SYRIAN CHRISTIANS IGNORED IN INTERVENTION DEBATE
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
September 16, 2013 Monday
by JOHN KASS
As President Barack Obama pushes to keep his military options open
in Syria, we hear of many sides in that brutal war.
The Islamic factions, the Russians supporting dictator Bashar Assad,
Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
But one group is hardly mentioned.
Their houses of worship have been burned by Islamist rebels. Their
clergy have been kidnapped. Their people have been killed.
And when radical Islamists take a village, the people say they are
told they have three choices: renounce their faith, pay a tax or leave.
They are the Christians of Syria. And they’ve become refugees in
their own land.
And if Assad’s government falls, will the Christians be purged by
Islamic fundamentalists, as happened after the fall of strong central
governments recently in Egypt and Iraq?
“In Washington, there is a very disturbing indifference toward the
Christians of Syria,” said Nina Shea, director of the Center for
Religious Freedom and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
“Our political leaders don’t talk enough about them to make it
an issue, and many of our American religious leaders find it
inconvenient,” she told me in an interview. “It’s as if it is
politically incorrect to talk of this problem. Orthodox Christians
being attacked by radical Islamists, and few of our leaders are
talking about what’s happening to them.”
Not all. Sen. Rand Paul, the Republican from Kentucky, has publicly
raised the question of what happens to the Christians if Assad falls.
But Mr. Paul is in the minority.
As are the Christians of Syria. A few years ago, they made up almost
10 percent of the Syrian population. They were protected – some say
favored – by the regime of the murderous Assad. But now their number
is around 3 percent, according to estimates by Ms. Shea and others.
The other day I met with several Syrian Christians at St. George
Antiochian Orthodox Church in Cicero, Ill. I wanted to hear their
stories.
“When they come into Christian villages that still speak the same
Aramaic language spoken by Jesus Christ, the rebels scream, ‘It is
time for the crusaders to leave!'” said the Rev. Nicholas Dahdal. “And
by crusaders, they mean Christians.”
But don’t they know that the Christians were there long before the
crusaders arrived from Western Europe?
“No. They don’t know over there, and people here ([in America]) don’t
know,” said Rev. Dahdal. “And what worries me is that they don’t want
to know.”
As an Orthodox Christian, I’ve always wondered about this
all-but-willful indifference of the West, and I must admit I have
had some difficulty dealing with it.
Is the blindness caused by the fact that there is no blue-eyed,
blond-haired Jesus to be found in Syria?
The carpenter wasn’t some lanky Anglo.
He was swarthy, as are the people of the Middle East, and his followers
in Syria and throughout the region worship as they have for centuries,
from the earliest days of Christianity, from the time that St. Paul
traveled on that road to Damascus.
The indifference of the West could be due to church politics. Or it
could be that the mere mention of the Christians in Syria – and how
they are under threat by some Islamist groups – further complicates
the already confusing landscape there and weighs down the simple
arguments for war.
I met with parishioners in a conference room at the beautiful
Antiochian church. They are highly educated men and women, mostly
Syrian-born physicians and academics.
They are not supportive of Assad’s reported cruelty, such as the
alleged chemical attacks. But they also want President Obama to
know this:
“If the president drops missiles and destabilizes the government,
the Christians left in Syria will be destroyed,” said Marwan Baghdan.
“They will have no protection. And they’re very scared.”?
“My uncle was 80 years old and was shot by a sniper in the stomach in
his bed,” she said. “Many people have come to Wadi al-Nasara. Entire
families are crowded into one room. They’re afraid to worship.”
Gassan Mohama talked of his youth in Damascus years ago.
“Most of my friends are Muslims,” he said. “We lived together as
brothers. We played together and studied together. And some have
turned to another way. And there is misery.”
The ancient Syrian city of Maaloula, where Aramaic is still spoken,
was taken by extremist Islamists the other day. The New York Times
focused on the rebels’ awareness of their “public relations problem.”
“They filmed themselves talking politely with nuns, instructing
fighters not to harm civilians or churches, and touring a monastery
that appeared mostly intact,” the Times reported
Obviously, you can find Syrian Christians who will paint a much
different picture.
“There is a purification campaign and jihadist elements among the
rebels who see Christianity as blasphemy,” Shea told me. “History has
shown what happens to Christians in the Middle East during times of
chaos. It happened during the Armenian genocide, and most recently
in Iraq and Egypt, with churches burned to the ground.”
And now it is happening in Syria.
When a powerful nation like ours prepares for war, what is not in the
news, what is not included in the rhetoric, can often be as telling
as the large bold type in the official statements.
And among the pro-war elites in Washington, the plight of the Syrian
Christians, and their brethren throughout the Middle East, is often
pointedly forgotten, and pointedly ignored.
John Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.