December 19, 2010
Dismissing calls to leave the region amid increased sectarian attacks, Christians in Syria are heeding their clerics and are holding fast to their communities.
"Life here in Damascus is more than perfect," Father Gabriel Dawood, a priest at the Syriac Orthodox Church in Damascus told The Media Line. "The good atmosphere here isn't fake like in other places. Here people are united as one."
Religious leaders in Syria at a government-sponsored conference called on Christians to remain in the Middle East despite recurring attacks against them, blaming Israel and the West for their suffering.
The appeal was made last week at the opening of the Islamic-Christian Fraternity Conference in Damascus. An annual event, the conference was organized by the Ministry of Islamic Endowments and local Syrian churches.
A terrorist attack against the Our Lady of Deliverance Syriac church in Baghdad in late October which killed 58 Christians weighed heavy on the minds of participants in the Syrian capital. The church raid was the last in a chain of anti-Christian attacks which have dispersed the once thriving Christian community of Iraq.
"I urge Christians of the East, from Palestine and Iraq, to cling to the land of our nation," Patriarch Ignatius Zakka 'Iwas, head of the Syriac Orthodox Church, was quoted as saying by the Kuwaiti daily Al-Rai.
"What is happening in Palestine and Iraq is the best proof of attempts by the enemies of good to divide our united house in order to control it and plunder its riches, with the support of Western countries," ‘Iwas added.
But a different message, less defiant and steadfast, came from one of the Church's representatives in Europe.
Archbishop Athanasios Dawood, head of the Syriac Orthodox Church in Great Britain, called on Christians to leave Iraq en mass. In a televised interview with BBC last month, Archbishop Dawood warned that "if (Christians) stay, they will be finished one by one."
But in Damascus, Father Gabriel Dawood said that Christians felt safer in Syria than elsewhere in the Middle East due both to the people's mentality and to policy directed from above.
"People here in Syria believe in peace," Father Gabriel said. "In addition, the President has instilled the principle of 'religion is for God, but the nation is for everyone'."
Since the start of the war in Iraq, many Iraqi refugees have found haven in neighboring Syria, including an unusually high proportion of Christians. According to Farah Dakhlallah, UNHCR Public Information Officer in Syria, 11% of Iraq's 152,000 refugees living in Syria were Christian. Some 12,000 Christian Iraqi refugees live in and around Damascus.
Many Christians view the secular approach of Syria's Ba'ath regime, led by President Bashar Al-Assad, as a guarantee for their religious freedom. The socialist and pan-Arab ideology of Ba'ath was outlined in the early 1940s by its founder Michel Aflaq, himself a Syrian Greek Orthodox Christian.
According to the State Department's International Religious Freedom Report for 2010, Christians constitute between 8 and 10 percent of Syria's population of 21 million. Christians reside around the urban centers of Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, Hama and Latakia. The largest Christian group is the Greek Orthodox Church.
The Syrian constitution guarantees freedom of religion, and government documents such as passports or identity cards do not give religious affiliation. Legally, Christians can fill all positions in politics except the post of president.
Severios Hazail Soumi, a native of Syria and Syriac Patriarch of Belgium and France, said that Syria's relative safety explained the sense of security of Syrian Christians.
"The first victims of war [in the Middle East] are always the Christians," Soumi told The Media Line. "Syria is a safe country, and Christians have their place in it. Up until now, no Christian was discriminated against in Syria."
Soumi acknowledged an influx of Christian emigration from Syria, but said it was due to economic rather than political reasons.
"If a Christian leaves Syria, it's only for economic reasons, or to unite with his family abroad," he said.
Hundreds of clerics from over 30 countries attended the Damascus conference that was called to discuss Christian-Muslim relations. Yet, virulent Israel and America bashing readily surfaced.
"The West is behind the killing of Christians in the church 'Our Lady of Deliverance', not Muslims," Grand Mufti of Syria Ahmad Hassoun told the assembly. "The West is clashing with civilizations while the East is building civilizations."
Sheikh Na'im Qassem, deputy secretary general of Hizbullah, Lebanon's armed Shiite faction, implied that Israel was behind the killing of Iraqi Christians.
"Those who killed the Christians in Iraq are no different than those who are killing children in Palestine," he said, calling on Christians and Muslims to unite and cooperate in "combating the conspiracies that target the region."