Professor of Islamic Studies Dan Peterson:
Christianity is dying in its birthplaceHe closes with this A.E. Houseman poem, a prayer to Christ:
Nazareth, a predominantly Christian Arab town within living memory, is now mostly Muslim, and — though few realize it because the writing is in Arabic — tourists visiting the massive Roman Catholic Basilica of the Annunciation are confronted by banners denying the deity of Christ.
Bethlehem was 85 percent Arab Christian when the state of Israel was proclaimed in 1948. Now the city's Christian population has fallen to perhaps 10 percent.
If in that Syrian Garden, ages slain,
You sleep, and know not you are dead in vain,
Nor even in dreams behold how dark and bright
Ascends in smoke and fire by day and night
The hate you died to quench and could but fan,
Sleep well and see no morning, Son of Man.
But if, the grave rent and the stone rolled by,
At the right hand of majesty on high
You sit, and sitting so remember yet
Your fears, your agony and bloody sweat,
Your cross and passion and the life you gave,
Bow hither out of heaven and see and save.
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| Lower level of the Church of the Anunciation, Nazareth. This is the traditional site where the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would give birth to the Messiah. Nazareth is inside Israel, so Christians, 30 percent of Nazareth, are not nearly as persecuted by Muslims there as they are in Bethlehem |
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| Plaza in Bethlehem, facing away from the Church of the Nativity. Facing the camera is the minaret of a mosque. In my lifetime, Christians in Bethlehem have fallen from almost 90 percent of the city to less than 10 percent. Christians in Bethlehem are ruthlessly oppressed by the Palestinian Authority and its militia arm, Fatah. |
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