Sura 21 of the Quran says, "The messenger of God has set a good example." The overwhelming majority of Muslims around the world try to be this "good example"; but there is also a hard-line minority, and a terrorist one. Today I would like to remind everyone of the Prophet Mohammad's oath to the Christians of Najran. I will summarize this valuable text, and send it to whoever wants it. The Prophet promised: First, I protect them, their churches, and their monasteries. Second, I guard their religion and their community, wherever it is, on land or on sea, east or west, as if I were protecting myself and mine, and the people of Islam. Third, I take them under my protection, safeguarding them from any harm or bad deeds... Sixth, no priest or bishop, or those with them, should be forced to pay a special tax. Seventh, no member of the Christian community should be forced to accept Islam. There were 11 items in this covenant, and the Caliph Omar found in it a good example; he made a similar pledge to the Christians of Jerusalem, saying, "The people of Aelia (Jerusalem) shall be granted safety by Omar, the Commander of the Faithful." He gave them safety for themselves, their wealth, their churches, and their crosses. No church, cross or money of theirs was harmed, and they were not forced to abandon their religion. None of them was harmed, and no Jews were living in Jerusalem with them. Patriarch Sophronius asked the Caliph Omar to pray with him in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the most important Christian place of all; the caliph declined, fearful that the Muslims would turn the area into a mosque. He prayed nearby, which is where the Mosque of Omar stands today. When he found the Christian sects in disagreement over the ownership of parts of the church, he gave the key to a companion of the Prophet who was accompanying him, ordering him to open the door to the church for Christians in the morning, and close it at night. The key was still around during the era of the Nusseibis, local notables in Palestine. No one is more Muslim than the Prophet and his successor, but what do we have today? There are people who are correct believers, and they are the majority. There are also some terrorists, who have no connection to any form of reason, and they are the bitterest enemy of Islam and Muslims, much worse than any other real or imagined one. Eastern Jews left their countries and there remains only a very small majority, so the terrorists have focused on Christians. The numbers here are not precise. I read that Copts in Egypt make up eight percent of the population, or nine percent, or fifteen. This means that there are about ten million of them. They have been emigrating to the west, especially Canada, for decades. Since the uprising of 2011, more than 100,000 have left. Every day or so there is news, from Alexandria to the Said region, about an attack on Christians or on churches. Sometimes, people are murdered, like the little girl Jessy Boulos this month. The only child to her parents, she was shot in the chest while coming home from a religious lesson. An alliance of 16 Egyptian human rights organizations has asked the government to protect Christians. In Iraq, I read that there were 1.3 million Christians and only about a million today. Then, I read that the majority of them emigrated, and that only 400,000 are left. The attacks on them have reached Irbil in Kurdistan, where the security situation is stable. In Syria, there are around 1.5 million to 2.5 million Christians. Hundreds of thousands of people have become internally displaced, or have left for Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and elsewhere. Life is more important than anything else; the life of a Muslim, and a Christian, and everyone. I will only add that the enemies of Islam are exploiting every incident and dealing with it as if all Muslims have committed a crime, instead of it being the work of one person, who is outside all religious teachings. Russian President Vladmir Putin is certainly not one of the enemies of Islam and Muslims, but the events in the Middle East led him, at a conference of Orthodox Christian sects, to urge the world to defend Christians in the East, and he spoke particularly about the oppression of the Orthodox. A final example for the extremists: in Aberdeen, Scotland, St. John's Episcopal Church opens its doors every Friday to Muslims to pray, because their nearby mosque is small and cannot fit them all. What this church is doing is what we find in the Prophet's covenant to the Christians of Najran, and the Caliph Omar's covenant to the Christians of Jerusalem. [email protected]
