Abstract
This article analyzes the 2025 Kairos Palestine manifesto A Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide (Kairos II) through the framework of dhimmitude—the historic and ongoing Islamic system of subordinating non-Muslims (dhimmis) under Muslim rule. The critique centers on how Palestinian Christian authors—constrained by their vulnerable status as a tiny, intimidated minority amid an overwhelming Muslim majority—are politically and existentially prevented from naming the elephant in the room: Islamic violence, theological antisemitism, and the dhimma itself.
Kairos II presents a black-and-white morality that casts Israel as an uniquely genocidal, settler-colonial, apartheid entity while defending the October 7 attacks as legitimate “resistance,” denying any Jewish indigenous claim to the land, and calling for the isolation and dismantling of the Jewish state in favor of a utopian, secular, pluralistic Palestine.
The document systematically silences Christian grievances against Muslim neighbors—discrimination, land expropriation, forced conversions, church desecrations, abductions, and murders—attributing all suffering to Israel. These silences are classic manifestations of a dhimmi mentality dominated by fear of and identification with the oppressor.
Kairos II’s utopian hope for a democratic Palestine after Israel’s demise collides with the reality that Islam is the official religion of the Palestinian Authority, the sharia its primary legislative source, and jihadi groups explicitly reject secular equality. By concealing these drivers, Kairos II functions as an epic act of misdirection, which invites Western churches to abet the restoration of dhimmitude in the Levant. Only by naming Islam and the constraints of dhimmitude existence can the manifesto’s full meaning—and the genuine plight of Palestinian Christians—be grasped.
Introduction
Much ink has been spilled concerning the competing ethical merits of the two sides in the long-standing conflict between Israel and the Arabs. This article does not attempt an adjudication of the merits and demerits of the parties to that conflict. It has a much narrower concern: to provide context and interpretive tools for readers of the 2025 Kairos Palestine manifesto, A Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide (Kairos II),[1] which has been offered to the Christian churches of the world as a call to action from Palestinians.
In July 2026, the General Synod of the Church of England voted to “hear” the Kairos II manifesto as “heartfelt expressions of the lived experience of Palestinian Christians”.
It is indeed important to “hear” the Kairos II manifesto and other statements from Palestinian Christians.[2] It cannot be denied that Christian Palestinians face profound challenges and suffering amidst enduring experiences of loss and displacement. However, the Kairos II document does not offer a fair and complete overview of Christian Palestinian lived experience. Neither is its testimony free of certain ideological commitments, which result in significant gaps or “silences” in how the manifesto presents its cause.
Why “Kairos”?
The New Testament Greek word kairos can refer to an appointed or opportune time (see, for example, Mark 1:14–15). In Kairos II the word is used to suggest a time of crisis that demands a response. The authors of Kairos II want to send an urgent cry to the Christian world to spring into action on their behalf without delay. Action in the future, they insist, will be too late. The crisis they warn of is the obliteration of Palestinians and Palestine, which they claim is the true intention of Israel. The action they are requesting is that the churches of the world should isolate Israel. They anticipate that this will lead to the dismantling of Israel and its replacement by a unified democratic, secular nation of Palestine.
Kairos II functions as an epic act of misdirection, which invites Western churches to abet the restoration of dhimmitude in the Levant.
Who Wrote Kairos II?
Kairos II was written in 2025 in response to the war in Gaza. It was produced by the Kairos Palestine movement, which is led by Christians. This movement is active worldwide and was established through the advocacy of evangelical Palestinian Protestants, who continue to provide key leadership to the movement.
Kairos II is an update of the 2009 Kairos Palestine document, which also bore the formal title A Moment of Truth.[3] (I shall refer to this earlier document as Kairos I.) Both Kairos I and Kairos II share the same end-goal as well as certain important characteristics. However, Kairos II escalates charges against Israel in response to the Gaza war. These charges now extend beyond “occupation” to “settler colonialism” and “genocide”.
Christians in Israel and the Palestinian Territories
Although Kairos II speaks as if it were the ordained voice for all Christians in Palestine and Israel, this is far from the truth. Christians in Israel and the Palestinian territories are highly diverse. They include traditional Middle Eastern Christians (Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox), mainline Protestants (e.g. Anglican and Lutheran), and other Protestants, including Pentecostals, Baptists, Messianic Jewish believers and converts from Islam. Some of these Christians are Zionists, supporting the right of Israel to exist and defend itself; others have embraced Christian Liberation Theology (CLT). It is CLT advocates who have led the Kairos Palestine movement.
In 1922, Christians composed around 11 percent of the British Mandate of Palestine (excluding Transjordan).[4] The Palestinian Authority does not conduct censuses, but there are thought to be around 50,000 Christians in the West Bank today, and fewer than 1,000 in Gaza, which together represent around 1 percent of the Palestinian Territories’ population. With the exception of Israel, the long-term trend for Christians in the wider region, including in West Bank and Gaza, has been demographic decline, as disproportionate numbers of Christians have been emigrating to the West. For example, in 1952 the percentage of Christians in Jordan (including the West Bank) was 18 percent; today the figure is around only 2–3 percent.[5] In Iraq, the population of Christians has plummeted since the 2003 invasion, falling from 1.5 million to fewer than 150,000 today.[6] In contrast, the number of Christians in Israel grew from around 34,000 after the 1948 war to around 185,000 in 2022, which was 1.9 percent of Israel’s population.[7]
What is Christian Liberation Theology?
Naim Ateek.
(Igo Corbière via Wikimedia)
Liberation Theology developed first in Latin America within Catholicism. A landmark in the founding of the movement was the publication of A Theology of Liberation by Gustavo Gutiérrez in 1971.[8] Liberation Theology teaches that Christians are obligated to seek justice for the poor and oppressed. Drawing on Marxist ideas of class struggle, it interprets the Bible’s message of freedom in earthly, political terms. It tends to see sin in terms of unjust political structures rather than individual personal morality.[9]
A seminal figure in the Palestine Liberation Theology movement is Naim Ateek, an Israeli citizen, Anglican priest, and founder of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem.
