Criticism of the document “We Choose Life” for Middle Eastern Christians

- Tuesday, September 28, 2021, a group of Christian thinkers, thinkers, theologians and theologians from the Middle East issued a reference document dealing with the theological, geopolitical, intellectual and societal conditions of Christians in this region.

It was titled "We Choose Life...Christians in the Middle East Towards Renewed Theological and Societal Options".

The importance of the document comes from several considerations;

The most prominent of them is the timing that coincides with the passage of a decade since the Arab Spring, and the basic thesis presented by the document in response to the challenges of the Christian presence in the region, which has become threatened not only by demography and the lack of numbers, but by the marginal role and dispensing with it, and the necessary requirements for this response to be effective, both for churches and Christian actors itself, or in the context in which it is moving.

The document called for changes in the political context;

The most important of which is changing the nature of the state to be civil and neutral towards all religions, allowing it to stand at the same distance from all religions, and violence is not linked to Islam as a religion, but is primarily a societal anthropological phenomenon, and is often linked to a discourse about identities that is closed, exclusionary and supranational

Is the problem political or religious?

The writer of these lines was destined to participate in launching several initiatives related to the file of Islamic-Christian relations, whether at the national level (Justice and Equality Committee 2011), locally in the governorates of Egypt (Qena governorate), or at the regional and international levels (the Arab Islamic-Christian Dialogue Team, Forum Anti-Radicals with the World Council of Churches). The experience of these long years has taught me that the efforts directed at addressing the cultural/religious roots of the dilemmas of Muslim-Christian relations alone are not sufficient, and that their effectiveness is limited. The crises of existence, interaction, and conflict that sometimes reach violence; These are developmental and political crises in which the parties test the balance of power among themselves, in light of a strong mixture of religious and cultural feelings with the nature of these crises. Some may think that addressing the cultural dimensions in the form of issuing documents, training religious and civil actors, or shouts to renew a religious or theological discourse alone is enough to solve problems with this interaction.

They are important, required and appreciated efforts; But the problem is in the context and politics in which the religious is invoked to be presented in such a way that it seems that the problem is religious/cultural. In other words; The distressed reality consumes a distressed discourse, and this distressed discourse feeds the distressed reality, by entering us into an infernal cycle that is difficult to escape from.

The document was characterized by its ability to combine the cultural and the political in analyzing the crisis of the Christian presence in the region, and devoted the first chapter of it to talk in the geopolitical and theological ecclesiastical contexts, and proposed adopting the option of contextual theology - which stems from a deep awareness of reality to re-understand the Bible - as a way to renew Christian religious discourse, It also called for changes in the political context; The most important of which is changing the nature of the state to be civil and neutral vis-à-vis all religions, allowing it to stand at the same distance from all religions, and violence is not related to Islam as a religion, but is primarily a societal anthropological phenomenon, and is often linked to a discourse about identities that is closed, exclusionary and supranational, according to the document.

Despite the combination of the contextual and cultural dimensions in understanding and analysis, some parts of the document were dominated by cultural approach when it sought to provide comprehensive solutions that prevent the overall conditions of the region without distinguishing between the nature of the historical development of each country in it, especially since reality tells us that there is a strong overlap and on multiple levels between civil and religious;

In such a way as to prevent one of them from colliding or being a substitute for the other.

The question becomes how to organize the relationship between them, but from a political entrance.

In other words;

What the writer of these lines has become convinced of is that we need a free, pluralistic religious sphere, independent of authority.

The ruling in it is consensus on the common political values ​​and rules that should govern the public sphere.

The document put forward a number of these values;

Most notably: a civil state that is neutral vis-à-vis all religions, citizenship that embraces diversity, transcending the logic of the minority, invoking external and internal protections, democracy in its broad political and societal sense, freedom of conscience...etc.

Here emerge the contradictions of the document that need to be resolved; The mind - according to it - represents the common common between human beings, and in another country, churches are not political institutions and should not be subject to political employment, especially by political authorities, and she sees the necessity of dismantling the linking of religious and ideological given to public space by making this given a moral compass (even if I prefer Using the term “values” so that it does not go into the private sphere) does not enter into the management of public affairs. According to this perception, the religious institution sets limits for its contact with the constitution and laws and does not exceed these limits unless it senses a deviation from the moral compass.

Although I agree with the need to delineate the boundaries between religious and public space; The religious and the public sphere, but - on the other hand - must demarcate the boundaries between the authority and the religious, and this is what the document detailed from the repercussions of its absence, but the main point of contention with it is its religious exclusion in its ability to draw the common or the public and limit it to reason only. This is one of the miracles of the document. It calls for the renewal of the theological discourse to contribute to solving the dilemmas of the Christian presence in the region, and at the same time excludes the religious as a way to establish and support common political values. In my estimation, the religious approaches - by re-reading the sacred texts - can have a contribution - next to the other entrances in reaching the constitutional democratic state that the document aspires to (see an example of the efforts made to harmonize between Islamism, democracy and citizenship). It is true that "excess religiosity"In our societies, it has become confused in the public and private spheres, but the treatment of this is not by excluding it from any relationship with the public space and its presence is limited only if its values ​​are violated.

Aborted Modernity and the Arab Spring

The document summoned 3 historical moments to establish its basic thesis of “active integration” and “risk of attendance and martyrdom”;

The first relates to the extended Christian history in the region before and after Islam, which was characterized by diversity based on differentiation and convergence at the same time.

