SYRIA AND THE BATTERED MINORITIES OF THE MIDDLE EAST
Al-Jazeera, Qatar
March 15 2015
Attacks, murders, abductions and the humiliation of minorities in
the Middle East have now reached frightening levels.
by Harry Hagopian
Our neighbourhood in East Jerusalem housed Christian as well as Muslim
families. To our right lived Armenians and Arab Christians, and to
our left were three Muslim neighbours. And although my mum and dad
were evidently sensitive to their backgrounds – Armenian, Palestinian
Christian or Palestinian Muslim – what truly mattered to them in the
end was the person rather than the religion, confession or ethnicity.
Those early memories remain precious, so much so that I still find it
hard to fast forward my life by some four decades and fathom fully that
we are living in a world where so much distrust – and such raw fear –
has been sown into the hearts of many peoples in the MENA region. It
is perhaps less so in Palestine where Muslims and Christians are
together struggling against an occupation that has disempowered them
all irrespective of their religious affiliation as it appears on
their differently-coloured identity cards.
ISIL fighters raid Christian villages in Syria
Over a number of years, something has become broken and I have not
yet succeeded in identifying it fully. Mind you, this began taking
root well before ISIL emerged on the scene, but if I look at the fate
of minorities in places like Iraq and Syria, to mention only two key
countries, it becomes abundantly clear to me that the feral attacks,
murders, abductions and humiliation against Christians and other
minorities by groups that claim to be speaking in the name of Islam
has now reached frightening zeniths.
Outer religious identity
What seems to matter these days is not so much the inner person as an
aggregate of different qualities. Instead, it is the outer religious
identity. I have heard – and we have all seen – horrific incidents
in Mosul, Deir el-Zor and other parts of Iraq and Syria, about
the maltreatment of Christians and this tempts me to cross-examine
the vehement degree of change in those societies over the past two
decades. I am frankly afraid as I had never felt so much unrefined
distrust let alone fear and hatred as I do today when travelling in
the region or speaking with different communities.
Why is it that there is a rampage against the minority communities of
Iraq since the downfall of Saddam Hussein whereby one million Iraqi
Christians have witnessed their numbers dwindle to less than 350,000?
Or why are other communities such as Shabaks, Sabaeans or even Yazidis
facing extinction?
How can I even resolutely castigate those Arab Christian hierarchs
who pretend … that the salvation of their communities can solely
be secured by those bloodied dictators and power-hungry despots who
have been in part responsible for the wholesale oppression, repression
and indoctrination of their own ‘citizens’?
How can anyone who believes in a higher Almighty commit the
barbarities of ISIL or destroy artefacts and monuments (in Nimrud,
Harta or Khorasabad) that are a token of our ancient history and
earlier civilisations? How can I justify the heinous crimes of
those individuals who give themselves a God-inspired right to kill
individuals of other faiths with such impunity?
How can I even resolutely castigate those Arab Christian hierarchs
who pretend – wrongly in my opinion – that the salvation of their
communities can solely be secured by those bloodied dictators and
power-hungry despots who have been in part responsible for the
wholesale oppression, repression and indoctrination of their own
“citizens”?
Radicalised minority
I suppose I could harvest some answers – justifications even – for
the state of our world today. After all, I could argue that Islam is
roughly 700 years younger than Christianity and that Muslims would
learn from the error of their ways just as Christians did after the
barbarous excesses of the Crusades or the Inquisition. Why stop with
those events, though, and not dredge up the colonial period that rode
roughshod over the local Arabs across a whole region?
Or I could even segue that what is occurring today is not the real
teaching of Islam or the work of the huge majority of Muslims but
that of a tiny radicalised minority across the faith who are reacting
against western hegemony and global emasculation. Better still, I
could posit my own theory that parts of the Muslim ummah have become so
traumatised by their ostracism from society that they have regressed
into a frame of mind which finds safety in a religious entitlement
to establish a caliphate where everybody who does not belong to their
rigorously exclusive interpretation becomes a second-class subject.
Alas, something has indeed broken no matter the learned pundits or
rabble rousers who claim otherwise. I would also argue it is our
responsibility as Muslims and Christians to tackle the causes of this
downward spiral together to enable us to address their symptoms too.
The crux of the matter is that we should speak out against such
atrocities, and the imams and religious leaders within the Muslim faith
should lead the way in raising our collective and unqualified voices.
This year marks the fourth anniversary of the uprisings across the MENA
region. This includes the Syrian uprisings that started off peacefully
in Daraa in mid-March 2011 by Syrians seeking their dignity and
bread. So faced with the pain of Raqqa and Aleppo, let alone of Mosul,
Sirte, Derna or Falluja, let me return to the beginnings of Islam.
Protected rights
Picture released in the 1930s showing the place where Saint-Paul fled
in Damascus [Getty]
Was it not in 628 CE that a Christian delegation from St Catherine’s
monastery in Egypt met with the Prophet Mohammad and requested
his protection? Did he not then give them a charter that protected
the right to property, freedom of religion and employment as well
as security for the person? Do the first and last sentences of the
charter not promise that it was eternal and universal so nobody could
revoke the inalienable privileges it granted to those Christians?
Was it not also in 631 CE that the Prophet Muhammad received a
delegation of 60 Christians from Najran in his mosque in Medina
where he allowed them to pray and then concluded the “covenant to
the Christians of Najran” as a treaty granting them religious and
administrative autonomy as citizens of the Islamic State?
Today, 14 centuries later, I understand the fear of others but I do
not internalise it. Rather, I pause to raise relevant questions about
issues of disempowerment, marginalisation, repression or destitution
of large masses across the MENA region that aided and abetted the
process of such radicalism. After all, we should not overlook the
demographic and polarising impact of top-bottom corruption, cronyism,
nepotism and abuse that festers in many MENA societies today.
So could it be that those factors contributed in fomenting anger and
hatred to such a high degree that they also percolated extremism and
even terrorism in our midst? Equally importantly, and once this wave
of radicalised extremism has – ineluctably – receded, will it spawn
new forms of radicalism? If so, will we succeed in reclaiming our
universal God? Or will those battered communities with their wounded
beliefs now become the disfigured realities of a new MENA region?
Dr Harry Hagopian is a London-based international lawyer, political
adviser and ecumenical consultant on the MENA region. He is also a
second-track negotiator and works closely with European institutions.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not
necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/03/syria-battered-minorities-middle-east-150315061239648.html