Here Is Where the Need of a Fortnight For Freedom Is Real

The Mar Elias Monastery in

Bethlehem--Christians in the

Near East are in great peril

I want to post these selections from a United Press article by Bassem Maroue that was posted several days ago to make us more aware of the pressing concern for the safety of Syria’s Christian minority.  By and large the “Arab Spring” has been a disaster for the Christians of the Near East and American foreign policy is not helping them—to the contrary the suffering of Christians in Iraq is directly traceable to the policies of the Bush administration and the support of the Obama Administration for the “pro-Democracy” movement in Egypt is destabilizing the situation of the Coptic Christians there.  (For more information on Christians in Islamic countries see entries for December 24, 26 2011,  March 20, 21, 23, and June 7, 2012.) 

Christians, who make up about 10 per cent of Syria's population, say they are particularly vulnerable to the violence sweeping the country of 22 million people. They are fearful that Syria will become another Iraq, with Christians caught in the crossfire between rival Islamic groups.

"What is happening in these neighbourhoods pains our hearts," said Maximos al-Jamal, a Greek Orthodox priest who is still in Homs. He says about 90 of the civilians in two besieged Homs neighbourhoods are Christians, down from thousands who lived in the area before the uprising began.

"Before we were staying here to guard our homes but now the situation is unbearable," one Homs resident told The Associated Press by telephone, asking that his name not be used for fear of reprisals by both sides of the conflict.

He said he feared the rebels want to keep the Christians trapped in the city as a bargaining chip while the army's bombardment and ground attacks on the city intensify. Syrian Christians have largely stuck by President Bashar Assad, fearing the strength of Muslim hard-liners in the uprising against his rule.

Several mediators have made an urgent appeal to evacuate the Christians who they fear could be targeted for their religion. Syrian Christians don't have to look far for an example of brutal treatment. Hundreds of thousands of Christians fled Iraq after their community and others were repeatedly targeted by extremist militants in the chaotic years after Saddam Hussein's 2003 ouster.

The Christians, who are trapped in Homs' Hamidiyeh and Bustan Diwan neighbourhoods, include four children under the age of 10. There is barely any electricity or running water, telephone lines are unreliable and they are forced to hide in shelters during daily shelling. 

Al-Jamal said that many Christians from Homs are coming to his office in the city to get marriage or birth certificates to apply for visas to leave the country.

"If Syrian Christians get visas from other countries, I say more than 70 per cent of them will leave," he said.

 For what you can do to help, contact the Catholic Near East Welfare Association. (Paste this into your browser: http://www.cnewa.org/home.aspx?ID=26&pagetypeID=12&sitecode=HQ )

Not All Bedfellows Are Strange

Russian Orthodox Patriarch

Kiril I, supporter of the regime

in Syria

Syria’s struggle for democracy has been very much in the news, particularly since the Houla Massacre where Syrian Army and Militia have been alleged to have execution-style massacred 108 civilians including 34 women and 49 children.  The massacre seems, in part, to reflect the Shia-Sunni antagonism that tears apart much of the Islamic world.  Syrians have been demanding an end to the regime of Bashar Hafez al-Assad.  Bashar al-Assad has been in power in Syria since the year 2000 when he succeeded his father  Hafez al-Assad who had ruled Syria for 29 years.  The party under which this father-son combination has served are the Ba’ath party—a party tied to the same party that ruled Iraq during the Sadam Hussein years. 

It would seem to most of us that this is another sinister regime that should be overthrown and replaced by a democracy and Americans are highly suspicious of Russia’s motivations for blocking any effective international cooperation in getting rid of the current regime.  Putin’s administration undoubtedly has a variety of reasons for wanting to shore up the al-Assad regime, but one of them is that the Russian Orthodox Church is supportive of al-Assad.  Putin, for a variety of political motives, has worked very closely with the Russian Church and the Moscow Patriarchate has always functioned as an agency of the State—even during the Communist era where the Church was very much subject to government control and used by the government for political ends.  Putin does not want to alienate the Church but finds support for his regime in collaboration with it.

Why would the Russian Church support the al-Assad regime?   Well, again, the situation is very complex and the motives are mixed.  The Moscow Patriarchate has always been anxious to be seen as the protector of Christian minorities in the Arab world as part of the Patriarchate's plan to achieve primacy in the Orthodox world.   But it is not all self-serving.  The plight of Christians in the Near East and North Africa has deteriorated terribly during the “Arab Spring.”  The Christian communities of Iraq and Egypt are undergoing particularity virulent persecutions.  (See blog entries for Dec 24, 26, 2011, March 20, 21, 23, 2012)  for more information on the plight of Christians in the Arab world, let me recommend to you the Catholic Near East Welfare Association (paste this into your browser: http://www.cnewa.org/home.aspx?ID=26&pagetypeID=12&sitecode=HQ )   

Keeping in Mind This Christmas the Christians of the Near East

Chaldean Patriarch Cardinal Mar Emmanuel III Delly

celebrates Christmas Liturgy in Mosul.  Priests from

Arlington VA, note the altar girl serving mass on the

picture's right. 

