I am sharing a write up by Paul Salem, President and CEO of
the Middle East Institute. He focuses on issues of political change,
transition, and conflict as well as the regional and international relations of
the Middle East. Although, many readers may not agree with his narrative, but
efforts must be made for establishing a sustainable peace in the Middle East.
Passover, Ramadan, and Easter coincide this year, a
phenomenon that only occurs a few times in a century. Can alignment of these
Jewish, Muslim, and Christian holy days offer a hope for peace in
conflict-stricken Middle East?
Five
thousand years after the birth of Judaism in the region, 2,000 after the
emergence of Christianity, and 1,400 after the spread of Islam, the current
moment presents signs of hope for coexistence and cooperation among the three
religions. The politicization of religion remains a potent force, even in
today’s world, and religion is still ably used by too many leaders to divide
rather than unite.
It may be recalled that a dialogue between the three faiths
were initiated last month in Abu Dhabi where a church, mosque, and
synagogue are located side by side. In 2019 it hosted Pope Francis and the
Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmad el-Tayeb, who signed a Document of Human
Fraternity.
The Abraham Accords brought normalization between
Israel and four Arab states in 2020, and other key countries might join in the
near future. Saudi Arabia and Iran also agreed to normalize
relations just a few weeks ago.
In a
region where religious and sectarian differences have driven violence and
animosity for decades, do these developments presage a fundamental shift
towards peace and coexistence, or a temporary papering over of persistent
conflict?
The role of religion in politics has ebbed and flowed in the
Middle East, as have the relations among the region’s various religious and
sectarian groups. Over the past two centuries, the potent rise of secular and
scientific world views brought on by the Enlightenment, the Industrial
Revolution, colonialism, and nationalism have posed challenges to all three
Abrahamic religions.
Secular
nationalist movements coursed through the Middle East throughout the 20th
century. And many secularists believed that the role and power of religion
would gradually disappear in the modern world.
The ultra-secularist Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
abolished the Caliphate in 1924, and secular nationalist leaders emerged in
Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. They extended the reach of the
largely secular state over society and education, weakening the hold of
religious elites and institutions.
Muslims, Christians — and Jews up until 1948 — of the Arab
world were joined together in the building of new secular political movements:
nationalist, socialist, and communist.
Even
the establishment of Israel in 1948 unleashed a conflict which, from the 1950s
to 1970s, was fought largely in nationalist terms: Arab and Palestinian
nationalists vs. Israeli Zionist nationalists. This semi-secular era did
marginalize the political power of religion — for a while — but did not bring peace;
it replaced one form of conflict with another.
The secular tide in the region turned decisively in the
1970s. The secular nationalist movements across the Arab world were shattered
by their abject defeat by Israel in 1967, as well as their failure to deliver
economic and political prosperity at home or unity and victory abroad.
The
energy crisis triggered by the Saudi reaction to the 1973 Arab-Israeli war led
to a historic rise in oil prices, and a shift in wealth and power from Egypt
and the Levant toward a much more religiously observant and conservative Saudi
Arabia and its Arab Gulf neighbors.
Iran, also flush with cash from the oil price boom, saw the
fall of the Shah and the rise of an Islamic Republic in 1979.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that same year convinced
the US, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan to arm and train Sunni extremists to fight
the Soviet menace. The Al Saud, facing an Islamic challenge from Iran, and an
attack by Sunni extremists on the Great Mosque of Mecca in 1979, doubled down
on supporting and funding Sunni Islamic institutions and movements as a way to
shore up their legitimacy.
Indeed,
by the 1990s and 2000s, little was left of the Middle East of the 1950s and
1960s, in which religion appeared to be a spent force and secular nationalist
and leftist movements defined the political — and militia — landscape.
By the 2000s, the religious wave caught up with the original
progenitor of Middle East secularism, Turkey, as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the
religious conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) rose to dominate
Turkish politics.