The World According to Kairos II
Kairos II professes no love for Jews or Israel. It portrays Israel as a racist state, accusing it of settler colonialism, apartheid, forced displacement, annexation, ethnic cleansing, and, above all, genocide.[10] It is convinced that Zionist Israel’s plan for Palestinians is “displacement, death or submission.” (1.3)[11] Israel is claimed to have “the deliberate policy of killing any possibility of a political solution.” (1.3) In the same breath, Kairos II presents Jews as arrogant supremacists. (1.3) Israel is dismissed as an imperialist project “built on racism and the ideology of ethnic or religious superiority”, which is claimed to be a continuation of the evil mindset of European imperialism. (3.3)
Kairos II defends the attacks of October 7, 2023 as “born out of decades of injustice, oppression and displacement” (1.6). It insists that a “people under occupation” have a right to “resist their occupier and oppressor” (1.6), saying, “… we reaffirm the right of all colonized peoples to resist their colonizers.” (2.4)
Kairos II rejects the idea that Israel has any right to defend itself. The very concept of self-defense cannot apply: “The claim of ‘self-defense’ cannot stand. How can a colonizer defend itself against those it has colonized and expelled from their land?” (1.6) To describe this as a “conflict” between two parties is also rejected out of hand. The “reality on the ground” is tyranny and oppression of Palestinians by Israel. (1.22)
Kairos II is written as if the Jews’ link to the Holy Land began with Zionism. It rejects any indigenous status in Palestine for Jews. This is nowhere stated explicitly, but everywhere implied. It is entailed, for example, by the accusation of “settler colonialism”. (1.7) It is implied when Kairos II describes Israel not as a nation with citizens but as an “exclusionary entity built upon the displacement of the indigenous population and its replacement with new settlers” (1.22). It is also implied when Palestinian Christians are asserted to be “descendants of the apostles and the saints”, seemingly forgetting that Jesus and his twelve apostles were all Jews:
(2.10) In addressing ourselves, we say: We are the sons and daughters of the first Church—descendants of the apostles and the saints of the first Christian centuries—those who cultivated this land, built its cities and villages and drank from its waters. We do not live on the margins of this land. We are woven into its fabric. We carry its history and heritage. Its very soil knows us as its own. [emphasis original]
It is a ground rule of Kairos II never to concede that Jews have any inheritance in the Middle East. They are always to be portrayed as alien interlopers, their presence in the Middle East a legacy of a European imperial project. Thus there is no acknowledgment that almost half of the Jews in Israel are descended from Jews expelled from Islamic nations across the Middle East who, when they fled their ancient homelands, were afforded no right of return.
Kairos II does not allow the war in Gaza to be understood as a response to the massacres, rapes and taking of captives on October 7, 2023. On the contrary, we are told that the Gaza war was driven by Israel’s greed: “We see deep economic dimensions behind Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.” (1.7) It is asserted that Israel wants to control Gaza in order to gain “control over one of the world’s most vital trade routes and energy supply corridors, enabling vast economic and commercial projects.”
Kairos II also blames “aggressive, bullying” Israel for religious extremism and terrorism springing up across the Middle East (1.20), implying that the sufferings of Christian minorities in other nations are the result of Israel’s aggressive pursuit of “military dominance over the entire area”, “pushing the region and indeed the world to the brink of catastrophe”. (1.19)
Kairos II also sternly rebukes attempts to normalize relations between Israel and Arab states through the Abraham Accords. (1.21)
Kairos II’s Utopian Vision of the Future
What solution does Kairos II offer to the crisis it describes? It calls for “dismantling oppressive, racist systems”—in other words, dismantling Israel as “settler colonialism and the apartheid system built on Jewish supremacy”. (4.2) This is to be achieved by “isolating Israel through boycotts and sanctions until it complies with international law”. (2.5) Churches of the world are urged to “pressure their governments to isolate Israel, hold it accountable, impose sanctions, boycott it, and to ban the export of arms until it complies with international law, ends oppression and tyranny, and adheres to the principles of justice and peace.” (3.10) This will include restoration of the Palestinians’ right of return. It is claimed that only this path can ensure Palestinian rights to self-determination. All this will usher in a “new horizon” in which everyone who lives in Palestine will enjoy “justice, equality and equal rights, free of supremacy and domination.” (2.1)
In Kairos II’s utopian vision for the future, Palestine will not have a religious character. (4.4) It will be a pluralistic, democratic state in which everyone will be equal before the law.[12]
What to Make of All This?
The full meaning of this manifesto can only be grasped when the elephant in the room, Islam, is named and its ways rightly understood.
First, it must be emphasized that nothing said here in criticism of the Kairos II manifesto is meant to deny the reality of Palestinian suffering. The Kairos II document is right to insist that all people have a responsibility to oppose falsehood and call out injustice.
It is also important to emphasize that I am not seeking to answer the grave accusations against Israel of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, or genocide. [13] Important as those claims are, they are not in focus here. I am also not attempting to fact-check Kairos II.
Our focus here is on systemic features of the Kairos II document that have the potential to deceive the churches of the world. A number of these features take the form of “silences”, things left unsaid. These silences are symptoms of a captured testimony. They conceal drivers of the conflict that should be acknowledged but have been suppressed.
Black-and-White Morality
One key feature of Kairos II is its black-and-white morality, in which one side is presented as vulnerable, righteous, weak, and victimized, and the other side as overbearing, cruel, arrogant, and oppressive. This manifesto implies that only if Israel is destroyed can the lives of Palestinian Christians get better. Consequently, it is one of the Kairos II project’s ground rules never to concede victimhood or any right of self-defense to Israel. This is why the war in Gaza between Hamas and Israel is not allowed to be described as a “conflict”: it can only be spoken of as a genocidal assault by Israel on an innocent, suffering victim people. Not a drop of sympathy is to be wasted on Jewish victims.
