Christians and Muslims are involved together in the democracy and reform movements bubbling up around the Middle East, and members of both communities will gain from their success and suffer if they are violently suppressed, said a leading Lebanese Muslim scholar. With demonstrations in Tunisia and Egypt, simmering unrest in Yemen and government changes in Lebanon, “I am both worried and hopeful,” said Muhammad al-Sammak, adviser to the chief mufti of Lebanon and secretary general of Lebanon’s Christian-Muslim Committee for Dialogue. “It is true that the situation of Christians in the Middle East is not good,” he said, adding that the region’s governments must do more to protect the religious minorities in their midst. “The political outcome [of unrest] is likely to take different shapes in different countries,” he said. “Christians in the Middle East are part of this change. They are not opposed to it; they are not leading it; they are part of it.”
United by Democracy
Show Comments (
)
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
The latest from america
As we grapple with fragmentation, political polarization and rising distrust in institutions, a national embrace of volunteerism could go a long way toward healing what ails us as a society.
I forget—did God make death?
you discovered heaven spread to the edges
of a max lucado picture book
The joys and challenges of a new child stretched me in ways I couldn’t have imagined.