate end by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, by the way. When Anwar Sadat deposed Coptic Pope Shenouda III in 1981, Sadat named Samweel — considered one of the Coptic church's leading figures after Shenouda — head of a council of bishops to run the church while the Patriarch was in exile. Due to this appointment, Bishop Samweel was seated on the reviewing stand behind Sadat on October 6, 1981, and died in the volley of fire which killed the President.
Like much of the earliest history of any culture or country, the links between Irish and Egyptian Christianity are fairly well-delineated but their precise origins are untraceable, but tantalizing. Since this is little known to most Westerners or even to Egyptians who aren't Copts, it seemed appropriate to mention it on Saint Patrick's Day.
Erin go bragh. Misr Umm al-Dunya.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Backgrounder: Reflections on the Diversity of Christian Minorities in the Middle East
While browsing around for blogging subjects I came across this account of the installation of the new Syrian Catholic Patriarch in Beirut earlier this week, and it started me reflecting, first, on just how varied and complex the Christian churches in the Middle East are, and, secondly, how little known they are to Westerners, even those who spend a lot of time deploring the fate of Christians in some Middle Eastern countries. I'm pretty sure that most Catholics in the West aren't even aware there is a Syrian Catholic Church, let alone who the Patriarch is (though this one is the former Syrian Catholic Archbishop of North America). (And as a footnote, the Church's name in English is now officially the Syriac Catholic Church, though this Lebanese report uses the earlier form, which was common till just the past few years. I think the church wanted to play down the equation of "Syrian" with the modern state of that name, though they only changed the English, not the Arabic or Syriac names.)
Christianity, of course, is not a Western faith by origin, but a Middle Eastern one. Palestinian Christians often joke about being asked by well-meaning Western Christians, "which missionary group converted your people?" (to which the answer is, of course, Jesus and the 12 Apostles). Middle Eastern Christian populations are in decline, as I think is well known; the hardships of the West Bank and the hostility of political Islamists have led many Palestinian Christians to emigrate; towns like Bethlehem, which had been Christian since, rather literally, the beginning are now majority Muslim. Assyrian and Chaldean Christians in Iraq have also been fleeing in the face of violence. But while there are certainly pressures coming from radical Islamist movements in some countries, the sheer diversity of the Christian communities in the Middle East, and the real if not always visible role Christians play in a number of countries is often unappreciated by Westerners.
I'm reminded of a story that a former chief Arabic translator for the US Department of State liked to tell back in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a Syrian Assyrian -- a Syrian national by origin and a member of the Assyrian Church of the East from the Dayr al-Zor area -- and since he traveled with the Secretary of State when going to the region, he was well known to reporters traveling along. When Western news media were trying to get up to speed on the factions in Lebanon and the Sunni-Shi'a split during the Iranian Revolution and after, they would ask, "are you Sunni or Shi'a?" and he'd say, "neither, I'm a Christian," The Lebanese war being in high gear at the time the reporters would often follow with, "so you're a Maronite?", and when informed that no, he was an Assyrian, the teaching moment would arrive . . .
As an example of this diversity: Wikipedia says that there are currently five churches whose heads use the title Patriarch of Antioch. (Three are based in Damascus, one in Beirut and one in Bkerke, Lebanon: in other words, none of them in ancient Antioch, current Antakya in Turkey.) The Patriarchs of Antioch represent the Eastern (Antiochene) Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox (sometimes called "Jacobite"), Maronite, Melkite, and Syriac Catholic Churches. The last three are all in union with Rome, the Antiochenes are "Eastern Orthodox" in communion with Constantinople, and the Syriac Orthodox are Oriental Orthodox in loose communion with the Copts and Armenians. There are at least three Patriarchs of Alexandria (Coptic, Eastern Orthodox, and Catholic). Nor do these exhaust all the Christian communities of the Middle East: Iraq has the Assyrian Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholics; Lebanon, Palestine and other areas with an Armenian diaspora have the Armenian Apostolic Church (two main branches) and the Armenian Catholics, and there are significant indigenous Protestant communities in Lebanon, Palestine and elsewhere. The leading historian of modern Lebanon, Kamal Salibi, is a Presbyterian.