Likewise, in a stunning example of misdirection, the well-known failings of the corrupt Palestinian Authority and the harm resulting from these failings are blamed on Israel. (1.14–15)
Reinforcing Kairos II’s black-and-white morality is the absence of even a glimmer of a concession that Hamas bears any responsibility for the war in Gaza. This is despite the fact that if Hamas had not attacked Israel on October 7, the war would not have happened, the tens of thousands who have died in the conflict would still be alive today, and so much Gazan infrastructure would not have been destroyed. It is also in spite of the fact that Hamas’ own officials have acknowledged responsibility for the war. In an interview with The New York Times, the head of Hamas’ foreign relations office Moussa Abu Marzou said he would not have supported the October 7 invasion ifhe had known what the consequences would be for the Gaza strip.[14]
This war happened at a time of Hamas’s own choosing, after long and costly preparations. Yet its tunnels were not defensive: they contained no bomb shelters for civilians. They were built to support Hamas’s plan to wage war against Israel in Gaza itself, and in a way that did not minimize Gazan civilian casualties. Hamas manifestly did not launch this war for the benefit of Palestinians, but for their harm. It did this in its own interests, not in the interests of the people of Gaza. If speaking truth to power (1.23, 3.6) means anything at all, it ought to include calling out Hamas for what it has done to the people of Gaza.
One of the casualties of this black-and-white morality is that Kairos II allows no acknowledgment that violent Arab opposition to the formation of a Jewish state and then to Israel has had a profound influence on shaping Israel and its policies.[15]
Never Speak of Christian Grievances Against Muslims
Another ground rule of Kairos II is never to speak of Christian Palestinians’ legitimate grievances against their Muslim Arab neighbors. These grievances are serious, including religious and legal discrimination, harassment, expropriation of land and buildings, attacks on and desecration of Christian places of worship, Islamization of Christian towns (for example, Bethlehem), abductions, rapes, forced marriages, and forced conversions.[16] Examples of harassment and intimidation include the repeated chanting during anti-Israel rallies of “First the Saturday people [Jews], then the Sunday people [Christians]”,[17] and vandalizing of Christian cemeteries.
The silences [of Kairos II] are symptoms of a captured testimony.
Although many such incidents go unreported due to fear, Archbishop Alexios of the Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza warned in 2016 that forced conversions of Christians to Islam had been taking place in Gaza. Christians who have converted from Islam are especially at risk: some have been murdered. There have also been other killings: for example, Rami Ayyad, a Palestinian Christian leader in Gaza, was abducted on October 6, 2007 and found dead the next day. Ayyad was the director of the Protestant Holy Bible Society; some months previous to his murder, the office of the Holy Bible Society in Gaza had been bombed.
Justus Reid Weiner, in his investigation of the deteriorating human rights situation of Christians living under the Palestinian Authority, pointed out that there is a widespread distrust of religious leaders among Palestinian Christians. These leaders “obfuscate the situation as it affects their constituents”.[18] One Christian man said, “Our leaders are liars: They tell the newspapers that everything is OK. But when Christians go to the market, they’re afraid to wear crosses.”[19]
Weiner identified the two main reasons for the denial:
- Fear and intimidation—one Palestinian woman said, “We are afraid. They [Muslims] have knives [and] guns and can do whatever they want. They can kill you simply … [for] speaking bad about them.”[20]
- Identification with the abuser—one Christian cleric “compared the behavior of Christian dhimmis to that of battered wives and children, who continue to defend and even identify with their tormentor even as the abuse persists.”[21]
Weiner describes a vicious cycle in which Christians, eager to placate Muslims and afraid of what will happen if they do not, identify strongly with Arab nationalistic aspirations, including the anti-Israel rhetoric. This leads them to deny or conceal that Christians are persecuted by Muslims.
An example of denial was the urging of Father Labib Kobtl, a Latin Catholic priest, to "… refuse … the propaganda that wants to prove that there were any studied or willed persecution from our Muslim brothers and sisters of the Christians. We consider it as a mere propaganda against Islam, a cold war against our Muslim brothers that only benefits the Zionists of Israel.”[22]
The Muslim Palestinian writer ‘Abd al-Nasser al-Najjar, lamenting confiscations of Christian lands by Muslims in Bethlehem and elsewhere, reported that Christians were “suffering in silence so as not to attract attention”, and that when they did attempt to take steps to retrieve their property, they could be subjected to death threats.[23]
The silence of Christians in the face of Muslim oppression and intimidation was analyzed by the historian Bat Ye’or as due to the imposition of the dhimma, which is the institution in Islamic law by which Christians were permitted to remain in territories conquered and colonized by Muslims, provided they rendered loyal service to Islam and Muslims:
The concealment of the dhimmis’ history arises from the silence imposed on them and the ban on any criticism. … In the dominating group, this refusal of testimony by the suppression of speech—the distinctive sign of humanity—reflects a denial of rights. This mutilated speech, this rejected testimony, is transposed from the individual to the group and is perpetuated in time. History being also the testimony of a people and the foundation of its rights, the effacement of the past abolishes its rights.[24]
This silencing has meant that Palestinian Christians are also inhibited from expressing solidarity with fellow believers who suffer under Islamic dominance, including converts from Islam, while blaming Israel for their suffering.
It is deeply ironic that Kairos II condemns those who do not speak out against “genocide” because “they judge one side and excuse the other or simply remain silent” (1.5), because “excusing” and “remaining silent” are attributes of Kairos II.
Steven Khoury.
