Minority Communities in the Middle East Region with a Focus on the Native Christians

Nicol 222, Beirut campus and Block A 710-711, Byblos campus

The Department of Humanities is hosting a talk titled: “Minority Communities in the Middle East Region with a Focus on the Native Christians” by Habib Malik, Ph.D.

The political map of the current Middle East shows artificially drawn straight lines often passing through deserts.  This map, the result mainly of colonial arrangements during the early decades of last century, conceals a more primordial and more representative layout of the region: an ethno-sectarian and tribal map that represents the true face of the many heterogeneous native groups and communities that have called the Middle East home for millennia.  An analysis of this underlying map can best point the way towards any future viable regional socio-political configurations in the wake of the recent and ongoing turbulent uprisings termed the Arab “Spring”.  At the center of this ethno-sectarian mélange are some 12 to 15 million indigenous Christians scattered mostly throughout the Levant, Iraq, and Egypt.  The challenges they have faced and their fortunes going forward will be the focus of this talk.