News Briefs
Episcopal News Service. May 28, 2003 [2003-119-1]
Christians urge Palestinian Authority not to make Islam official religion
(ENI) Christian leaders in the Holy Land have called on the Palestinian Authority not to make Islam the official religion of a future independent Palestinian state. The leaders oppose Article Six of a draft constitution prepared by the Constitution Committee of the Palestinian Authority which states: "Islam shall be the official religion of the state. The monotheistic religions shall be respected."
The Anglican bishop in Jerusalem, Riah Abu Al-Assal, said he has already taken the matter up with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. "I want to assure you that we have written already to the Palestinian Authority. I have already met with President Arafat," he said.
The bishop said he would also be discussing the issue with Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath, who headed the committee that produced the draft constitution. "There is a way out of this. I know that the majority are Muslims in Palestine but it did not mean that Islam [should] be the religion of Palestine. Palestine needs to be the most democratic state in the Middle East, I hope and pray."
Al-Assal said he also wanted the Palestinian Authority to adopt a model that would allow political representation for Christians as well as Muslims at the highest levels of office, citing Lebanon as an example. "You can copy the example. In Lebanon, the president is Maronite [Christian] and the prime minister is Sunni [Muslim], if we need to address the issue from a religious point of view," he said.
The bishop was responding to questions on the issue from the Rev. Petra Heldt, the executive secretary of the Ecumenical Theological Research Fraternity in Israel, at a recent conference in Jerusalem on Christians in the Holy Land. Heldt had asked for the bishop's opinion on plans to make a future Palestinian state an Islamic one, ruled by Islamic laws.
Following the conference, she described the plans by the Palestinian Authority to impose Islam on a future Palestinian state as "utterly disturbing." "The proposed constitution is for the dominance of Islam," she told ENI. She said that her organization had put forward a paper advocating that the constitution not go ahead in its current form. "We are for an open, democratic society, not determined by religious law," she said.
Heldt said the draft versions of the constitution in Arabic differed greatly from those in English, and those in Arabic made it clearer that Islam would be dominant in a future Palestinian state. Christians make up only a tiny percent of the 3.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and their numbers are dwindling. It is estimated that thousands of Christians have left since the start of the current Israeli-Palestinian violence in September 2000.