ICC Note: Ancient Christian communities in Lebanon are now facing an existential threat as Islamic jihadist groups are demanding they submit to Islam. Lebanese Christians are descendants of the Aramaic Syriacs, who were previously a religious majority in the nation a century ago. Additionally, politician Saad Hariri is calling on the Lebanese party to confirm Lebanon as an Arab state. Arab state means Islamic laws, as is with all members of the Arab League.
04/25/16 Lebanon (Gatestone Institute) – Recent upheavals in Lebanon are making local Christians communities worry about their existence as heirs and descendants of the first Christians. Christians in the Middle East now are facing a huge genocide — similar to the Christian genocide the followed the Islamic conquest of the Middle East in the 7th century A.D.
Islamic jihadist groups are threatening Lebanese Christians and demanding that they submit to Islam. Lebanon’s Christians, descendants of Aramaic Syriacs, were the majority in the country a mere 100 years ago.
The demand for Christians to convert to Islam was one of the declarations issued by ISIS and other Islamic groups hiding in the mountainous border between Syria and Lebanon.
Saad Hariri, a Saudi-backed Sunni Muslim politician and the son of assassinated Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, recently invited every Lebanese party to his office to sign a document confirming that Lebanon is an Arab state. Arab state equals Islamic laws, as with all members of the Arab League. Why is it so important to Hariri or to the Sunni and Islamic world to include Lebanon as an Arab state and cancel its current name as a Lebanese state only?
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There are approximately one million Syriac Maronites left in Lebanon, as well as another 700,000 Christians belonging to other churches. In addition, more than eight million Syriac Maronites live in the diaspora. These eight million Christians fled over the centuries because of persecution by Muslims, often conquerors of the Christian homeland. Lebanon was never a strictly Arab or Muslim. But that is the step that Saad Hariri, as a milder face of the expansionist ISIS ideology, would have us take — under the guise of a modern, moderate, Sunni secular front.
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