Paris show on Arab Christianity prompts Macron support

The Chrėtiens d'Orient exhibition, which is taking place at the Paris Institute of the Arab World (l’Institut du monde arabe (IMA)) until January 2018, showcases over 2 000 years of Arab Christian history in over 300 works and objects.

Many of the objects have been borrowed from other global institutions, and have come together for the first time, in a bid to demonstrate the diversity and complexity of millennia of Christian history across the Arab world, including in the Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Syria, Iraq and Egypt.

The exhibition has taken on especial significance given what some have described as the present-day ongoing threat to Christian communities in Muslim-dominated areas of the Middle East, including areas affected by Isis in Syria and Iraq.

President Macron was prompted to state his support for Christianity in the beleaguered region, in front of numerous representatives of various Christian churches - including Catholic, Orthodox, Armenian and Maronite - after having visited the exhibition himself in Paris this week.

Jack Lang, president of the IMA, added: “In these times of fire and blood, it is important to remember that the very ancient peoples of Arab Christianity were some of the biggest catalysts towards modernity in these often-forgotten cradles, which today are barely keeping in place,” he said, speaking to French newspaper Le Monde.

Today, half of Syria’s Christians have already fled, but 750 000 remain. In Iraq, there are a reported 300 000 Christians: just 10% of the 3 million counted in 1955, according to figures from Father Salim Daccache, rector of the Jesuit University of Beirut.