Catholic Online Forum

I have a question for Christians of the Orthodox faith. With the war in Iraq, there is so much media frenzy, it is quite difficult to take away the propaganda out of the news. Saddam called for a jihad, but who knows how that is going to turn out. So, I went into a Muslim-based website and tried to figure out what was it that Islam actually teaches. The website, if you guys want the link I'll show it to you, said that the Muslims were pretty much tolerant of the Orthodox faith and that the Muslims were not a cause or a factor in keeping the Orthodox Church and Catholic Church separated. According to what I have read, the Catholic and Orthodox Church were getting along pretty well around the time of the Council of Florence but then the Muslims put pressure on the Orthodox Churches and they were forced to dissociate from the Catholic Church. So here's my question: Were the Muslims really tolerant of the Orthodox faith? If not, in what way?

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--Benito
"We are not the inventors of our Faith; we are its custodians."
--Cardinal Francis Arinze

Benito,



It depends on the country. There are many Muslim nations that are not tolerant of the Orthodox. You might want to check out some Orthodox websites for a different prospective than the one that you found. The Orthodox Church in many Muslim countries has been almost decimated. In some countries the oppression has been violent (like the Armenian massacre by the Turks in 1915). In others, the persecution is more subtle. They simply make it very difficult for a Christian to worship or live in their country.

I read a great book about this once, “From the Holy Mountain. It talks about the state of the Christianity (mostly Orthodox) in Muslim countries. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... s&n=507846

Some of the more subtle ways of getting rid of the Orthodox is by not letting them build new churches or repair old ones. In some countries, very old, very beautiful Orthodox chruches have been bulldozed. One country removed mosques that were in the way of a new dam, while letting an important Orthodox church be distroyed by the water. In many countries, things like this happen all the time.


I think that if you asked most Orthodox Christians who have been in countries that are dominated by Moslems, you won't find many that agree with the website that you found. The book I cited will give you more information.



I haven't heard that before.


Effie - former Orthodox Christain

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“The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.” –G.K Chesterton

RE - According to what I have read, the Catholic and Orthodox Church were getting along pretty well around the time of the Council of Florence but then the Muslims put pressure on the Orthodox Churches and they were forced to dissociate from the Catholic Church.

This is off the top of my head so you should check the details. As I recall the purpose of the Orthodox Church at the Council of Florence was to obtain Western support for their struggle against the Moslems who were besieging Constantinople. They agreed to a reunification as the price of that support. The fall of Constantinople shortly thereafter eliminated the basis of the agreement.

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- Joe Kelley

Death is only a shadow across the path to Heaven.

Shlomo.

Well i am a middle eastern catholic, but i can still help you with that issue.
1. in Iraq orthodox are minority and they mix them up for catholics because 90 %of the chrsitians of iraq are non-arabs, and most of them speak Syriac aramaic with few exeptions

2. In lebanon : Same case, Most of them are Syriac catholics or Maronite syriac catholics, orthodox also get mixed up with catholics.

In both cases, in the middle east a catholic and orthodox are considered chrisitians my moslem, and they are persecuted equally.

3. In egypt, Orthodox are the dominants, so they get persecuted by moslems, but for the catholics, they get persectuted by Moslems physcally and by orthodox verbally.

4. In syria, Syriac orthodox are arond 200 thousand, but other catholics sects make up 1.2 -1.5 millons , but they are distinctive coz they live in the north.

5. turkey is whole different story, and Catholics got the most out of it. We " syriac catholics " stayed without a patriarch for a long time, because the syriac orthodox convinced the Ottomans that we are not christians, and they used to tell where we hide to the turks and kurds, so we lost huge numbers , almost 80 thousands. When finally the ottomans recognised us as christians, they blew all christians off, what is called armenians genocide, actually had almost 1 million syriacs in it ( mainly orthodox, coz catholics were killed bfore ). They from the turkls and kurds south to live with the syriacs of the south, hmm, arabs got us down there, so now, we are like uranium, hard to find.

That is samary of the history with islam, i dont want to get into current time persecution, it will take ages to write it down.

Wisam