The Christians Are Coming Back to Arabia – Fourteen Centuries after Mohammed
Three months ago to the day, on May 31, the Holy See established diplomatic relations and exchanged ambassadors with the United Arab Emirates.
Few noted the fact that the United Arab Emirates has the greatest Christian presence of any Islamic country.
And it is a new and growing presence. Exactly the opposite of what is happening in other regions in the Middle East like Iraq, Lebanon, the Holy Land, where Christian communities of very ancient origin actually face extinction.
The United Arab Emirates is a federation of seven emirates – Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah, and Umm al-Quwain – situated along the middle of the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula. The capital is Abu Dhabi. Almost all of the citizens belong to the official religion, Islam.
But there are many more immigrants than citizens. Foreigners now make up more than 70 percent of the more than 4 million inhabitants, coming from other Arab countries, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, the Philippines.
More than half of these foreign workers are Christians. Adding up the figures, Christians account for more than 35 percent of the population of the United Arab Emirates. Around a million of them are Catholic. And it's not only in the UAE – in Saudi Arabia, too, it is estimated that there are already about a million Catholics from the Philippines.
But how do these Christians live in Arab lands? What does this young, growing Church look like? What scope for freedom does it have?
The report that follows responds to these questions. It was published on August 19 in the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference, "Avvenire."
Engulfed: The Church in the Arab Emirates
by Fabio Proverbio
It's early afternoon, and I'm in a car with Santos and Lea, moving through frenetic Dubai. Around me are big SUV's that are barely moving in the congested urban traffic, luxurious and ultramodern buildings, huge construction sites swarming with armies of workers: all confirmation that we are in one of the most cutting edge, bustling cities on the planet.
We're heading toward a place of refuge provided by the Filipino embassy for the housing and protection of young immigrant women fleeing from their employers.
Once at our destination, which is inside an elegant building, I meet a hundred or so young women absorbed in compensating for the state of natural disorder generated by the overcrowding (see photo). All standing side by side, they sing hymns and prayers, exchanging embraces of mutual consolation. I note the tears that none of the girls is able to hold back, and I search fruitlessly for some reason for so much sadness. I will understand at the end of the prayers, when Santos and Lea recount for me the dramatic experiences of these young immigrant women.
Their stories are almost unbelievable, like that of Beng, who, tired of being closed up in the house where she worked and suffering abuse from the family, made a desperate escape attempt, which ended with a ruinous fall and a broken arm. Brought to the hospital by some passersby, the girl was later arrested on the accusation of having attempted suicide. The intervention of Filipino diplomats finally set free the immigrant who today, in this protected place, is waiting for developments in her case. The housemaid who worked for the same family after her did not meet with better luck: she, too, tried to escape, with the same result.
Santos and Lea are members of the Legion of Mary, the Catholic movement that has become a point of reference here for many Filipino immigrant women who find in this community not only solidarity, but also the necessary legal assistance to be able to break free from working conditions that often do not correspond to those defined in their hiring contracts.
After saying goodbye to the young immigrant women, who in the meantime at least seem to have recovered some serenity and some of the cheerful spirit that characterizes the Filipino people, I leave for Abu Dhabi.
It is Sunday, but in a Muslim country like the United Arab Emirates this is just another day. And yet, late in the afternoon iat n the Catholic church of Saint Joseph in Abu Dhabi, I witness an extraordinary coming and going of faithful belonging to different ethnic groups, who come here to participate in the Mass celebrated in their own native language. There are Indians - mostly from Kerala or Tamil Nadu - Filipinos, Lebanese, Iraqis, or Christians from other Middle Eastern countries, and also Europeans and Americans.
On Friday, the weekly holiday in Muslim countries, the faithful stream through in even greater numbers, so much so that the church cannot hold them all. Many must follow the celebration from outside, in the front churchyard, where gigantic screens are set up on special feasts like Christmas or Easter so that everyone can participate. Nonetheless, Paul Hinder, bishop of the apostolic vicariate of Arabia, takes care to clarify that those who come to the parish regularly are only a small proportion, 15-18 percent, of the Catholic population in the capital and the surrounding area.
They are all immigrant workers, and many of them, because they live on the outskirts and don't have easy transportation access to the city, cannot regularly attend the official places of worship. This is the situation of the thousands of Indians who work on the construction sites in Dubai and are housed in the largest village-dormitory in Asia. According to unofficial estimates, this houses a population of about thirty thousand workers. Or there are the immigrants who work in the oil industry, who are cut off in isolated desert villages.
