Macron’s Support for 'Secular Christianity' in the Middle East: Suspicious Indications and Objectives

In what appears to be an attempt to restore colonial policies against the Arab region over the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, French President Emmanuel Macron is trying to evoke that history and power under the pretext of supporting Eastern Christians against allegations of "persecution as a minority."

As part of a move that observers saw as the beginning of a new strife in the Arab region, Macron is seeking to spread secular Christianity contrary to its counterpart in the Middle East, which is ravaged by sectarian and religious crises in which Muslims are in the majority.

France has decided to double its financial support for Christian schools in the Middle East, Macron said in early February 2022, in front of 150 activists against what they call "the dangers of conflict and jihadist attacks," he said.

"Supporting The Christians of the East is a secular commitment to France and a historic mission and is a response to the need not to abandon the struggle for culture, education and dialogue in the troubled region," Macron said.

He noted that his country and the L'Oeuvre d'Orient Association, which supports eastern churches, would double their contributions to the Eastern Schools Support Fund to $4 million.

Macron's statement comes as part of a political struggle between him and some right-wing candidates for France's April 2022 presidential election, particularly Eric Zemmour, a Jewish candidate of Algerian origin who is anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and Anti-Muslim.

 

Colonial Tendencies

Macron is racing with right-wing presidential candidates to exploit the causes and crises of Eastern Christians in particular, ignoring followers of other religions in the region who suffer the same as other Christian citizens in political conflicts and wars.

Immigrants, refugees, religious Muslims, their mosques, service associations, schools and women's clothing are headlines in which candidates compete for the French presidential election, in an effort to win the votes of the French hard-right.

Macron's fund to support Christian schools in the east was established in January 2020.

In 2021, the fund supported 174 schools, including 129 in Lebanon, 16 in Egypt, 7 in Israel, 13 in the Palestinian territories and 3 in Jordan, AFP reported.

Egyptian politician and Authenticity Party (Asala Party) leader Hatem Abu Zeid, referring on Facebook, pointed out the danger of Macron's secular orientation to the Arab region.

"Secularism is a religion that sees Islam as its first enemy without other old ideologies, which have been dissolved and joined under secularism, other than Islam with a clear and insoluble ideology and to be included under positive ground-based ideas and values, whether the values of the French Republic or others," he said.

Mustafa Sharkawy, a journalist specializing in Islamic affairs said that "Macron supports these schools because they spread Francophone," noting that these schools in Egypt, for example, belong mostly to churches, which means that this support will go to them, and that he has tasks other than education.

"How can supporting Christian schools in the Middle East be a secular commitment to France, while mosques and schools are closed on French soil," he asked on YouTube.

"Muslims suffer with this secularism in Europe, as certain curricula and clothing are being imposed on them," he said.

Macron and his wife Brigitte were keen to meet the Orthodox Pope of Egypt, Tawadros II, by visiting the church's headquarters in Cairo on January 29, 2019.

Macron, however, did not talk about Christians in Yemen and Syria, which are suffering from internal wars and armed conflicts, while his attention is exaggerated to Lebanon's Christians.

Since 2017, French authorities have carried out 24,000 searches and 650 closures of Muslim places, including licensed NGOs, legalized houses of worship and schools housing thousands of Muslims.

On September 28, 2021, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin announced that his government had begun closing six mosques and dissolving a number of associations in five provinces.

Darmanin admitted to the French newspaper Le Figaro that one third of the 89 places of worship have been under surveillance since November 2020.

 

Vague Objectives?

"Macron's move to provide and increase financial support to Christian schools in the Middle East brings together a variety of signs," researcher and political analyst Ezzat al-Nimr told Al-Estiklal.

The first is that "the world is experiencing moral and cultural degradation and stands in the face of the massive fall of Western civilization with all the principles it has been claiming and trading within the past two centuries, such as democracy and human rights, which have been confined to the Western man."

He referred to the resounding fall of secularism, which it claimed was aimed at preventing religious persecution, and that it was now lifting its image due to its war on faith, persecution of the other and a fierce war on diversity and freedom of thought and opinion.

In the second sign, he said that "events declare a tremendous fall for the Church in all its sects, as its vices have been revealed, and the sins of its leaders and symbols have been remembered for the crimes of sexual harassment of children and exploitation by thousands of priests, patriarchs and all symbols of the Church.

"The published incidents of these human wolves has reached more than 3,000 dirty aggressors in France alone, which claims to be the state of light and freedoms, and the number of victims has reached more than 216,000, according to their investigations, and only God knows what’s hidden.

"The Eastern Church has also been subjected to this cheap blackmail, and has followed the demon of western churches, accepted and participated in it, in exchange for cheap gains that are not accepted by rational mind and strong behavior," he said.

"The last indication is that the Islamic world is living under tyrannical governments and dictators, who have overstated not only their religion but also the religion of the nation, and most of them have stood up to the anti-Islam attitude, its sharia and its cultural heritage, perhaps due to a dislodgment of the West and Israel and perhaps because of authentic hatred to religion, its values and its principles," he said.

"It is enough for every Islamophobic and hater of his rituals and laws to find his way into what the President of the Egyptian regime, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, Saudi Arabia's Mohammed bin Salman and other Muslim world-rich people are doing.

"Don't forget the dirty alliance between the UAE and France, which arose in 2017, supporting Bin Zayed in Paris with billions and creating cultural damage centers to surround everything that is Islamic in our country and the Muslim community in the West."