Ninety Percent Muslim is Ten Percent of the Truth
A co-worker recently asked me what it was like being the only non-Muslim in Syria. A couple weeks ago, a family friend asked me if the convents I visited were Muslim convents. But, worst of all, (he says, breathing deep with inevitable regret) as I ducked my head beneath the Calvary-proof arches of a Monastary in Southern Syria, I asked Miriam if the French brought Christianity to Sham.
I knew, even as those raw and asinine words were expelled from my mouth that it was the dumbest thing I ever have, and ever would say (insha'allah.) I made Miriam swear she would never tell anyone I said it, as my face flushed red with embarrassment, and one hand held my defeated forehead and the other grasped helplessly at the previous fifteen seconds, trying to rake the words back in like spilled marbles.
So here I am, publicly confessing the unfiltered babble that Miriam swore to secrecy under pain of death, blushing even as I type; to show how far detached American society has become from the reality of the Middle East since September 12, 2001. Even a college educated liberal with an intrigued and admiring heart for Arabs forgot, if only in that unfortunate moment, that I was standing in the birthplace of Christianity.
There is a street in Damascus, the very street on which I bought pistachios for my father, on which Saint Paul converted to Christianity. I bought 5x7 prints of The Lord's Prayer in Aramaic, the language of Christ, for my grandparents, in a Christian shop in the heart of The Old City in Damascus, a densely populated Muslim district. I went to one of the last villages in the world where Aramaic is still spoken in dialect. I witnessed a baptism at a beautiful Catholic Church, which was bursting with bright hand-made paintings and religious relics-- paintings and sculptures of Christ as he likely was, rather than the Aryan poster-child representation that somehow got swallowed up by American culture, through centuries of denial and misplaced self-indulgence.
Wikipedia tells me that the Middle East is approximately 90% Muslim. That seems hefty. But in 1988 America was 88% Christian. I would like to think, if only for my own comfort, that America is not (on the whole) a religiously oppressive society. So it would seem then, that an extra two percent of statistical dominance condemns Arabs as a "religiously oppressive" people. Muslims (among others) are judged for being judgmental and filtered through the non-secular electorate as illegitimate politicians because they presumably seek non-secular dominance. Maybe even, (gasp!) the kind of dominance that gives a country three hundred years worth of Christian presidents. But that would never happen here, not in the land of Freedom and Hannah Montana. Discounting an entire region as extremist Muslim terrorists based on the prevalence of Islam among citizens is no different than discounting all of America as self-righteous fundamentalist Christian fanatics, blowing up abortion clinics and setting crosses on fire in the name of Christ.
That hardly ever happens, and the Christian community in society is, on the whole, or at least in principle, tolerant and gracious toward other religions. And when the occasional idiot hurts someone else in the name of God, they do it in contradiction of the scriptures and prophets they disgracefully embrace as pretense for agenda. The Muslims in the Middle East are no different. They are, on the whole, loving and gracious toward Arab Christians. Further; the Christian Arab women in a Damascene Souk (market) are openly welcome, where as a covered woman in the Greenwood Park Mall would be a suspect; a spectacle.
I don't have any anecdotes to share about being a religious minority during my time in the Middle East. Because it just wasn't an issue. It was a non-event; all the while surprising that no one cared whether or not I prayed toward the Mecca, toward the sky, or not at all.