(The Isaiah Projects via Wikimedia)
The silences that hem in and cripple the Kairos II statement are understandable as a defensive strategy. Palestinian Christians in the West Bank who side with Israel put their lives at risk. Pastor Steven Khoury is a Christian Zionist Baptist pastor active in the West Bank. Tristan Sturm and Seth Frantzman, who interviewed Khoury, reported that he and his more than 400 congregants “live under constant physical threat: his church has been bombed 14 times and in 2001 he was shot in the arm in Bethlehem, narrowly escaping with his life”.[25]
It has long been the case that for Arabs, to support peaceful coexistence with Israel can put one’s life at risk. Famous victims of anti-Israel hostility were King Abdullah I of Jordan in 1951 and President Anwar Sadat of Egypt in 1981, both assassinated because of their openness to making peace with Israel. During the Mandate period, many Arabs who favored coexistence and friendly relations with Jews were harassed and lost their livelihoods. Treated as apostates from Islam, some became assassination targets for militants aligned with Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.[26]
Fantastic, Emotive Hyperbole
Another characteristic of Kairos II is a tendency towards fantastic, emotive hyperbole, aligned with its black-and-white morality. An example is the claim that the Gazan war was waged by Israel to gain access to “vast economic and commercial projects”. (1.7)
Another example of fantastic hyperbole is the implication that Israel is the root cause of the oppression of Christians across the whole of the Middle East (1.19–20). This is a delusion. The discriminatory ill-treatment of Christians at the hands of Muslims extends to the whole world, not just the Middle East. It applies, for example, in Brunei, Pakistan, the Maldives, Mauritania, and the north of Nigeria. In Open Doors’ World Watch List of the 50 most dangerous countries for Christians to live in today, Muslim contexts account for around 75 percent of listed countries, and around 70 percent of Muslim countries are on that list.
Palestinian Christians are a tiny, shrinking, captive minority, caught between resurgent militant Islam and the Israel–Palestinian conflict. The Kairos II authors blame Israel for every injustice that Christians experience, even those for which Muslims are responsible, and even all across the Middle East. This is necessary in order to sustain their black-and-white morality: if Hamas were to be blamed, at least in part, for all the slaughter in Gaza, then Kairos II would be rendered incoherent.
Islamic Character
Another feature of Kairos II is the Islamic character of the way some of its concerns are prosecuted. An example is its reference to Palestinian casualties of the war in Gaza as “martyrs”. This is a Quranic, Islamic perspective, not a Biblical, Christian one. In Christian tradition, someone is a martyr if they are killed for their Christian witness, for refusing to deny Christ. However, in Islamic tradition, a martyr (shahīd) is someone killed in a war with infidels. When Kairos II refers to “hundreds of thousands of martyrs and wounded” in Gaza, it is referring overwhelmingly to Muslim casualties, and applying an Islamic theological grid to the conflict.
Another Islamized characteristic of Kairos II is the privileging of Muslim victimhood: Kairos II dismisses Israeli victimhood while insisting that Muslim Arab violence is legitimate “resistance”. This aligns with the Quranic justification for violence against non-Muslims, when it teaches that “persecution is worse than slaughter” (Sura 2:191; 2:217), and with its command to “fight [i.e. to kill] them [non-Muslims] until there is no more persecution” (Sura 2:193; 8:39). This Quranic perspective treats killing of non-Muslims as legitimate when Muslims are or could be ill-treated. Moreover, Islamic theology treats the kuffar (non-Muslims) as inherently guilty by virtue of their disbelief in Islam.
This privileging of Muslim victimhood found expression in a 2005 debate on Al-Jazeera TV between former Muslim Wafa Sultan and Algerian Professor Ahmad bin Muhammad. At one point, Professor Ahmad began to shout, “We are the victims … I am not saying that killing innocent people is nice. I say that all innocent people should be protected. But at the same time, we must start with the innocent among the Muslims. There are millions of innocent people among us, while the innocent among you—and innocent they are—number only dozens, hundreds, or thousands, at the most …"[27]
Another aspect of Kairos II that aligns with Islamic perspectives is when Israel is spoken of as an “entity”, rejecting its legitimacy as a nation. This aligns with Muslim Palestinian claims that any land once conquered by force by Muslims forever belongs to Muslims.[28] By this logic a Jewish state in the Levant could never be granted legitimacy. Thus Israel is to be spoken of as an “entity”, not a nation.
The Elephant in the Room
In addition to all this, an essential key to understanding Kairos II is to recognize Islam as the elephant in the room, ever-present, controlling much of what is happening, but never to be acknowledged or held accountable. This suppression of truth causes distortions and omissions throughout the Kairos II manifesto.
An example of a minor omission is this romantic claim about Christian Palestinian history:Many empires have passed over this land and disappeared, buried in the dust of history, yet the bells of our churches continue to ring—bearing witness to the truth and proclaiming resurrection every day. (2.10)
The Reality of Islamic Antisemitism
More significant is that Kairos II makes no acknowledgment of the gross antisemitism that is hardwired into the primary canonical Islamic sources: the Qur’an, the hadiths, and the biographies of Muhammad.[30] Islamic enmity to the Jews predates the founding of the state of Israel by more than a thousand years.
Many sermons preached in mosques to this day keep this ancient enmity alive, citing the Qur’an to support it. This enmity continues to fuel the jihad against Israel.
In this conflict, it is not just that Palestinian grievances have caused enmity to and conflict with Israel, as Naim Ateek assumed, when he supposed that suicide bombing can only be explained by “the deep misery and torment of many Palestinians. For how else can one explain it? When healthy, beautiful, and intelligent young men and women set out to kill and be killed.”[31]
The opposite is also true: that pre-existing, ancient Islamic enmity to the Jews can fuel grievances.[32] Kairos II conceals this fundamental truth.
Here are just a few of the many Quranic verses which promote theologically driven enmity:
- Qur’an 5:64 states that the Jews are cursed, and Allah has “cast enmity and hatred among the Jews until Resurrection Day”, and “whenever they light the fire of war, Allah extinguishes it, but they strive to spread wickedness on the earth.”