We think of the Iraqi people as Muslims but before the second Iraqi war there were approximately one million Christians in Iraqi, mostly members of the Chaldean Catholic Church, the Syrian Catholic Church, or the Syrian Orthodox Church.  Christianity came to what was once Assyria in the second and third centuries and despite the Muslim conquest in the seventh century and subsequent centuries of Muslim Rule under the Baghdad Caliphate and then the Ottoman Empire, vibrant Christian communities continued to exist and even flourish especially in the towns and villages of the so-called Nineveh plain centering around modern day Mosul.  
     The Chaldean Catholic Church has been in formal communion with Rome since at least the early seventeenth century.  (It’s previous status was ambiguous, especially after the Council of Florence in 1445, but it can be said that it was never in formal schism.) The current head of the Chaldean Catholic Church is Cardinal Mar Emmanuel III Delly, Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans.  Worldwide there are about a million and a half Chaldean Catholics, six hundred thousand of whom lived in Iraq before the most recent war.  (There were also about 400,000 other Christians, not Chaldean Catholics but Latin (Roman Rite) Catholics, Syrian Catholics, and Syrian Orthodox.)     The Chaldean Catholic Church maintains  a seminary in Baghdad.   The Patriarch resides in Mosul. The Syriac Orthodox Church comes from Apostolic times and the Patriarchate of Antioch which parted ways with Greek Orthodoxy and Western Catholicism when it rejected the teachings of the Council of Chalcedon (451) regarding the manner in which humanity and divinity are united in Jesus of Nazareth.  Syriac Catholicism separated from Syriac Orthodoxy in the late eighteenth century when Mar Ignatius Michael III Jarweh, Bishop of Aleppo who had reconciled to Rome was elected Patriarch.  Several bishops who opposed union with Rome rejected his election and chose an alternative candidate pledged to retain the autonomy and separation of the Syriac Church.  The followers of Mar Ignatius thus became known as Syriac Catholics; those of his rival, Mar Matta ben Abdel Ahad Saalab bishop of Mosul are Syriac Orthodox.   Latin Catholics are fewer and their Archbishop is Jean Sleiman, a Lebanese Discalced Carmelite. There are also smaller communities of Armenian and Maronite Christians.  
      I remember that about two weeks before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 that I was at a dinner party with a couple who are Arab Christians—the husband Maronite, the wife Copt.  They were very upset at the impending war as they foretold—and foretold correctly—that a war would destabilize the entire region and have ominous consequences for Arab Christians in Iraq and throughout the region.  They could not have been more right. The late Pope John Paul II also forecast a dangerous shift of power in which Christians would suffer as a consequence of the American determination to go to war.  The Pope sent Cardinal Pio Laghi, a family friend of the Bushes, to speak with President Bush but it was to no avail.  The plight of Christians in the region has grown steadily worse since the American invasion.  
      For centuries the Christians of Iraq were give the protected status of dhimmi by the various Muslim overlords and the various Christian communities existed in peace and even thrived.  Even under the regime of Sadaam Hussein they remained protected and Chaldean Catholic Tariq Aziz served as Foreign Minister and then as Deputy Prime Minister.  The Second Iraqi War (“Mr. Cheney’s War”)  totally destabilized Iraq and not only pitted Shiite against Sunni in a bloody civil war but left the Christian minority without any protection.  American strategy only made this worse when, in order to take pressure off Baghdad, Mosul became the center of conflict.  The majority of Iraqi Christians lived in Mosul and surrounding villages and towns. Militants suspected the Christians of treasonous ties to the NATO forces whom they viewed as foreign invaders.  Terrorists began targeting the Christian communities with abductions and murders of religious leaders.  Father Ragheed Azis Ganni was killed in Mosul in 2007 along with three subdeacons at Mass.   Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho was kidnapped in 2008 and found murdered several days later.  Several of his companion including chauffer and bodyguard were also killed.  Christians were threatened with death if they did not abandon their homes and their businesses.  Churches have been bombed and religious institutions destroyed.  To date about 40% of Iraqi Christians—400,000—have fled the country and most of the remainder live in fear and with hope of escaping their ancestral homeland.