They're coming back!
Earlier this week the Pope met with the King of Saudi Arabia. Their conversation included discussion about the treatment and tolerance of Christian people living in Saudia Arabia. The issue is one of increasing importance because it is thought that Christians will soon become the majority in at least one arabian state, and are increasingly present in Saudi Arabia as well.
The site Chiesa online has a series of articles about the effect this is having:
"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. "
Read the rest here.
I'm one of the Christians living in the UAE. Thank you, Nick, for pointing out this article from Chiesa. This is a country I have become quite attached to.
The UAE receives high marks for religious freedom from the US State Department. As the article states, on major feast days churches put up loudspeakers and video screens to handle to huge overflow crowds. It is really quite an uplifting experience. On any Friday (Sunday is a workday and Saturday is a half work day for many) it is great to be at the church souk (a souk is a marketplace - the churches are all collected to gather in one block just as all the spice vendors are collected together in a spice souk). The comings and goings of multiple congregations of multiple denominations (protestant, orthodox, Catholic...) is a wondrous sight.
The accounts of labor abuse are true, and the problem exists because workers are indentured to the employer who brought them here. If you are a low-wage worker and get a bad employer it is next to impossible to merely quit and go to a decent one.
That said, and knowing this risk, foreign workers continue to come to the UAE of their own free will. That is because it offers them more than they can get in their home countries. Most of these workers choose to send their earnings home to their parents or spouses, bettering their lives.
Recently there has been an additional squeeze. The UAE currency is fixed to the dollar and as the dollar falls there is less to send home.
Anyone interested in reading more is invited to my blog,
http://emirateseconomist.blogspot.com
Posted by John B. Chilton![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/nav-commenters.gif)
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November 10, 2007 4:59 AM