- Qur’an 5:82 states that Jews have the “most vehement enmity” to Muslims.
- •Qur’an 7:167 declares that Allah will raise up those who will “inflict evil punishment” upon the Jews until Resurrection Day. It is in accord with this that the Hamas leader Khaled Mash’al declared, “Before Israel dies, it must be humiliated and degraded. Allah willing, before they die, they will experience humiliation and degradation every day.”[33]
- The first Surah, Al-Fatihah, includes a prayer for the Muslim not to be like those under God’s wrath, whom Muhammad identified as the Jews.[34]
- Muhammad commanded his followers in Medina to “kill any Jew who falls into your power.”[35]
- A hadith of Muhammad states that Muslims will fight the Jews and the trees will cry out, “There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.”[36]
Islam Must Rule; It Is Not to Be Ruled
Furthermore, Islamic law demands that in an Islamic state, both Jews and Christians should be subservient to Islamic dominance. Already in the 1930s, Muslim Palestinians made clear that Jews could exist in the land as a minority, but never as a majority.[37] Many Muslim groups have insisted, on Islamic grounds, that the whole of the land of Israel should be turned over not to a secular state but to Muslim rule.[38]
It is striking that the Kairos II document, which is dedicated to the dismantling of Israel, makes no acknowledgment of the Islamic jihad, even though this dogma has been the central theme of so many Muslim Arab speeches denouncing Israel. Some Palestinian leaders have routinely declared that victory over Israel can be achieved only through jihad, a doctrine that was included in the 1988 Hamas Covenant.[39]
Kairos II also turns a blind eye to the reality of the global Islamic awakening. During the past two centuries, movements have arisen across the Islamic world that have been dedicated to reviving the glory and power of Islam through means that include jihad. Jihadi movements continue to be active across Africa, Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the West. There is no attempt in Kairos II to consider how the Arab jihad against Israel has much in common with all the many other ongoing global jihadi movements, far removed from the Israel–Palestinian conflict.
It is also an act of concealment, in a document that describes itself as dedicated to truth, not to mention actual religiously driven genocides of Christians in the Middle East, including the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek genocides in which more than two million Christians were killed by Muslims. Nor does Kairos II mention the many attacks since 2003 on Christians in Syria and Iraq by Muslim combatants, which have driven a dramatic decline in Christian populations. This happened despite the Christians in Syria and Iraq having embraced the pan-Arab movement.
Israel is the only country in the Middle East where traditional Christian communities are growing.[40]
A Forlorn Hope
Perhaps the greatest Islam-related blind spot in Kairos II is its forlorn hope that a democratic, pluralistic nation will emerge in Palestine. This hope is embraced and promoted despite the fact that all the jihadi groups committed to armed struggle to destroy Israel have insisted again and again that their goal is to restore Islamic rule over Jerusalem and Palestine. The hope for a secular state is also given the lie by the fact that Islam is the official religion of the Palestinian Authority. Furthermore, Palestinian Basic Law, established in 2002, enshrines the Islamic sharia as its main source of legislation (Article 4). The draft Palestinian Constitution makes the same commitment. In light of this feature of the Basic Law, it bodes badly for Palestinian Christians that the dhimma is part of the sharia.
The question must be asked: Once they have managed to dismantle Israel, how do the Palestinian Christian authors of Kairos II propose to defeat heavily armed Islamic factions such as Hamas and Hezbollah and their patrons, who include Qatar, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Iran? After the October 7 massacres, the senior Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad declared that Arabs would repeat October 7 again and again until Israel is no more.[41] How do the authors of the Kairos II manifesto propose to prevent these promised massacres?
In reality, it is highly improbable that the dismantling of Israel could ever result in the emergence of the democratic, pluralistic, secular state that the Kairos II authors long for. Where in the Middle East has it happened that such a nation has been created with a Muslim majority? In every Middle East country except Israel, the long-term trend over the past century has been to revive Islamic consciousness and restore the will to Islamic political dominance, guided by the sharia. This has served to establish authoritarian rule. This is also the track record in the Palestinian Territories: the human rights situation for Christians worsened after the Palestinian Authority took over security in 1995 and Hamas took power in Gaza in 2007.
Pan-Arabism and the Veneration of Islam
In the late nineteenth century, it was Arabic-speaking Christians, who had suffered for centuries as dhimmis under Islamic rule, who led proposals for a pan-Arab movement. It was thought that this would allow them to share an identity with Muslim Arabs as one people. Today Kairos II continues to cling to this hope.
This inclusive shared Arab identity had previously not existed because of the Islamic dhimma system, which was designed to maintain the separate, stigmatized, and inferior status of Christian and Jewish populations under Islamic rule and forced Christians and Jews to seek refuge in segregation.
In fact, the conditions of the dhimma were crafted to enforce separation. For example, Christians and Jews were required to wear distinctive clothing so they could be instantly recognized as non-Muslims. A hadith of Muhammad states that “whoever imitates a people, he is one of them”.[42] Based on this and other hadiths and Quranic verses, the sharia prohibited Muslims from looking like non-Muslims: they should maintain distinctness in appearance and manners.[43] For their part, dhimmis responded with a mimetic tendency, a preference to be indistinguishable from Muslims.[44]
By the nineteenth century, dhimma conditions were being relaxed under pressure from the European Great Powers. In this changing environment, the pan-Arab movement appeared to offer what Daphne Tsimhoni has described as “a middle way between assimilation within the Muslim majority [i.e. conversion to Islam] and segregation”.[45] However, in seeking out this middle way, a price the Christian pan-Arabists had to pay was the adoption of positive regard towards Muslims and Islam:
Traumatized by [the Armenian and Assyrian massacres], the Syrian Christians committed themselves totally to the doctrine of Arab nationalism. The most intransigent exponents of a Muslim–Christian brotherhood, they dedicated themselves to extolling at both a political and a literary level the greatness and tolerance of Islamic civilization.[46]
In 1993, Tsimhoni warned that the call by Christian Arab leaders to "… venerate the rule of Islam because it creates national unity ignores the heavy price Christians would pay in living under such a regime. It indicates an acquiescence to an inferior position as a religious minority and the abandonment of the Christian dream of a liberal, secular society that would accept them as equals.”[47]
Even as the pan-Arab project was getting underway in the late nineteenth century, the dhimma system, a “colonial settler project” par excellence, was driving the early twentieth century genocides of Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek Christians in their ancestral lands. It is the present-day Islamist revival of the dhimma, with its enforced dominance of Muslims over non-Muslims, that Kairos II’s project to dismantle Israel, if successful, would give way to. In effect, the authors of this document are unwittingly inviting the churches of the world to assist in reviving the dhimma.
