Hospitality or hostility in the Arab World

At dinner the other day I was being regaled by someone with tales of how hospitable he had found the Arabs of the Arabian peninsula. This 'fact' is something that is often used to show how wonderful Arab culture is and to male Westerners feel guilty for not completely welcoming the arrival of a multitude of people from around the planet to our countries. Of course the reality can be somewhat at odds with this 'fact'. Whilst my new friend might have been welcomed with traditional Arab hospitality; I am not sure how they would have welcomed this Jew, albeit one without an Israeli stamp in his passport.

This reminded me of something I read in the New York Times recently. Apparently a new wave of Iraqi Christians are fleeing Bagdhad and Mosul to escape an organised campaign of violence against them. This particular wave started with a siege on 31 October at a church in Baghdad, a siege that resulted in the deaths of 51 Christian worshippers and 2 priests. The bloody siege was followed by bombings and assassinations targeted at Christians. Thus a people whose roots stretch back to the earliest days of Christianity (and thus pre-Islam) are being forced out of large areas of Iraq by Islamists, to whom practicants of any other religion are not greeted with hospitality but hostility.

This forced exodus of non-Muslims is not a new thing and echoes what happened to the large Jewish community in Iraq in 1948. Since the US lead invasion of Iraq in 2003 it is estimated that over half of the million strong Christian population of Iraq has fled the country. After all the Al-Quaeda in Mesopotania offshoot 'The Islamic State of Iraq' which claimed responsibility for the siege said that its fighters would kill Christians "wherever they can reach them". Islamists in Iraq want all Christians to leave Iraq so that Iraq can be pure and Islamic.