Save Syria’s Christians

Secretary Marco Rubio and David Lammy, the UK Foreign Secretary, had rather tellingly different responses to the latest wave of violence in Syria. Lammy deplored the “horrific violence” but failed to address where that violence was coming from. Rubio, by contrast, stated clearly that “radical Islamist terrorists” were targeting minorities in Syria, including Alawites, Christians and Druze.

Rubio is right. While precise numbers are difficult to ascertain, it appears that, according to a source verified by the Hungarian government’s State Secretariat for the Aid of Persecuted Christians — the only one in the world — up to 3,000 people may have been killed, the majority of them innocent Alawite civilians. A number of Christians have also been killed. While clearly a pogrom against the Alawites, Christians in Syria are deeply concerned because, as the old Syrian phrase has it, “first the Alawites, then the Christians.” Since the accession of the Islamist government at the end of last year, Christians have been the subject of murder, kidnappings, intimidation and vandalism. The situation is very tense.

It may not be acceptable to say so, but, under the undeniably brutal dictatorship of the Assad family there was no inter-religious strife and all religious minorities were protected. On a visit to Iraq in 2017, my interpreter, a resident of Raqqa and a former supporter of the rebels, told me he was committed to Assad because he had seen the alternative.

The alternative, even if they put on western suits and enjoy obsequious chats with the Davos crowd, are all committed Islamists. The new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, otherwise known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, started his terrorist career in Iraq with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, before moving the franchise to his own version of al Qaeda. Can it be that an Islamist leopard has changed his spots?

The PR war, at least in the West, is being skilfully handled: the new regime has yet to appoint a diversity minister, but its supporters are trimming their Islamist beards and talking to journalists about education for women. However, discussions on the constitution include sharia law and, more worryingly, the demand the president be a Muslim, thus relegating all minorities to second-class status.

Does it matter, apart from the obvious humanitarian question, that Christianity survives in Syria? Hearing Syriac Aramaic, the closest language to that used by Jesus, being spoken not just in the liturgy but on a mobile phone in the ancient town of Maaloula is a reminder of the roots of Christianity in Syria. This part of the world is one of the very few places where Aramaic is still spoken, including parts of the Nineveh Plains of Iraq, and that is not just a cultural linguistic curio. Christianity was born in this region. According to the historian Philip Jenkins, between the years 640 to 740 there were no fewer than six popes from Syria and, in 668, Pope Vitalian sent Theodore of Tarsus to Canterbury to be archbishop. There was a time when the Church was truly catholic — and the contribution of the Churches of the Middle East, particularly Syria, was vital.

Pope John Paul II once spoke of the Church ‘[breathing] with two lungs — of the East and the West’, and if one of the lungs is either damaged, destroyed or ignored, the body as a whole will suffer. Not only have Middle Eastern Christians felt ignored and forgotten by the Church in the West, as Islamic persecution has destroyed their churches, but western Christianity, with its increasingly empty churches and dwindling congregations, has lost a vibrant and revitalising connection with the roots of the religion.

A tree cut off from its roots will not survive. The very fact that most western Christians are unaware of the extent of persecution directed against the Church, helped by an uninterested or hostile media, is an ignorance for which much of the leadership in the Church is culpable. The Church in the West focuses on climate change and ‘green audits’ for parishes. Yet those who are having their heads cut off for their profession of the Christian faith do not worry too much about the harmful effects of air conditioning.

This year, the Church commemorates the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, which produced the Nicene creed, still said on Sundays by orthodox Christians. At that council, which was critical to the life and teaching of the early Church, the majority of the bishops attending were from the East. It would be illogical to celebrate that crucial moment in history without considering the contribution of the ‘eastern lung’ of the Church. We must not forget that lung, as it fights for breath today.