The Dhimma’s Return
The plan of some Muslims to re-implement the dhimma over the heads of Christians and Jews is not a secret. It has been declared openly for many years. Here are some examples.
In 2001, Palestinian Sheikh Muhammad Ibrahim al-Madhi stated in a sermon broadcast on Palestinian Authority Television from Gaza that Jews are welcome in Palestine as long as they accept dhimmi status: “We welcome the Jews to live as dhimmis, but the rule in this land and in all the Muslim countries must be the rule of Allah.”[48]
In 2005, Hassan El-Masalmeh, leader of Hamas’s representatives on the municipal council of Bethlehem, announced Hamas’s intention to reinstate jizya tribute payments, a key condition of the dhimma. Non-Muslims would be “welcome”, he said, to live as dhimmis in Palestine, if they submitted to sharia law: “We in Hamas intend to implement this tax [i.e. the jizya] someday. We say it openly—we welcome everyone to Palestine but only if they agree to live under our rules.”[49]
In another example, on April 25, 2019, Christian residents of the village of Jifna near Ramallah asked the Palestinian Authority for protection when they were being attacked by armed Muslim rioters with guns and petrol bombs. The violence reportedly happened after a woman in the village complained to the Palestinian Authority police about an attack by a Fatah-affiliated man. The rioters, while firing bullets in the air, called upon the Christian residents to pay jizya.[50]
An intention to bring back the dhimma has been announced by Muslim supporters of the Palestinian cause around the world. For example, on July 24, 2025, the influential British Islamic scholar Sheikh Asrar Rashid asserted in a Workshop on Palestine for Muslim activists that Jews must leave Palestine or remain as ahl al-jizya ‘people of the jizya’—that is, they must submit to a dhimma pact.[51]
Plans to bring back the dhimma do not stop with Israel. The Egyptian scholar Sayyid Qutb, in his widely influential commentary In the Shade of the Qur’an, called for the dhimma to be applied universally on the grounds that only under the conditions of the dhimma would non-Muslims agree to provide no obstacles to Islam’s spread: “When this happens [i.e. the dhimma is imposed] the process of liberating mankind is completed by giving every individual the freedom of choice based on conviction.”[52]
In 2002, the influential Saudi cleric, Sheikh Muhammad bin ‘Abd al-Rahman al-‘Arifi, who was at the time Imam of the King Fahd Defense Academy, declared: “We will control the land of the Vatican; we will control Rome and introduce Islam in it. Yes, the Christians … will yet pay us the jizya in humiliation, or they will convert to Islam.”[53]
According to Islamic tradition, the Christians of Greater Syria, which included Palestine, surrendered to Islamic rule by agreeing to the Pact of Umar, which specified the terms of their surrender. In this pact, Christians agreed to serve the cause of jihad and Islamic dominance. They would house Muslims when asked. They promised never to betray Muslims. They promised never to imitate Muslims in their dress or appearance, but always to keep themselves visually distinct. They agreed to pay a crippling annual tribute. The obligation to provide all this faithful service was only lifted off the necks of Middle Eastern Christians when the European powers intervened in the Middle East, exerting political pressure on the Ottomans for reform.
The grim alternative to servile submission for Christians is spelled out in the Pact of Umar. In it, the Christians of Syria agreed that if they ever breached any of the conditions of their pact of surrender, breaking their pledge of loyalty, then the jihad against them would restart: “
These are the conditions that we set against ourselves and followers of our religion in return for safety and protection. If we break any of these promises that we set for your benefit against ourselves, then our dhimma is broken and you are allowed to do with us what you are allowed of people of defiance and rebellion.”[54] In keeping with the sharia rules of war, for the Christians this would mean looting of possessions, rape, enslavement, and death.
It is the dhimma system that explains so much about the Kairos II document, especially its silences. Seen in the light of the dhimma, Kairos II launches Palestinian Christians along a path that could only end in subjugation to a form of Islamic rule if the manifesto’s project were to succeed.
Conclusion
The Kairos II manifesto is designed to gain traction among Western Christians. It uses categories such as anti-colonialism, anti-racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and Western guilt, which Western liberal Protestants are familiar with and are inclined to embrace. At the same time, it conceals through silence the subordinate, marginal, and threatened position of Arab Christians under Muslim dominance and the abuses they currently experience at the hands of their overwhelmingly more numerous Muslim neighbors. This plays into the hands of those Muslims who seek to return Jews to the oppressed condition, subject to the culture of dhimmitude, that many Arab Christians are already forced to endure.
However diligently Kairos II labors to conceal the Islamic elephant in the room, the “moment of truth” is that this manifesto is an epic effort of misdirection. Yes, Palestinian Christians must be viewed with compassion. Such compassion needs to be informed by the reality that Arab Christians are a captive indigenous people, under pressure from radical Islam and reduced to tiny remnants in ancestral lands where they were once the majority. Today, after centuries of Islamization, they find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place, under pressure from Islam and the war between Israel and its enemies. What Western churches need to understand when presented with the claims of Kairos II is that the full meaning of this manifesto can only be grasped when the elephant in the room, Islam, is named and its ways rightly understood.
