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Syria And The Battered Minorities Of The Middle East

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  • Syria And The Battered Minorities Of The Middle East

    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

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