ISLAM-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE

90 was almost exclusively Christian; Islam has supplanted it by force. Two great stages: the Arab conquest that Islamized Egypt and the Levant in just six years, from 636 to 642: the Turkish con- quest that took possession of Asia Minor between the 10th and 15th centuries. Only one strategy: some decisive mili- tary operation allows Muslims to take political control of a province or a state: the new power causes divisions among Christians (Jacobites against Melchites, Copts against Orthodox, Greeks against Latins); finally, the "dhimma" regime ("protection"), a mixture of discriminatory measures and financial oppression, inci- tes Christians to convert, in general entire families or relatives. After a few genera- tions, a country that was 90% Christian at the time of the conquest has only a few Christian minorities, both in the cities whe- re they exercise professions judged useful by Islamic power, and in some regions that are difficult to access, particularly the mountains. In two moments, a chan- ge in the global relationship of strength between Islam and Christianity allowed the churches of the East to catch their breath and to experience a brief rebirth: the Crusades from the 11th to the 13th centuries, and above all modern Europe- an expansion from the 18th to two thirds of the 20th century. During this second period ("the happiest in their history"), according to the Christian Hierosolymi- tan university professor George Hintlian, Christian communities were adopted by the Western powers: Russia watched over the Orthodox, France watched over the Churches connected to Rome, and Great Britain watched over all the other communities. Austria, Germany, Italy and the United States and even Greece in- tervened in equal measure. The Muslim powers are therefore forced to grant full religious freedom to minorities and al- most complete social or political equality. Eastern Christians also have wider access than Muslims to Western-style education, itself a factor of economic success: they formed the backbone of the middle class in the Ottoman Empire until World War I, before playing a similar role until about 1970 in most Arab countries. But the end of Western domination (or decolonization) nullifies in an instant these acquired rights. Westerners allow in the name of their principles, Jewish Christians or laity: natu- ral law, human rights. Muslims see only a return of the geopolitical balance in their favour, even if it is less due to a military victory than to simple demography (on average, the birth rate of Muslims is twice as high as that of Christians in the Middle East). In certain Islamic countries Christians or certain Christian groups are expelled. El- sewhere, they are taken either de jure or de facto to a secondary status that forces them to emigrate. The phenomenon ac- celerates with the rise of fundamentalist or Islamist movements within the Mu- slim society, which preach a permanent "jihad" and the total exclusion of non-Mu- slims from the formerly Islamicized areas, such as the Arab world. TURKEY In 1915 the Ottoman Turkey started the eradication of the Armenian Christian mi- nority of Eastern Anatolia (one and a half million people). In 1992 Mustafa Kemal expelled the Gre- ek Orthodox community of Asia Minor (1.5 million people), a measure followed by a change of population: the transfer to Anatolia of the Turks who still lived in Gre- ece (500 thousand people). Approximately 300,000 Greeks were still living in the region of Istanbul and the Sea of Marmara, reassured by the Repu- blican and secular regime, instituted by