From the very first moments of the Syrian revolution,
voices from East and West were raised lamenting the Christians’ situation in
the heart of the struggle, and calling for rescuing them from the war’s inferno
and for protecting them from the ethnic and religious cleansing, which they are
going to be exposed to when the tyrannical and criminal regime would collapse
and be replaced by an Islamist, fanatic rule. Since the very first harbingers
of the Syrian people’s rebellion, the Christians found themselves in the midst
of riots that were pulled later on, by the regime and the extremist rebellions
alike, into the square of an open, bloody war. And because Syria became an open
field for settling the historical, strategic and political deals of the entire
region, the Christians fell at the mercy of the choices of their clerical
prelates, on one side, and the terrifying, treasoning discourse and media of
the regime, on another.
Most
of the Christian (and Muslim) religious prelates have often been attached to
the regime in Syria by means of a complicated network of authoritative,
pragmatic, individual and mutual-interest network of connections and alliances;
a network that has started during the age of Al-Assaad senior and continued during
the rule of Al-Assaad junior. Therefore, and since the revolution’s kick off,
these prelates resiliently proliferated before the entire world the claim that
the Easter Christian public hardly sees any possible salvation and survival to
itself in the East after the collapse of Al-Assad’s rule. As if the recent
Assaad is the Church’s contemporary Messiah, and as if the Assaadi regime and
no else is the guarantor of Eastern and Arab Christianity’s salvation; as if
Christianity has never existed before it and it will never continue existing
after or without it. The discourses of these clerical prelates have always been
baptized with negative imaginations on the rebelling Muslim (and Christian)
Syrians, which insinuate that they are the enemies of Christianity and a threat
to its existence; as if the Christians have never lived side-by-side with
Muslims during the 1400 years, minus forty years, and as if what happened to
the Christians in Iraq is definitely the fate that is waiting for them in
Syria.
On the other hand, the regime and its local
and international media machine worked, from the beginning of the revolution,
and at the peak of this revolution’s peacefulness and civility, on terrifying
the Christians (and the Alawites) from the consequences of the revolution’s
success and the replacement with a new Syria the ‘Syria’ which the regime
malformed and tailored according to its own calculations. The regime worked
hard on enhancing the presence of religious and confessional extremism and
started to pave the paths for filling Syria with all kinds of terrorism,
fanaticism and jihadism. As well as it started to exert on the silent
Christians in Syria all sorts of terrorization, threatening and suppression
possible; promising them of excessive harm and evil if they just thought of
supporting the mere principals of the revolution or if they, merely
theoretically or ethically, backed its rightful demands (as the regime itself
admitted at one point). The regime has recently intensified its exploitative
implementation of the Christian clerical prelates in its media and propaganda
policies; opening before them all the internal and external venues to express
their fear from Islam and to reveal explicitly their historical, cultural and
sociological loftiness toward every non-Christian.
Yes, the Christians of Syria needs rescue.
But, they need to be rescued from the two above mentioned sides, who force on
them exclusivist ideologies and political and public discourses that promulgate
hatred and demonization against the ‘other’ and narrows the Christians’ (and
Alawites’) view of this other down to mere sociopathic complexes. The Syrian
Christians need to be rescued by all of us from the regime’s exploitation of
them as merely cards, no more, in the game of its own survival and existence.
They must be rescued from a hegemonic regime that does not at all protect the
minorities (nor the Christians among them in particular), but it rather
protects itself by the minorities and use them as a shield for its own rescue.
The Syrian Christians must be rescued from the false discourse of the regime’s
agents among their own clerical prelates, who propagate lies on the nature of
the events in Syria and its true details. They must be rescued from the disastrous
choice of these church leaders, who opted for stretching their hand of alliance
to the owner of power and authority and rule, instead of deciding to open their
arms toward the broader Syrian society and to embrace the people’s choices and
defend the oppressed, tyrannized, terrorized and killed among those, who are
supposed to be the Christians’ brothers and sisters in the nation. The
Christians must be rescued from this option, for rules and regimes rise and
fall, and only people and their co-existence remains.
Yes,
the Syrian Christians need to be rescued from the regime’s terrorizing and
tyrannizing game by making the world realize, contrary to what the regime and
its agents around the world allege, that the Christians in Syria opt for
whatever their siblings in the nation long for, and they dream of another Syria
with no tyranny; and they do not wish that Syria would remain as it was or as
it is now; and they are not innately persuaded by the theory of ethnic and
religious cleansing. They do know that the revolution was not unleashed against
them, but against the regime that intimidates them, by the revolution, from its
collapse. The Christians must be rescued from systematized fear and
intellectual suppression. We must take seriously on board that many of them
participated and still in the revolution, despite their spiritual leaders’
wishes and against all the security forces’ threats.
Dear
westerners, Christian or non-Christian, be sure always that you hear about the
true Syria, not hearing what you intrinsically or subconsciously wish to hear
that the situation is. If you want truly to rescue Syrian Christianity, then
please differentiate it from the lies and alliances of its clerical prelates
and their submission to their Assadi messiah. If you want to rescue the Syrian
Christians, know that they do not believe in the regime’s propaganda and claims
about its protection of minorities. They do remain silent before these claims,
not because they concede them, but because they are afraid of the oppression
and punishment they will be exposed to by the regime if they withstand them.
Rescue the Syrian Christians from over-projecting your Islamophobia and
problems with Islam on their situation. Rescue the Syrian Christians by viewing
them as the Christians in Egypt, not as the Christians in Iraq. Just like their
brothers and sisters in Egypt, the Christians in Syria do support the general
demands of the public and they dream with the Muslims and the secularists alike
of a Syria free from terrorism, killing, blood, blaspheming, jihadism,
fanaticism, backwardness, tyranny, hegemony and corruption. Rescue the
Christians from the lies and loyalties of the corrupted and weak among their
leaders. And, rescue them from tyranny, terrorization and intimidation, which
the regime strangles them with.
