A Wolf in sheep’s clothing?

As the Arab uprisings continue to unfold, it is unclear how countries in the Middle East will act on issues of plurality and human rights.  On Monday, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars hosted a talk on the Future of Religious Minorities in the Middle East.  Congressman Frank Wolf, co-chairman of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, delivered a presentation on religious minorities in the region, based on a series of visits to the Middle East.

Wolf reminded that oppression of religious minorities is not new in the region. The Iranian government repressed its Baha’i minority since 1979, killing hundreds of its leaders and dismissing tens of thousands from jobs.  The recent uprisings in the region have exacerbated the situation.  The Arab Spring “devolved into Winter for many of the most vulnerable in these societies—foremost among them the ancient Christian communities,” according to the Congressman.

The Congressman added that Coptic Christians in Egypt and Syrian Christians are among the most vulnerable in the region.  Those issues must be viewed “not simply as today’s news but rather through the lens of history.”  Wolf said a phrase not often heard outside the majority Muslim world is ‘First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people.’  ‘Saturday people’ refers to the Jews, whose population decreased from hundreds of thousands to only 4 in Iraq, and roughly 20 in Egypt.  The Congressman warned that “a similar fate may await the ancient Christian community” in the Middle East.

The US government nevertheless continues to provide countries with foreign assistance “without a single string attached.”  Washington, Wolf said, should act because “the historic exodus of Christians from the region… threatens to erase Christianity from its very roots.”

The Congressman suggested that the administration should make use of the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Act, which he authored in 1998.  The legislation created an office at the State Department, headed by an Ambassador-at-Large, dedicated to advising on matters of religious freedom.  The legislation also established a new designation, Countries of Particular Concern (CPC), to describe those countries with “severe systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations.”  Successive administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have under-utilized these tools.  Since 2011, no countries were added to the CPC.  Likewise, the position of the IRF ambassador was vacant for the first two years of the Obama Administration.

As someone who lived in Jordan most of my life, I think the Congressman is right in pointing to the ongoing oppression of religious minorities in the Middle East and in predicting that the situation could get worse in the near future. The problems are real.

Nevertheless, the Congressman’s report was less than completely convincing. His phrase ‘First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people’ is not often heard inside the Muslim majority world, as he seemed to imply.  I have yet to hear it.  In my view, the threat to Christian minorities is not as dramatic as he suggested.  Coptic Christians are unlikely to be reduced to a handful in Egypt.  Christianity will not be erased from its very roots.

The Congressman’s selection of religious minorities in the Middle East on which to focus is odd.  He never referred to the Shiite populations of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, the Sunnis in Iran, or the Arab population in Israel, to mention a few.  The only Muslim minority group the Congressman mentioned, in passing, was the Ahmadiyya.

Biblical references are important to the Congressman.  One of the main reasons he made the trip to the Middle East was to visit the Syrian Christian community.  After all, he said, “we read in the Bible about Paul on the road to Damascus.”  When Jesus died on the cross, he cried in Aramaic, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Other Biblical references included Abraham, Isaac and his bride Rebekah, Jacob, Jonah, Mary, Joseph, King Herod, the apostle Mark, and more.

Wolf is connected to a Christian group called the Fellowship Foundation (referred to, Wolf says inappropriately, as The Family).  He writes:

The broader “fellowship” is an association of friends who have a commitment to follow Jesus and stay relationally connected, whether or not they are formally connected through a ministry organization. The essence of their teaching is to encourage love for God and others, always in keeping with biblical principles.

According to New York Times bestseller Jeff Sharlet, this group has viewed people like Hitler as models of leadership and commitment.  The group’s founder, Abraham Vereide, admired fascism’s cultivation of elites, crucial to what he saw as a God-ordained coming “age of minority control.”  The Fellowship Foundation has reportedly been involved in promoting proposals to punish homosexuality by death in Uganda.  One report claims that, by 2010, Wolf received more than $15,000 from the Fellowship Foundation to make trips abroad, including to Lebanon.

The problems of the Christian communities in the Middle East are real.  But is this a Wolf in sheep’s clothing? (see Gospel of Matthew 7:15).