Stephen Farrell, Jerusalem and Rana Sabbagh Gargour, Amman

Christians in the Middle East have paid a high price for the Iraq war, the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad and the Pope’s controversial remarks about Islam.

Egyptian Copts, Iraqi Chaldeans and the Palestinian Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Protestant communities have faced violence and even death at the hands of their Muslim neighbours.

Canon Andrew White, president of the Foundation for Reconciliation in the Middle East, told The Times that the Iraq war had had a dire effect on the lives of Christians in the region, particularly in Iraq, where he is the vicar of St George’s Church in Baghdad.

“All my staff at the church have been killed,” he said. “They disappeared about a year ago and we never saw them again. Of the rest of my congregation, most say they have been targeted in some way or have had letters delivered with bullets in them. People forget, or the Islamic groups don’t realise, that Christianity was in the Middle East before them and therefore they see Christians as being part of the Western coalition military presence. Things have got considerably worse since the Iraq war.”

Tensions have also increased elsewhere. In Syria one Christian Assyrian said that he was planning to emigrate to Canada because of growing Islamic fundamentalism in a society having to absorb huge numbers of Iraqi refugees. “I do not feel at ease any longer and I do not want my two sons to live in this polarised society and atmosphere,” he said.

In Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Christian Arabs are a vulnerable minority caught between sympathy for their fellow Palestinians under Israeli occupation and their own tensions with the much larger Muslim Palestinian community.

Even before the Iraq war there had been a palpable increase in anger towards the United States because of President Bush’s use of the phrase “crusade” for the war on terrorism shortly after 9/11. In Gaza, Christians saw neighbours’ anger mount at the US-led occupation of Iraq. Matters were made worse by the publication of cartoons of Muhammad and by a speech from Benedict XVI that described Islam as a religion of violence.

Hanna Massad, the pastor of Gaza Baptist Church, said that the conflicts highlighted a difficult issue of identity for Christian Arabs. “The issue is who we are. Are we first Christians or are we Palestinians?” he said.

“For me my priority is my faith. I am a Christian first but I am also a Palestinian, I am Arab. Of course as a Christian Palestinian Arab we suffer with the [Israeli] occupation but at the same time I cannot, because of my personal faith, use violence.”

In Jordan conditions are easier in a dwindling Christian community that remains an influential force in a country ruled by a Hashemite king claiming descent from the Prophet Muhammad. Here Christian Arabs sent thousands of letters to the Holy See asking the Pope to apologise for his recent controversial remarks about Islam.

Christians can practise their faith freely and members of the royal family often attend Christmas and Easter ceremonies.

Christians in Jordan and other neighboring states began leaving for the West more than a century ago to escape the poverty of the Ottoman Empire. Estimates put the number of Arab Christians living in the diaspora at 4 million, with between 10 million and 15 million living in the Middle East.

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