Last week Sister Carolin Tahhan Fachakh, a Salesian, spoke out against US President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb Syria. Only two weeks after being officially recognised by the US as a Woman of Courage, she declared Trump’s move “a step backwards for peace”.
An anti-war nun is hardly novel but what she said next is significant. Sister Carolin said that she doubted President Assad was responsible for the chemical attack which prompted America’s intervention. Reflecting on the man who most leaders in the West regard as a monster, she added plainly: “I like my president.”
Among Syrians, Sister Carolin is not alone. Church leaders have also voiced doubts about the veracity of some of the reports concerning Pres-ident Assad’s barbaric record as ruler.
In 2015, for instance, a senior leader of Syrian Christians, Patriarch Gregorios III Laham, claimed that President Assad was the victim of misrepresentation by the Western media where “manipulation, ignorance [and] the desire to learn the worst prevailed”.
At the same time, President Assad has made moves to earn the Church’s favour. During an interview last year, Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan told Catholic News Service how during a meeting the president had received him and six other bishops “like a gentleman, who was trying to listen to us, to our grief and problems”.
Since the beginning of the Syrian conflict, Church officials estimate that 80 per cent of Syria’s Christians have been forced to leave the region. But the patriarch said that Assad had told the bishops: “I need you to tell your Christian communities that Syria needs them.”
The president has acted on this plea by making some practical moves to preserve Syria’s war-battered Christian identity.
Last year, for example, the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch of Antioch told the charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) that President Assad had funded as many as 40 cardinals and bishops from around the world to attend celebrations in Damascus, marking the Year of St Paul.
Assad’s government has also reportedly made progress in restoring the main Christian shrine in the town of Maaloula, which was recaptured from Islamists by the Syrian Army in 2014. The town boasts two monasteries of great significance for Christians dating back to the 2nd and 5th centuries. The latter is named after the Roman soldier Mar Sarkis, who was executed for his Christian beliefs.
Many Church leaders therefore, convinced that the amount of blood on Assad’s hands has been exaggerated by his enemies, remain supportive of him.
But this support is morally problematic to say the least. While it is expedient for Church leaders to exonerate President Assad in their minds, the evidence is mounting that the latest appalling attack involved deliberate use of chemical weapons by a Syrian warplane. Christian leaders can’t in good conscience look the other way, or worse, stand by anyone who perpetrates such evil acts.
But war has always thrown up a harrowing choice between two evils; a brief glance at the Church in Spain under Franco is just one reminder. Christians in Syria stand at a crossroads in their history where time is running out. Their allegiance to Assad is a product of the most basic human instinct: survival.
On top of this, the Church knows that whatever Assad’s crimes, were he to be overthrown, something far more bloodthirsty might fill the void. Assad for them and for many others is still the lesser evil.
John Pontifex of ACN, in an article for graceformuslims.org, put it like this: “Christians assert that the only person who can bring peace to Syria is Assad, who, they say, treats them very well. They say: ‘At least we had some freedom of speech. At least we could go to church. At least we had citizenship. What is the alternative?’”
One charity worker recalls a story he heard on a recent visit to Damascus. A woman told him about the time her family fled Aleppo. Their bus was seized by extremists brandishing guns and demanding to know which passengers were Assad supporters. The woman said how relieved she was that her three-year-old was asleep, as he would have raised his hand in support of the president.
Inches away from the barrel of an Islamist’s gun, it’s not hard to predict which leader Christians would silently pray for when forced to choose.
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