“Fee al-badi’ khalaqa Allahu as-Samaawaat wa al-Ard . . . ”
—Genesis 1:1 in the Arabic Bible
There are about 12 million Arabic speaking Christians in the world. They live as substantial minorities in Lebanon (35 percent) and Syria (10 percent) and in lesser numbers in Iraq, Palestine and North Africa.
Millions of Arab Christians are good citizens in dozens of nations throughout the world. One of the first people I met as a graduate student in Denmark was a Palestinian Christian.
Contrary to popular belief, the majority of Arabs living in the U.S. are Christians, not Muslims. Ralph Nader, for example, comes from an Arab Christian family.
A majority of the refugees from Iraq are Arabic speaking Christians, who have come under great pressure since the U.S. invasion gave rise to Muslim extremism. Osama bin Laden condemned Saddam Hussein for his secularism and for the fact that his foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, was a Christian.
For at least 1,200 years Arab Christians have read their Bibles with the Hebrew and Greek words “elohim” and “theos” translated as “Allah.” The oldest extant Arabic Bible (parts of the New Testament) was produced in AD 867 and was found at St. Catherine monastery on Mt. Sinai. MORE HERE
Saturday, January 30, 2010
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