Un-Christian

I got this from the August 7 special issue of Time Magazine...

In an article titled "Keeping the Faith" by Tim McGirk writes,

Wajeeh Nuseibeh has one of the world's more unusual jobs: his business card reads: 'Custodian and Door-Keeper of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.' The Sepulcher, in Jerusalem, is Christianity's holiest shrine. Believers say it houses Golgotha, the site where Jesus Christ was crucified, the Stone of Unction on which Christ lay, and the tomb from which he rose again. Yet, for centuries, the guardianship of the Sepulcher has lain with a Muslim family whose latest representative is Wajeeh. "Nobody in the whole world" he says, "is alloweded to open the church but me."

Imagine that! a Muslim is the only person allowed to be custodian of the holiest shrine in all of Christendom. McGirk further writes,

Roman Catholics, Greeks and Armenians own 70% of the property. Each group professes to be the rightful heir to the shrine. They loathe one another in a most un-Christian fashion, contesting every angel's hair-breadth of holy space inside the cavernous basilica. A few years ago, some 500 Greek and Franciscan monks brawled for hours, tossing benches and clubbing each other with giant candlestick holders, all because one sect might have tresspassed on another's sacred property. Centuries of suspicion and envy have made it so only a Muslim can be trusted with the Sepulcher's keys.

Think about it.