For two days, experts discussed this theme that occasionally emerges in the news. A subject that is extremely complex, deserving more than episodic attention, and one that risks turning into a tragedy.
What can we do beyond expressing our solidarity to these brothers and sisters whose present is in suffering and whose future is uncertain?
There is politics but also humanitarian efforts… This is the perspective Patrick Mottard brings to these events.
I attended a fascinating and terrifying round table at the CUM on the future of Christians in the East. A community that has been the victim of a true religious purification (the term is from senior faculty member Vallard of the Faculty of Law in Nice) in a part of the Arab-Muslim world that wants to eradicate all forms of otherness (political scientist Myriam Benraad).
And while some retain a glimmer of hope: “we must maintain hope despite despair” (Professor Joseph Yacoub), the general opinion was rather pessimistic about the future of these Christians. Persecuted for 14 centuries, they now face the genocidal intentions of the racist and fundamentalist sect Daesh.
Thus, how can we not agree with Marek Halter when he explains to his friend Yacoub that the world has changed and that Christians in the East will suffer the same fate as Jewish communities in Arab countries: death or exile…
And since we could not defend them, our duty will be to welcome them so that they can save their culture within a diaspora already strong in Latin America, the USA, or Australia. We owe them that much.
by Patrick Mottard
