EUROPE, ISLAM AND THE MODERN DHIMMIS
EUROPE, ISLAM AND THE MODERN DHIMMIS

Summary/Abstract: This article considers the troublesome fate that many Middle Eastern Christian communities faced once the terrorist organization known as the Islamic State achieved its goal of declaring an Islamic Caliphate. In our opinion, destroying the millennia old Christian communities of Syria and Iraq does not only amount to an incommensurable human tragedy, but also to a profound and terrible loss in terms of the cultural heritage that these communities were preserving. For Christianity, a term rarely used as most Christian countries both Western and Eastern are now secular and hardly in touch with their religious identity, these events amount to an epochal change. What is even more peculiar is that the last remnants of Christian Churches in the Middle East are wiped out consecutively with the reaffirmation of old Islamic institutions devised exactly to protect Christian communities. Clearly, though argued differently by their fundamentalist supporters, the old Islamic Empires have nothing in common with new Caliphate rising now on the ruins of Middle Eastern national states.

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