End Notes
[1] The Palestinian Christian Ecumenical Initiative, A Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide (Kairos Palestine, 2025).
[2] Previous works that share some of the presuppositions of Kairos II have included: Jean Corbon et al., “What is Required of the Christian Faith Concerning the Palestine Problem: A Memorandum By a Group of Middle Easern Theologians” in Christians, Zionism and Palestine: A Selection of Articles and Statements on the Religious and Political Aspects of the Palestine Problem (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1970); Naim S. Ateek, Justice, and Only Justice: A Palestinian Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1989); Naim S. Ateek, Marc H. Ellis, and Rosemary Radford Ruether, eds., Faith and the Intifada: Palestinian Christian Voices (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1992); Naim S. Ateek, “Suicide Bombers: What is Theologically and Morally Wrong with Suicide Bombings?: A Palestinian Christian Perspective” Cornerstone 25, (2002): 2–18, https://sabeel.org/library/issue-25-summer-2002-suicide-bombings/. See also Dexter Van Zile, Updating the Ancient Infrastructure of Christian Contempt: Sabeel (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, 2012).
[3] The Palestinian Christian Ecumenical Initiative, A Moment of Truth: A Word of Faith, Hope, and Love from the Heart of Palestinian Suffering (Kairos Palestine, 2009).
[4] Report to the League of Nations on Palestine and Transjordan (British Government, 1937); Jerusalem Post Staff, “Christian Population Declined 90% Under Palestinian Authority and Hamas” The Jerusalem Post, 2024, https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-834585.
[5] Catholic Near East Welfare Association, Christian Emigration Report: Jordan (Catholic Near East Welfare Association, 2002); US Department of State, Report on International Religious Freedom: Jordan (US Department of State, 2022).
[6] U.S. Department of State, Report on International Religious Freedom: Iraq (US Department of State, 2022).
[7] U.S. Department of State, Report on International Religious Freedom: Israel, West Bank and Gaza (US Department of State, 2022).
[8] Gustavo Gutiérrez, Teología De La Liberación: Perspectivas (Centro de Estudios y Publicaciones, 1971).
[9] The Vatican’s two official responses to Liberation Theology are: The Vatican, Libertatis Nuntius: Instruction on Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of Liberation’ (The Vatican, 1984); The Vatican, Libertatits Conscientia: Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation (The Vatican, 1986).
[10] The use of the term “genocide” is problematic. Certainly there is no equivalence with events like the Holocaust and the Armenian/Assyrian/Greek genocide. For an investigation into claimed evidence of genocide, see Danny Orbach et al., Debunking the Genocide Allegations: A Reexamination of the Israel-Hamas War from October 7, 2023 to June 1, 2025 (Ramat Gan: The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, 2025).
[11] References in parentheses are to paragraph numbers in the Kairos II document.
[12] Naim Ateek, trusting in an evolved democracy, criticized Zionists for pursuing self-determination instead of trusting in Europe: “Democracy was the right answer to the problem, a true democracy with equality for all. They did not anticipate the day when Europe would have democratic systems of government that attract many people to its shores as we see happening today. The Zionists could not foresee this.” Naim S. Ateek, “The Zionist Ideology of Domination Versus the Reign of God: The Ultimate Triumph of Justice and Love” Sermon delivered at Notre Dame, Jerusalem: 2001, https://web.archive.org/web/20071028165435/http:/www.sabeel.org/old/conf2001/ateek.htm.
[13] For corrections of factual errors in Kairos II see Ian Paul, “A Cry and a Curriculum: Reading Kairos II Before Using It” Psephizo, 2026, https://www.psephizo.com/life-ministry/a-cry-and-a-curriculum-reading-kairos-ii-before-using-it/.
[14] Rasgon, Adam, “Hamas Official Expresses Reservations About Oct. 7 Attack on Israel” The New York Times, 24 February 2025.
[15] Emblematic of this opposition was the alliance of former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini with the Nazi war effort.
[16] Jerusalem Post Staff, “Christian Population Declined 90% Under Palestinian Authority and Hamas”; Saud Abu Ramadan, “Christians Face Insecurity in Gaza Strip” The Arab Weekly, 1 April 2016, https://thearabweekly.com/christians-face-insecurity-gaza-strip; Justus Reid Weiner, “Palestinian Christians: Silent Victims of a Zero-Sum Game?” Mediterranean Journal of Human Rights 8, no. 2 (2004): 383–425.
[17] David Raab, “The Beleaguered Christians of the Palestinian-Controlled Areas” Jerusalem Viewpoints 490, January 2003.
[18] Justus Reid Weiner, Human Rights of Christians in Palestinian Society (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2005), 22.
[19] Ibid., 23.
[20] Ibid.
[21] David Raab, “The Beleaguered Christians of the Palestinian-Controlled Areas”.
[22] Weiner, Human Rights of Christians in Palestinian Society, 24.
[23] ‘Abd al-Nasser al-Najjar, “Palestinian Columnist: Muslims Are Harming Christian Culture” MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 2112, 12 November 2008, excerpted from Al-Ayyam (Palestinian Authority) 25 October 2008, https://web.archive.org/web/20170526075249/, https://www.memri.org/reports/palestinian-columnist-muslims-are-harming-christian-culture.
[24] Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude, Seventh–Twentieth Century (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press & Associated University Presses, 1996), 240.
[25] Tristan Sturm and Seth Frantzman, “Religious Geopolitics of Palestinian Christianity: Palestinian Christian Zionists, Palestinian Liberation Theologists, and American Missions to Palestine” Middle Eastern Studies 51, no. 3 (2015), https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2014.971768, 441.
[26] Hillel Cohen, Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008), 43–65.