For all the problems that Christian minorities face, ironically one reason for this diversity is that Islam not only tolerated Christianity but did not tolerate the internal Christian feuding which elsewhere tended to eliminate dissident sects: as Rome and Constantinople consolidated their religious authority, Catholicism and Orthodoxy became uniform in the Western and Eastern Roman Empires and their successor states, but in the Islamic world the old "heresies" (in the eyes of Rome and Constantinople) endured. The Copts, Armenians, Syriac Orthodox and Ethiopian/Eritrean churches are the heirs of what the Western world called "Monophysite" churches (though they reject that term themselves), and are often referred to today as "Oriental Orthodox" in distinction from "Eastern Orthodox," those in communion with Constantinople; the Church of the East and the Malankara Church of India are those once dismissed in the West as "Nestorians," another term rejected by those to whom it is applied by others, the Church of the old Persian Empire that once evangelized as far afield as India and China. Some offshoots of many of these churches have split and given their allegiance to Rome, though they retain their Eastern Orthodox or "Oriental Orthodox" liturgies and married priesthoods; they are the Eastern Catholics, or the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church. (The Maronites of Lebanon are the one Eastern Catholic rite that has no Orthodox or Oriental analogue.) There are Eastern Orthodox churches in communion with Constantinople (the city may be Istanbul but the Ecumenical Patriarch is still "of Constantinople") in most Middle Eastern countries as well.
Some of the Christian minorities of the Middle East are waning fast, due to the conflicts in Palestine and Iraq, but the Maronites remain a major force in Lebanon (the President and Army Commander must both be Maronites, and I've already noted the political clout of the Patriarch). The Copts are a significant population in Egypt, though the exact percentage is itself a matter of controversy, and have produced some well-known figures, Boutros Boutros-Ghali most prominent among them.
In the more nationalist/secularist states and movements, Christians have been prominent, often seeing Arab nationalism as a way to find a role for Christians in a majority-Islamic polity. For years one of the highest-ranking Christians in the Middle East was Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, a Chaldean by upbringing though not, I somehow suspect, a devout churchgoer. One of the co-founders of the Ba'ath Party, Michel Aflaq, was Greek Orthodox, as were such other radical nationalist leaders as Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) founder Antoun Saada and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) leaders George Habash and Nayef Hawatmeh. (Saada certainly and Aflaq arguably were virtual fascists and Habash and Hawatmeh Marxists, so the common ground is secular radicalism, not ideology.)
Sometimes prominent Middle Eastern Christians deliberately conceal their origins to succeed in a Muslim environment. Tariq Aziz was born Mikhail Yuhanna. The actor Omar Sharif was born Michel Chalhoub of Maronite parents from Egypt's then-prominent Lebanese community (though he did convert to Islam when he married). For many years I was a friend -- I thought a pretty good friend -- of the late Hamdi Fuad, Washington Bureau Chief for Egypt's Al-Ahram for a great many years. Yet it was not until his obituary appeared that I learned his real name was Ramses something, born a Copt; his funeral was in the same Washington church in which I was married. None of these men chose an unambiguously Muslim name like Muhammad Ahmad; they were not so much hiding their Christian roots as obscuring them a bit for professional reasons. I know of one or two other cases like this, but they involve people still working and I see no reason to "out" them: their friends know their backgrounds anyway.
Often we only hear of Middle Eastern Christians when there are clashes with their Muslim neighbors or when some outrage occurs; I thought it worth noting the diversity and antiquity of these ancient churches because they are in fact a real presence in the region. And there is more interaction than one might think: in some localities local Muslims come out for certain Christian saints' days and Christians may occasionally venerate the tomb of a Sufi sheikh; at the level of popular practice there is often less division than at the level of official ideology.
Christianity, of course, is not a Western faith by origin, but a Middle Eastern one. Palestinian Christians often joke about being asked by well-meaning Western Christians, "which missionary group converted your people?" (to which the answer is, of course, Jesus and the 12 Apostles). Middle Eastern Christian populations are in decline, as I think is well known; the hardships of the West Bank and the hostility of political Islamists have led many Palestinian Christians to emigrate; towns like Bethlehem, which had been Christian since, rather literally, the beginning are now majority Muslim. Assyrian and Chaldean Christians in Iraq have also been fleeing in the face of violence. But while there are certainly pressures coming from radical Islamist movements in some countries, the sheer diversity of the Christian communities in the Middle East, and the real if not always visible role Christians play in a number of countries is often unappreciated by Westerners.
I'm reminded of a story that a former chief Arabic translator for the US Department of State liked to tell back in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a Syrian Assyrian -- a Syrian national by origin and a member of the Assyrian Church of the East from the Dayr al-Zor area -- and since he traveled with the Secretary of State when going to the region, he was well known to reporters traveling along. When Western news media were trying to get up to speed on the factions in Lebanon and the Sunni-Shi'a split during the Iranian Revolution and after, they would ask, "are you Sunni or Shi'a?" and he'd say, "neither, I'm a Christian," The Lebanese war being in high gear at the time the reporters would often follow with, "so you're a Maronite?", and when informed that no, he was an Assyrian, the teaching moment would arrive . . .
