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Syrian Christians are Syrians first

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  • Syrian Christians are Syrians first

    Gulf News (United Arab Emirates)
    January 17, 2013 Thursday


    Syrian Christians are Syrians first

    by Joseph A. Kechichian | Senior Writer


    If misguided Christian religious leaders attempted to portray the 2011
    revolution as a conflict that did not concern them, and if they stood
    by the Baath regime to protect their respective communities from
    alleged "terrorists," most of their flocks finally rejected the
    official propaganda that drowned them in the rhetoric of victimisation
    so dear to the regime of President Bashar Al Assad. What triggered
    the transformation and will this radical shift accelerate the fall of
    the Baath?

    Inasmuch as fear, intimidation, bigotry, putative financial gains, and
    latent racism coloured much of the oratory that was uttered by a few
    company clerics, Christian civilians were not only perceived as mere
    victims but became casualties as well. To be sure, some were kidnapped
    and killed as extremists gained ground, although many more were fodder
    in the hands of state authorities. Several prelates counselled
    prudence as they positioned themselves on the side of the powerful
    with the likes of Greek Orthodox Bishop Louqa Al Khoury or the Syriac
    priest Gabriel Dawood participating in pro-government demonstrations
    that supported Bashar Al Assad.

    Such mixed messages confused masses, who believed that their leaders
    rejected the revolution, though most quickly became victims of the
    dreaded Mukhabarat. Indeed, some Christians were prosecuted, arrested
    and sometimes executed by revolutionaries, but not because they were
    Christians. Rather, as was the case with others, they died and
    continue to perish because they collaborated with the regime, engaged
    in spying activitiess, or otherwise assisted Damascus.

    Christians were also caught between Free Syrian Army and Al Shabiha
    confrontations, which eliminated any neutrality they professed, and
    that translated into deaths and mayhem. Of course, and this was worth
    repeating, such casualties were not the result of belonging to any
    particular community, for deaths befell on all without discrimination.
    If churches were destroyed, so were mosques and, it may be safe to
    write at this stage that many more mosques were razed than chapels and
    monasteries.

    If many Christians were forced to abandon their homes, many more
    Muslims were in similar situations, as looting was widespread and
    indiscriminate. If about 200,000 of the estimated 3.5 million Syrian
    Christians were displaced, it was also critical to note that their
    forced departures were not related to their religious affiliation, but
    the evolution of fighting on the ground, especially in Aleppo.

    Several million Muslim Syrians became refugees and were also forced
    out of their homes.

    Naturally, Damascus successfully presented its quest for order, as
    well as its justification on the use of extreme violence during the
    past two years, as a posse effort to protect Christian communities.
    The latter were "victims of the revolution," everyone was told, as the
    state played its "protection of minorities" song time and again. Yet,
    and though Christian clerics polarised their communities by labelling
    revolutionaries "rebels" or "bandits," such erroneous sentiments were
    corrected by intellectuals who gradually restored their tarnished
    reputations as they insisted that Syrian Christians were Syrians
    first.

    Starting in March 2011, Christians questioned church authorities, as
    they informed the clergy that the uprising was not about a class,
    community or a particular religion. They insisted on freedom,
    diversity, respect for life and property, all majestically commended
    in the Gospels. Most important, intellectual voices cautioned the
    clergy not to become a tool for the moribund political system that,
    regrettably, failed to register. Leading political activists
    intervened to tell the leaders of their communities to desist from
    regurgitating the state's arguments.

    A 30-years old Jesuit priest, Nibras Chehayed, the `poet' of the
    revolution on account of his carefully drafted missives against the
    blatant use of weapons to destroy Syria, was perhaps the most
    eloquent. He replaced Father Paolo Dall'Oglio, the Italian-born cleric
    who served at the Mar Mousa monastery for three decades, and who was
    expelled by the regime in October 2012.

    They were not alone. A Canadian-Syrian attorney, Hind Aboud Kabawat,
    promoted interfaith tolerance and cooperation, while Marie Mamarbachi
    Seurat, the Syriac faithful whose parents were forced out of Anatolia
    during the 1915 Armenian massacres and whose erudite Middle East
    scholar husband, Michel Seurat, was brutally murdered in 1986 (his
    remains were found in Beirut's Southern suburbs), fought to restore
    Christian credibility in the country.

    Ayman Abdul Nour, who ran the online news site All4Syria, as well as
    the popular singer Lina Chamamyan, along with the president of the
    Syrian National Council, Georges Sabra, all added their voices to the
    chorus. None has been as eloquent as Michel Kilo, who insisted on his
    patriotic stances irrespective of faith, and whose eloquence in logic
    and word remained unparalleled.

    As civilians warned priests, bishops and patriarchs against the
    machinations of the intelligence services, it was gratifying to
    finally note that, after much soul-searching, a few bold clerics
    changed their discourse and literally sanctioned members of the clergy
    whose actions aroused many months of faithful irritation. Those who
    routinely appeared on official television were asked to end their
    activities since they did not reflect the positions of the
    overwhelming majority of Christians who aspired towards a civil
    society.

    Interestingly, the newly elected patriarch of the Greek Orthodox
    Church of Antioch and all the East, joined the intellectual voices
    that called for a careful reappraisal. During his first press
    conference after his appointment in late December 2012, Bishop Yuhanna
    Yaziji insisted that what happened to Christians happened to all other
    Syrians and that Syrian Christians were "in the same situation as
    any". This was a breath of fresh air.

    It illustrated that not all were mesmerised by cheap rhetoric and that
    a new reading to realities on the ground showed the way for the
    future.

    Dr Joseph A. Kéchichian is the author of Legal and Political Reforms
    in Saudi Arabia.

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