[27] Wafa Sultan and Ahmad Bin Muhammad, “La Psychologist Wafa Sultan Clashes with Algerian Islamist Ahmad Bin Muhammad Over Islamic Teachings and Terrorism” MEMRI, 2005, excerpted from Al-Jazeera TV, 26 July 2005, https://web.archive.org/web/20071014114553/, http://memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/783.htm.
[28] Hamas Covenant: The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (1988), Article 11.
[29] Adam Dodds and Emma Austin, “Church Bells, Dhimmitude, and the Politics of Religious Sound” Evangelical Quarterly 97, no. 2 (2026): 95–122, https://dx.doi.org/10.1163/27725472-09702001.
[30] For studies of antisemitic passages in the Islamic canon see Andrew G. Bostom, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2008); Sam Solomon and Elias Al -Maqdisi, Al-Yahud: Islamic Enmity and the Jews (London: Pilcrow, 2010); D. L. Green, ed., Arab Theologians on Jews and Israel: Extracts from the Proceedings of the Fourth Conference of the Academy of Islamic Research (Geneva: Editions de l’Avenir, 2011); Mark Durie, “Islamic Antisemitism Drives the Arab-Israeli Conflict” Middle East Quarterly 29, no. 3, 2022; Andrew G. Bostom, ed., A Modern Qur’anic Kampf Against the Jews: An English Translation of Late Al-Azhar University Grand Imam Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi’s Banū Isrā’īl fī al-Qur’ān wa-al-Sunnah “The Children of Israel in the Qur’an and Traditions”, 2026).
[31] Naim Ateek, “Suicide bombers”, 1. In fact, to seek martyrdom by attacking an infidel, expecting to be killed is a meritorious act praised by medieval Islamic jurisprudents.
[32] Mark Durie, “Islamic Antisemitism Drives the Arab-Israeli Conflict”.
[33] Richard Landes, “Why the Arab World Is Lost in an Emotional Nakba, and How We Keep It There” Tablet 24 June 2014. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/emotional-nakba.
[34] Ibn Kathir in his Quranic commentary cited the hadith: “Imam Ahmad recorded that ‘Adi bin Ḥātim said, … he [Muhammad] said ‘Those who have earned the anger are the Jews and those who are led astray are the Christians.’” Ibn Kathir, Tafsir Ibn Kathir (Abridged) (Riyadh: Darussalam, 2003), 87–88.
[35] Alfred Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah (Karachi & Oxford: OUP, 1955), 369.
[36] Al-Bukhari, The Translation of the Meanings of Sahih Al-Bukhari (Riyadh: Darussalam, 1997), vol. 4:110, hadith no. 175.
[37] Robert Gale Woolbert, “Pan Arabism and the Palestinian Problem” Foreign Affairs 16, no. 2, 1938, 311.
[38] See, for example, Article 11, Hamas Covenant.
[39] Article 13, Ibid.
[40] Christians are growing in number in Iran by conversion from Islam.
[41] Ghazi Hamad, “Hamas Official Ghazi Hamad: We Will Repeat the October 7 Attack Time and Again Until Israel is Annihilated” MEMRI, 1 November 2023, excerpted from LBC TV (Lebanon) 24 October 2023.
[42] Abu Dawud, Sunan Abu Dawud (Riyadh: Darussalam, 2008), vol. 4, Hadith 4031.
[43] Islamqa, “Why Does Islam Forbid Muslims to Imitate Disbelievers”, 2015. https://islamqa.info/en/answers/121554/why-does-islam-forbid-muslims-to-imitate-disbelievers.
[44] Mark Durie, The Third Choice: Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom (Melbourne: Deror Books, 2010), 181, 201.
[45] Daphne Tsimhoni, Christian Communities in Jerusalem and the West Bank Since 1948: An Historical, Social and Political Study (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993), 191.
[46] Bat Ye’or, Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press & Associated University Presses, 2002), 159.
[47] Tsimhoni, Christian Communities in Jerusalem and the West Bank, 192.
[48] Muhammad Ibrahim al-Mahdi, “A Friday Sermon on PA TV: … We Must Educate our Children on the Love of jihad….” MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 240, 13 July 2001, excerpted from PA TV, 6 June, 2001, https://www.memri.org/reports/friday-sermon-pa-tv-%E2%80%A6-we-must-educate-our-children-love-jihad%E2%80%A6.
[49] Karby Leggett, “Bethlehem Mayor Courts Hamas, Stirring Up Region” The Wall Street Journal, December 23, 2005, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB113530381960630149.
[50] The Jerusalem Post reported that “Fatah regularly exerts heavy pressure on Christians not to report the acts of violence and vandalism from which they frequently suffer, as such publicity could damage the PA’s image as an actor capable of protecting the lives and property of the Christian minority under its rule.” Edy Cohen, “The Persecution of Christians in the PA” The Jerusalem Post, 2 June 2019, https://www.jpost.com/opinion/the-persecution-of-christians-in-the-pa-591404.
[51] Asrar Rashid, “A Workshop on Palestine for Imams, Activists, Committee Members and Trustees”, 24 July 2025https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c2f8LgrS9s.
[52] Sayyid Qutb, Fī ẓilāl al-Qurʾān (Dār al-Shurūq, 1985), commentary on Qur’an 9:29.
[53] Muhammad bin Abd Al-Rahman Al-’Arifi, “Leading Sunni Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi and Other Sheikhs Herald the Coming Conquest of Rome” (MEMRI, December 6, 2002, excerpted from http://www.kalemat.org/sections.php?so=va&aid=93, https://web.archive.org/web/20170120031331/, https://www.memri.org/reports/leading-sunni-sheikh-yousef-al-qaradhawi-and-other-sheikhs-herald-coming-conquest-rome).
[54] The Pact of Umar, cited in Ibn Kathir’s commentary on Sura 9:29. Ibn Kathir, Tafsir Ibn Kathir (Abridged).
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