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Monday, 18 June 2012

Christians Under Muslim Attack In Syria

From RT:

Syrian Islamist opposition casts out Christians

June 14, 2012,


The Christian minority in Syria is facing a growing threat and thousands are being forced to flee their homes as they face harassment and discrimination from radial Islamist factions of the opposition.

At least 9,000 Christians from the western Syrian city of Qusayr were forced to seek refuge after an ultimatum from a local military chief of the armed opposition, Abdel Salam Harba, Fides news agency reports.

In the latest outburst of violence a Christian man was shot dead by a sniper in Qusayr, which neighbors the restive city of Homs.

There have been reports last week that some mosques in the city have announced from the minarets: "Christians must leave Qusayr within six days, which expires this Friday."

Two Catholic priests who fled Qusayr confirmed to the news agency that they heard the ultimatum "with their own ears" repeated from the minarets.

"The situation is unsustainable in the area and exposed to total lawlessness," Fides sources on the ground say. They also fear that the fate of Christians in Qusayr could soon affect the 10,000 believers who live in other villages in the area.

The areas controlled by the opposition are witnessing the rise of radical forms of Sunni Islam with the extremists not willing to live in peace with the Christians. Many of these gangs and armed groups operate independently of the Free Syrian Army, which rejects such kinds of discrimination against minorities.

Apart from religious rifts, the violence against the Christian community may also be fueled by the fact that they have openly expressed support to the regime. Bashar Assad, as well as his late father, Hafez Assad, guaranteed secular rule in Syria, protecting Christians from discrimination and guaranteeing their rights.

On Wednesday, an armed group broke into and desecrated the Greek-catholic church of St. Elias in Qusayr.

"It is the first time in the ongoing conflict that such an episode has occurred in which sacred symbols are deliberately hit," a local source told Fides.

Christians make up about 10 per cent of the country’s population with most belonging to the denomination of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch.

Posted on 06/18/2012 10:31 AM by Hugh Fitzgerald
Comments
18 Jun 2012
Christina McIntosh

I encourage everyone who reads this, and who is angry about what is being done to Christians (and for that matter all non-Muslims) throughout dar al Islam, to go to the website of the Barnabas Fund and check out their current campaign, 'Proclaim Freedom'.

Launched in March, it is gathering signatures for petitions which will at the end of the year be formally presented - by sympathetic politicians who have agreed to speak to same when tabling them - to the governing bodies of the major western democracies. , e.g. the UK, Australia, Canada, the United States.

One can obtain copies of the petition by contacting the Barnabas Fund branch in one's country; and then one can go round one's parish church, or one's friends and family and colleagues, and gather signatures, in support of the call to our elected representatives to do much more to promote religious liberty, particularly for religious minorities - most notably, the Christian minorities in heavily Islamic lands such as Pakistan, Egypt, and today Syria - suffering persecution, discrimination and advantage.  Barnabas is also encouraging those who sign the petition to write personally - on paper, not by email - to their elected representatives, discussing the same topic.

This is about consciousness-raising: making sure that none of our politicians can pretend they do not know and have not been told about the sufferings of people such as the Syrian Christians or the Copts.

It follows on from a previous petitiion and letter writing campaign that sought to inform our politicians and governing bodies about the law of apostasy in Islam, so that they could not pretend they didn't know that in Islamic countries and communities those who leave Islam are harassed, attacked, and not infrequently killed.

The aim is to prod our as-yet-majority-nonMuslim nations, our governments that are still relatively free, to apply at least some pressure to and inflict Consequences on those countries - nearly all of  them Muslim though there are a few non-Muslim offenders e.g. North Korea - that are actively persecuting Christians (and in the case of Islamic lands, persecuting all other non-Muslims as well) or are winking at / passively conniving in such brutality and violations of human rights.

So far, by end May, Barnabas had 14,750 signatures.  They need a LOT more; preferably, across the free world, hundreds of thousands.  And preferably, each signature should be backed up by a short, sharp individual letter sent to a head of state and to an elected representative.






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