In Israel, a nation originally built and dominated by
staunchly secular Jewish nationalists became increasingly challenged by
religious zealots and extremists — groups that now all but dominate the current
government.
In the
Arab uprisings of the 2010s secular groups — liberal, leftist, nationalist —
faced off against Islamic ones, with the latter generally gained the upper
hand, either in elections or in the mayhem of civil war.
The US-led
invasion of Iraq in 2003 itself triggered a wave of sectarian polarization as
Sunni and Shia groups battled for supremacy.
For the Christians of the Middle East, the last few decades
have been an unmitigated disaster. The decline of nationalist and leftist
secular movements, in which they had played such a central role, and the rise
of Islamic fundamentalism undermined their very place in society. But they had
survived under the equal opportunity oppression of Arab dictatorships.
The US-led invasion of Iraq wiped out the state and the
oppressive security that it provided, and unleashed a sectarian civil war in
which the Christians were the most powerless; from 1.4 million before the war,
Christians in Iraq now number less than 250,000.
In Syria the uprising of 2011, initially a point of national
unity among Muslim and Christian protesters, soon turned deadly for Christians.
The regime preferred to turn the uprising into a shooting war, sought to
exploit sectarian differences to weaken the opposition, and released large
numbers of Islamic extremists from its prisons.
As the opposition was forced to resort to arms, Islamist
groups, some garnering support from pro-Islamist states and institutions in the
region, others making common cause with the hard-fighting al-Qaeda, came to
dominate the opposition.
In Egypt, the brief rule of the Muslim Brotherhood between
2012 and 2013 terrified an already marginalized Coptic community and cemented
their support for the return of the military to power.
The meeting between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Salman and the Coptic Pope Tawadrus II in 2018 was an important step in
restoring warm relations between Muslims and Christians in the Middle East.
Pope
Tawadrus II represents the biggest Christian community in the region;
Pope Francis of Rome does not.
Christian numbers have also plummeted in Jordan, as well as
in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Lebanon has had its own turbulent
history of alternating between fighting and powersharing among its various
religious communities. Currently, they share equally in the misery brought
about by the corruption and criminal unresponsiveness of their own sectarian
oligarchs.
Interestingly,
the religious-secular pendulum has started to swing yet again. In today’s
Middle East, it is in Iran where a rising generation is making the bravest
stand against religious authority and repression. Meanwhile, the leadership in
Saudi Arabia has decided to get ahead of this wave by reversing four decades of
policy since 1979, eliminating the religious police, and storming ahead with a
radical opening of society at the cultural and social level — although
decidedly not the political — bringing in a long-delayed wave of secularization
and women’s socio-economic empowerment.
Protest movements in Lebanon and Iraq have railed against
sectarian politics and corruption and demanded a more civic order.
Nevertheless,
the politicization of religious and sectarian identity remains a divisive and
conflict-generating force in the Middle East.
Recent steps toward interfaith dialogue and building common
positions and institutions underscore the ability of religious entities to work
for conflict de-escalation and peace. And the resurgence of secular forces in
some areas of the region might also help in calming religious, especially
sectarian, conflict.
Indeed, the confluence of the three religious holidays is a
bittersweet occasion. It hints at the opportunity for a more peaceful and
harmonious future in the birthplace of the three religions, but also
underscores the arduous work that still needs to be done to reverse the deep
religious divides that exist today.
Now
that diplomatic ties are restored, Saudi Arabia and Iran must work together to
end violence and conflict in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, and support
peace- and nation-building efforts.
The Abraham Accords between Israel and some of its Arab
neighbors have allowed bilateral relations to flourish, bringing great
dividends in trade, investment, development, tourism, technology, and other
sectors. But these trends have coincided with a worsening of conditions at
home.
Less
than three years after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu achieved the Abraham
Accords, Israel has the most right-wing and extremist government in its
history, making life under occupation for Palestinians even more intolerable.
Jews and Arabs across the region will not find lasting normalization until
progress and a just settlement is found for Jerusalem and the Palestinian
people.
