There has been a succession of conferences on Christians in the Middle East for a while now. The increase in the number of conferences is nothing more than conclusive evidence of the state of concern that takes hold of this fundamental part of Arab society, whose existence dates back to the pre-Islamic era. The threats that endanger this group’s existence are numerous. Some threats have been around for a long time, such as the group’s demographic decline that has resulted from structural reasons. Some of these include a lack of political freedoms and decreased growth — due to either political crises and successive wars, or economic policies that limited the chances of success and narrowed job possibilities, such as the waves of economic nationalization that were common in the 1950s and 1960s. Other threats are newer, and have been imposed by the harbingers of the Arab uprisings and accompanied rise of Islamist movements.

Truth be told, the emergence of Islamist movements is not a reassuring factor for non-Islamic groups in particular and other subgroups within Arab society. These groups look forward to modernity that denotes the priority of the rights of individuals over any other values guaranteed by a democratic civil state, although they are committed to the principles, rituals and rites of Islam. In Egypt, developments that accompanied the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood to power and their attempt to monopolize power — by running parliamentary elections alone, refusing to ally and bridge with the rest of the groups in Egyptian society or limiting the draft of the constitution to a group that is loyal to it and absolutely conform to its ideology — have not been reassuring to Christians and have undoubtedly weakened their enthusiasm for the Arab Spring. They had previously been at the forefront of these uprisings, given the potential that existed for a shift toward modernity and firmly establishing the right to participation and self-determination.

The decline of the role of Christians in Lebanon has certainly represented an additional factor of frustration, which has recently surrounded the rest of Eastern Christians. Reverberations throughout the region — from which Lebanon has suffered since the Palestinian exodus and the entry of large numbers of Palestinian refugees to its territory — all Arab-Israeli wars in which Lebanon did not participate and the overwhelming Nasserist wave that dragged Lebanon into the first sectarian crisis since its independence in 1943 are factors that have weakened the country’s cohesion and eroded the foundation of its sovereignty. The internal rifts such as the 1989-90 fratricidal war were nothing more than a knockout blow to this role, with which the Christian groups scattered around the Middle East were psychologically and symbolically associated. Lebanon, under the tutelage of Syria, quietly enacted the 1989 Taif Agreement, and Hezbollah's role emerged on the domestic scene as the military arm of Iran — the ally of the Syrian regime — at the expense of the Lebanese state and its sovereign institutions; the role of the Christians, particularly the Maronites, has lessened. The equation is of the utmost simplicity; the more the Lebanese state is weakened, the more the founding sect’s role of the small country recedes.

While the emerging Islamist wave poses a threat to the Christians and other civil forces that oppose the literal application of Sharia — which is not in line with the requirements of this time — this does not mean that the former dictatorial regimes are the solution.