The second is the aborted Arab modernity in the late 19th century to evoke the solution it presented of secularism that addresses the problem of minorities and majorities, and the in-depth reflection it offered on the relationship of religion to the development of society, while highlighting the contribution of the Christian elite in this period.

The third was the moment of the Arab Spring, and here the document was able to distinguish between the essence of the narrative it presents and the stakes of reality that ruled it, in addition to its limits and failures.

These uprisings "energy for change" and dropped "the concept of the minority and the majority in the name of citizenship based on individual rights," and demanded that the concept of citizenship be returned to the heart of political practice, making it the beacon of political and societal reform.

However, these uprisings - despite their youthfulness and a mixture of social issues and freedoms - were characterized by their "inability to crystallize an integrated national modernization project."

The importance of the Arab Spring - according to the document - is that it has become "a starting point for the emergence of a new proposal in examining the relationship of citizenship with other affiliations such as religion, sect, race, color and class," and I think that the document built these new theses.

The document attempted to combine these three historical moments, but it also represented - in my view - one of its contradictions; In the era of modernity, which began in the late 18th century and extended throughout the 19th century, there were multiple and varied responses to the challenges of this era, some of which relied on the mind alone, and there were those who relied on reason and the text, and there were those who were satisfied with religion and the text to generate their response, and the response was not limited to the intellectual and cultural aspect. Rather, it extended to state practices and the development of the systems themselves, and here I can refer to the experience of the Council of Judgments in 1084, the late Muhammad Ali era, whose roles were to harmonize Sharia with the practices of the modern state.

What I want to conclude is that calling the "aborted modernity" moment is a historical moment with which there is no agreement;

For a section of Muslims, it transcends the religious dimension upon which their lives were founded, which is the moment of Western colonialism and the elimination of the political entity that unites Muslims. And authenticity and contemporary, hadith and ancient, text and reason...etc.

The writer of these lines presents the Arab Spring in its two waves as an alternative to aborted modernity as the great moment of consensus.

It is a founding university that belongs to the 21st century. It is a collective moment because it created commonalities between citizens in the fields and supported them with practice, not ideology. It was able to transcend discourses of divided identities towards a pension discourse that is based on people’s daily and daily needs and priorities, and it is still ongoing and has not ended yet.

The document was issued with a decade of the Arab Spring;

It is most likely that her owners did not want her to do that, and her uncle was 10 years late, which is the duration of this period;

The Arab uprisings and the movement of citizens in the squares and streets put forward - on the level of practice before theorizing - and before they were hijacked, 3 concepts in this regard:

• inclusive citizenship;

  When everyone participated in these uprisings, not as an expression of their religious, political, ideological and sexual affiliations, but as citizens who discovered when they saw each other that they are diverse and united by the values ​​of living, freedom and social justice.

• The second concept is that Christians - especially young men and women - are no longer “subjects of the sect”, but rather the children of these uprisings, and from what I remember on this subject is that one of the priests in Qena complained to me in early 2013 that 80% of Christian youth had become far from the influence of the church, and I remember a young woman A Christian woman from Aleppo participated in the beginnings of the mass movement in Syria, bypassing the position of her church rejecting this movement.

• moving to a societal incubator instead of authoritarian privileges;

  The authorities have all collapsed and are unable to protect themselves, let alone their vassals;

  Therefore, we have no choice but community interactions as a way to maintain and preserve relationships.

ambiguous globalization

In my book titled “The Narrative of the Arab Spring and the Stakes of Reality,” which was published this year, I made sure that its first chapter bears the title “Protesters of the world, unite.” Sometimes it fades away, with protesters expressing anger at: police brutality, corruption, crony capitalism, the arrogance of those in power, the manipulation of politics, the weakness of political institutions in representing people, their collective marginalization, and the exacerbation of disparities in wealth, income and opportunity. justice and freedom, but why should we stop in front of this global wave of protest against racism that has caused journalist Kim Zetter to write that the global impact of the Black Lives Matter movement in recent weeks has seemed to shift”As massive as the fall of the Berlin Wall, and why should it be understood in the context of two decades of continuous protests, that is, from the beginning of the third millennium? What is the relationship between these protests and the outbreak of the Corona virus?

The document was dominated by a negative view of globalization, and its authors did not see in it possibilities that could be used for the movement of the peoples of the region towards justice and equality, as the nation-state was the basic unit of analysis to measure its effects. It "deepens the phenomenon of man's association with machine, which may lead to a threat to the individual's ability to establish authentic relationships with those around him." What is characterized by an opposite tendency to emphasize specifics and narrow identities, and this polarization in the Middle East leads to “the tension between the rise of religious feeling on the one hand and the rise of religious indifference and mistrust of religion on the other.”

And so on;

The negative view of globalization deprives us of benefiting from its potential, which was one of its manifestations in the case of the globalized protest that I have already mentioned, and it obscures the suffering of sectors of humanity regardless of their presence in rich or poor countries;

For example, the Corona pandemic has shown the extent of disparity between and within countries alike, and these capabilities allow the building of transnational networks that are united by common human values ​​that we all strive for, and most importantly that young women and men live in and in them and use its tools that are in essence a new epistemological model for the revolution Egypt and the new media belong to this century, leaving the entire twentieth century behind.