Christians share fears of the "New Colonialism"

By Abdul Raheem Ali, IOL Cairo Staff

CAIRO, April 21 (IslamOnline.net) - The United States attempts to sow differences between Muslims and Christians and destroy all chapters of history and civilization in the Arab region after its occupation of Iraq, a leading Christian cleric said Sunday, April 20.

"So we have to stand shoulder to shoulder to throw a spanner in these destructive plots contrived by sponsors of the New Colonialism of the Arab nation," Secretary General of the Middle East Churches' Council (MECC) Secretary General Rev. Dr. Riad Jarjour told IslamOnline.net.

Warning of the U.S. efforts to draw divisions among Arabs, Jarjour  said that the Council is moving the other way round.

"Out of fears to play on our cultural and religious multiplicity and disrupt our unity, the Council had draw up a plan to change the western mindset as to the reality of the Palestinian situation and incorrect ideas about the Islamic religion popping up after the September attacks," he said, referring to the terrorist attacks against Washington and New York which U.S. blamed on Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

A number of the Council's members, Islamic and Christian intellectuals, were sent for tours of Sudan and Europe.

"The first visit is an effort of rapprochement between the Islamic North and the predominantly Christian South in Sudan which could be set as an clear example of co-existence," Jarjour  said.

"The second is to explain out the true viewpoints of Islam away from rumors circulated to the interests of certain parties," he added.

But at the internal front of the region's countries, Jarjour  said that national unity "should also be consolidated."

Churches "Sympathetic"

The Middle East ecclesiastical official made clear that many churches in the United States and Europe were sympathetic towards Arab issues as conclusively demonstrated in their flat objection to the U.S.-led military aggression against Iraq.

He said that the European churches now work with the American Islamic Council (AIC) to hold a meeting of Islamic and Christian spiritual leaders in Chicago on April 28-29.

"The get-together is to broach the repercussions of the Iraq war in the Middle East region one hand and relations between Muslims and Christians on the other," he said.

The meeting, Jarjour  said, is also to probe steps to be taken down the road of calling on the U.S. to pull out of the Arab country and halt its steadily rising threats to neighbors Syria and Iran.

Easter Message

The ecclesiastical Middle East leader also called on the Christians in the Easter message not to strip any festivities from their religious ceremonies as long as "the Iraqi people still bear the brunt of the U.S.-led aggression and mourn their deaths and wounded.

"The true Christian is the one who condemn acts of injustice wherever they take place and show solidarity with those suffer under them," Jarjour  added in his message to Christians.