Another case is that of the Filipina housemaids who, because they don't have enough free time or enough money for transportation, remain bound to the places where they work. In consequence, small prayer groups - which are organized according to language and place of origin and meet in private settings like apartments, dormitories, and storage sheds - have become a very important and widespread form of religious expression for the Catholic communities. These are necessary moments of encounter, but they are also risky because of the rules imposed by the local authorities, who grant freedom of worship only in officially recognized places like the territory's parishes. In this context, the Charismatic groups from India or the Philippines take on an important role in spearheading initiatives in support of immigrants living in the most difficult conditions. These are often not limited to religious initiatives, but also include services of practical assistance, as in the case of the Legion of Mary mentioned above.
The phenomenon of immigration to the United Arab Emirates is a relatively recent one, and is linked to the region's oil fortunes. When in the 1950's and '60's oil revenues began to bring prosperity and progress, the country's development made it necessary to bring in both specialized and non-specialized manual laborers from abroad.
Today, the Emirates are undergoing a process of modernization that has no equal in the world. Petrodollars are being reinvested in highly advanced structures and infrastructure, the Dubai stock market is taking on global significance, and its port is one of the world's busiest. Artificial islands in the shape of palm trees, ski slopes in the desert, bizarrely shaped hotels, and a whole series of eccentric building projects - like the still incomplete tower Burj Dubai, which is set to become the tallest building in the world - are just a few examples of the "wonders" through which the local emirates intend to amaze the world and attract foreign investors, who find favorable investment conditions and extremely low labor costs here.
Immigrants represent 90 percent of the almost two million workers present in the Emirates, and 100 percent in the case of low cost manual labor. In fact, for the Arab locals the concept of poverty is either unknown - for the youngest - or is a timeworn memory from long ago. The lack of incentives for striving toward professional and economic success - which are guaranteed from birth - is creating complacency among the country's future leaders, with the risk of leaving them incapable of meeting the challenges of globalization.
The term "immigrant" is itself too generic to define the reality of those who are working today to transform the face of the Gulf. The true status of these workers, even of those who have been living in the Emirates for a number of years, is that of "expatriates," persons whose presence in the country is strictly connected to the possession of a valid work contract, but who can never become residents or buy houses or property. Their destiny is bound to the decisions of their employers, who often hold their passports hostage out of fear that they will flee or become insubordinate. These manual laborers are employed in the oil industry, and more recently in the sectors of construction and domestic service.
They are the new poor of Dubai and its surroundings. Few of them make more than 200 dollars a month, and they work an average of 10-12 hours a day, six days a week, in temperatures that can reach 50C (122F). They live in suburb-dormitories that are as large as cities, but completely devoid of services. Like huge barracks, these villages are entirely populated by men whose families are a distant memory, to be contacted periodically with a moneygram that permits the most fortunate to send their children to school or pay some debt arising from extreme poverty. The best that this army of grunts can hope for is to spend their working lives on construction sites in the Gulf, with brief visits to their loved ones every two or three years.
Speaking of poverty in a country undergoing very rapid economic expansion - and one whose leaders intend to make it one of the most important spots for contemporary art, with the opening of museums and exhibit spaces - seems like a paradox. And this is a reality particularly difficult to understand and accept for an outside observer, precisely because it exists side by side with such exaggerated opulence.
But these elements must also be considered in seeking to understand the reality of the Emirates today: a land of striking contrasts, where tradition meets modernity in a unique, surprising, and dramatically contradictory fusion of East and West.
The newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference, which published this report:
The official statement dated May 31, 2007, on the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the United Arab Emirates, with some useful data on the country:
> Joint communiqué on the establishment...
From the United Arab Emirates, www.chiesa earlier published an account by bishop Paul Hinder, apostolic vicar of the entire Arabian Peninsula, an account reprinted by the magazine of the patriarchate of Venice, "Oasis":
> There Is a Catholic Oasis in Dubai (31.1.2005)
On the difficult situations of Christians in other Islamic countries:
> The Last Mass of Father Ragheed, a Martyr of the Chaldean Church (5.6.2007)
> A Final Appeal: Save Christian Iraq (28.5.2007)
> Blessed Are the Meek: The Life and Martyrdom of a Priest on Mission in Turkey (7.2.2006)
English translation by Matthew Sherry, Saint Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.
© Gruppo Editoriale L’Espresso Spa
This item 7788 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
