It was very sad to read, in a BBC report, that the church bells in Gaza
have fallen silent under Hamas rule. The BBC correspondent, Katya
Adler, reported that instead of ringing the bells, a nun was quietly
playing a cassette tape: "I thought how this reflected the situation in
Gaza in Christmas 2007 - that while the muezzin were on loudspeaker, the
church bells here are played from a cassette tape.
adjusted the volume - loud enough to peel through the church but not to
penetrate its walls - it might risk offending Muslim Gazans passing by."
I was reminded by this story of the text of the 7th century "Pact of
Umar", in which Christians, when surrendering to Islam, agreed to
silence their bells: "We shall use only [wooden] clappers in our
churches very softly."
The prohibition on ringing bells was one of the universal restrictions
imposed by Islamic law upon 'dhimmis' - non-Muslims living under Islam
after conquest. The bells of Middle Eastern Christians fell silent for
more than a thousand years, until the European Powers dismantled the
dhimmi system during the 19th and 20th centuries. Now the age-old
discriminatory laws are being enforced again, and Hamas is proving as
good as its word, for when it took power in Gaza the local Christians
were told that as they were now in a full Islamic system they 'must
accept Islamic law'. The silence of the bells bears witness that Hamas
has told the truth about its intentions.
The silence is bad enough, but what distressed me most about Adler's
report was her claim - paradoxically in the very same article - that
"There is no evidence to suggest the Hamas government here officially
discriminates against Christians…"
This Christmas season Gazan Christians are being resubjected to the
odious, humiliating discriminations of the dhimmi system. This makes
Christmas a very good time for the rest of the world to wake up and pay
attention to the stark historical reality of dhimmi Christians' lives
under Islamic rule, and to the intolerable reimposition of these
conditions in many Muslim societies in the present day.