As an example of this diversity: Wikipedia says that there are currently five churches whose heads use the title Patriarch of Antioch. (Three are based in Damascus, one in Beirut and one in Bkerke, Lebanon: in other words, none of them in ancient Antioch, current Antakya in Turkey.) The Patriarchs of Antioch represent the Eastern (Antiochene) Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox (sometimes called "Jacobite"), Maronite, Melkite, and Syriac Catholic Churches. The last three are all in union with Rome, the Antiochenes are "Eastern Orthodox" in communion with Constantinople, and the Syriac Orthodox are Oriental Orthodox in loose communion with the Copts and Armenians. There are at least three Patriarchs of Alexandria (Coptic, Eastern Orthodox, and Catholic). Nor do these exhaust all the Christian communities of the Middle East: Iraq has the Assyrian Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholics; Lebanon, Palestine and other areas with an Armenian diaspora have the Armenian Apostolic Church (two main branches) and the Armenian Catholics, and there are significant indigenous Protestant communities in Lebanon, Palestine and elsewhere. The leading historian of modern Lebanon, Kamal Salibi, is a Presbyterian.
For all the problems that Christian minorities face, ironically one reason for this diversity is that Islam not only tolerated Christianity but did not tolerate the internal Christian feuding which elsewhere tended to eliminate dissident sects: as Rome and Constantinople consolidated their religious authority, Catholicism and Orthodoxy became uniform in the Western and Eastern Roman Empires and their successor states, but in the Islamic world the old "heresies" (in the eyes of Rome and Constantinople) endured. The Copts, Armenians, Syriac Orthodox and Ethiopian/Eritrean churches are the heirs of what the Western world called "Monophysite" churches (though they reject that term themselves), and are often referred to today as "Oriental Orthodox" in distinction from "Eastern Orthodox," those in communion with Constantinople; the Church of the East and the Malankara Church of India are those once dismissed in the West as "Nestorians," another term rejected by those to whom it is applied by others, the Church of the old Persian Empire that once evangelized as far afield as India and China. Some offshoots of many of these churches have split and given their allegiance to Rome, though they retain their Eastern Orthodox or "Oriental Orthodox" liturgies and married priesthoods; they are the Eastern Catholics, or the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church. (The Maronites of Lebanon are the one Eastern Catholic rite that has no Orthodox or Oriental analogue.) There are Eastern Orthodox churches in communion with Constantinople (the city may be Istanbul but the Ecumenical Patriarch is still "of Constantinople") in most Middle Eastern countries as well.
Some of the Christian minorities of the Middle East are waning fast, due to the conflicts in Palestine and Iraq, but the Maronites remain a major force in Lebanon (the President and Army Commander must both be Maronites, and I've already noted the political clout of the Patriarch). The Copts are a significant population in Egypt, though the exact percentage is itself a matter of controversy, and have produced some well-known figures, Boutros Boutros-Ghali most prominent among them.
In the more nationalist/secularist states and movements, Christians have been prominent, often seeing Arab nationalism as a way to find a role for Christians in a majority-Islamic polity. For years one of the highest-ranking Christians in the Middle East was Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, a Chaldean by upbringing though not, I somehow suspect, a devout churchgoer. One of the co-founders of the Ba'ath Party, Michel Aflaq, was Greek Orthodox, as were such other radical nationalist leaders as Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) founder Antoun Saada and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) leaders George Habash and Nayef Hawatmeh. (Saada certainly and Aflaq arguably were virtual fascists and Habash and Hawatmeh Marxists, so the common ground is secular radicalism, not ideology.)
Sometimes prominent Middle Eastern Christians deliberately conceal their origins to succeed in a Muslim environment. Tariq Aziz was born Mikhail Yuhanna. The actor Omar Sharif was born Michel Chalhoub of Maronite parents from Egypt's then-prominent Lebanese community (though he did convert to Islam when he married). For many years I was a friend -- I thought a pretty good friend -- of the late Hamdi Fuad, Washington Bureau Chief for Egypt's Al-Ahram for a great many years. Yet it was not until his obituary appeared that I learned his real name was Ramses something, born a Copt; his funeral was in the same Washington church in which I was married. None of these men chose an unambiguously Muslim name like Muhammad Ahmad; they were not so much hiding their Christian roots as obscuring them a bit for professional reasons. I know of one or two other cases like this, but they involve people still working and I see no reason to "out" them: their friends know their backgrounds anyway.
Often we only hear of Middle Eastern Christians when there are clashes with their Muslim neighbors or when some outrage occurs; I thought it worth noting the diversity and antiquity of these ancient churches because they are in fact a real presence in the region. And there is more interaction than one might think: in some localities local Muslims come out for certain Christian saints' days and Christians may occasionally venerate the tomb of a Sufi sheikh; at the level of popular practice there is often less division than at the level of official ideology.
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