Although peace with justice might seem like an unachievable dream, all things are possible to those who believe.
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Although the collapse of the secular Syrian Arab Republic should give Western Christians pause for thought, clear-headed thought and moral bravery in the face of genocide have never been their strong cards. Those are traits that have always been outsourced or marginalised by those, who talk the talk of Jesus’ martyred Apostles, but who have always been wary of walking the road to martyrdom that the Christians of Greater Syria have been forced to walk for the last 2000 years.
When I spoke about the Ottomans’ genocide of the Armenians in Damascus on the 100th anniversary of that most notorious of war crimes, I said that only Russian President Putin had the right to speak in Yerevan because all of the other global leaders, who had assembled for that knees up in Armenia, were not only show boating hypocrites but were even then colluding in the ongoing genocide of the Armenians of Syria. Russia, to its credit, not only stood by the Armenians of Syria, but stood by all of Syria’s great minorities, as they got it in the neck over the last ten and more years.
This is not only a pedantic point but is a very practical one as well. Take Franciscan priest Father Francois Murad, who was publicly beheaded in front of a baying crowd in June 2013 by Syria’s new Muslim Brotherhood rulers. Call me a sectarian stick in the mud if you like, but I believe Fr Murad’s murder should be avenged a thousand times over.
As should the murder of Damascus based Dr Mohamed Said Ramadan Al-Bouti, who was one of the world’s leading Sunni Muslim scholars (and, like Saladin, a Kurd which was never an issue in secular Syria). The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood murdered al-Bouti and 40 of his followers in a suicide bomb attack the state controlled BBC ludicrously tried to pin on the Syrian government. The attack took place when Shaykh al-Bouti was giving a religious speech to a group of Islamic students, including his grandson. Al-Bouti, 84, was a retired dean and a professor at the College of Islamic Law at Damascus University and a scholar of worldwide repute. Shaykh Al-Bouti was known for his anti-terrorism stances and his criticism of foreign-backed militant groups, whom he rightly described as mercenaries. One week after Al-Bouti’s murder, another Sunni cleric, Shaykh Hassan Saif al-Deen, 80, was brutally beheaded in Aleppo by Harati’s unit, who planted his head on the minaret of the mosque where he used to preach.
Although I could cite hundreds of similar murders, it must be pointed out that many Muslim Brotherhood controlled and/or Saudi funded “holy men”, who now peacock about “liberated” Damascus, welcomed these outrages and some even participated in them. Shaykh Abu Basir al-Tartousi, for example, said he did not regret the death of Skahykh al-Bouti as “He was a liar, who all his life supported the rulers.” The Imam of Masjid from the al-Haram mosque in Mecca, Abdul Rahman al-Sudais, openly celebrated the assassination, “He (al-Bouti) was one of the biggest imams of delusion. He was a Mujahid on Satan’s path. And this (the murder of al-Bouti) is a great joy for Muslims,” he wrote on its Facebook site.
In this insightful interview, Nabeel Naiem, a former Al Qaeda/HTS capo, extrapolating from his own experiences of running a 120 man head hacking gang, questions how Isis came to be so big, so well-organised and so well-funded. He contends “Now as we speak there are 1,500 of ISIS & Nusra (Front) in Tel Aviv hospitals” and, of interest to the NHS, the Charity Commission and the Old Bill, that “They have field hospitals, and it’s remarkable that they have a number of doctors in their ranks, even doctors from European countries”, “Osama was spending by himself, but before Osama there was the International Islamic Relief Organization”, “they’re working on igniting the war between the Sunna and the Shiites, just like what Abu Mussab (Zarqawi) used to blow up Sunnah mosques then blow up Shiite mosques, to start the sectarian war in the region; and this is of course an American plot, and I tell you ISIS didn’t kill a single American, ISIS didn’t behead a single American and didn’t play football with his head, they beheaded Muslims and ate livers of Muslims and didn’t kill a single American though it’s established since 2006”, “the Muslim Brotherhood have no religion, no nation, not safe to be with them, they’ll betray anyone”, “At one time, these takfiri groups were openly taunting the people who came to see dead British soldier bodies returned to open abuse saying they deserved this. There was a national outcry about these people and parliament was forced to list them as a terrorist group – to be dated in four days’ time. So, the group changed their name and continued their practices. They are still there, in Syria’s drivers seat, of all places – still espousing their hatred.”
Whatever we may think about Nabeel Naiem, we would have to agree that his opinions on the Muslim Brotherhood, who now rule Syria, and their affiliated terror gangs deserve attention, not only from the NHS, the police and the Charity Commission that funds them but from us all. Nabeel’s analysis leads to the important questions as to who is calling Syria’s sectarian shots and who is most complicit in their endless war crimes.
My own hypothesis, and one that is born out by the fall of the Syrian Arab Republic, is that this catastrophe has many fathers, one of which is the tepid attitude Western Christian leaders adopt to their co-religionists getting it in the neck in Syria, Palestine, India, Pakistan and Nigeria to name but a few places that Christians and other vulnerable minorities have bounties on their heads.
Before we offer our knee jerk reaction to these war crimes, we must first take stock of what the lie of the land is. Aid to the Church in Need is the branch of the Catholic Church that bats for these unfortunates and, from my experience with them, their key players are work horses, who deserve all the praise that anyone cares to bestow on them.
But so too does the Russian Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society (IPPO), which was a missionary organisation that promoted Russia’s shared Orthodox Christian history and culture with Arabs in Palestine and Syria and whose good work, which I have personally witnessed in Jericho, Zion and Hebron, continues in Greater Syria to this day.
Although the Russian Orthodox Church has its critics, not least in Ukraine, where it is racking up martyrs at an alarming rate, they do have the advantage that they can put not inconsiderable pressure on the Russian secular authorities when their members are getting it in the neck.
Not so the Western Churches when their best get their heads lopped off. Again, call me a Neanderthal but I believe that sectarian attacks in Syria, Palestine, India, Pakistan and Nigeria deserve a robust response along the tried but tested eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth template.
We have seen Alawi, Isma’li, Yezidi, Chaldean, Mandaean and other minorities slaughtered in Iraq and Syria, all, as Madeleine Albright so ineloquently explained, to serve the greater imperial agendas of NATO and Israel. That is not only not right but it is a wrong we must try to put to rights by the appropriate channels, which include not only the world’s genuine religions but world’s genuine military formations as well.
Though the road to getting justice for the persecuted people of Syria, Palestine, India, Pakistan and Nigeria will be a long one, once we determine what are the ingredients to make success a possibility and which ones are superfluous to needs, then we have a chance, however slim, of prevailing against the odds. Although those ingredients should be the subject of future articles, one thing for now is certain and that is that the NGOs NATO have causing havoc in countries like Georgia are not parts of the solution but are integral to the problems NATO encourage and they, along with their spokespeople, should be expeditiously done away with.
But they are not the only impediments to the pursuit of peace. Every single NATO politician, who encourages them or colludes with them or their head hacking Muslim Brotherhood proxies is likewise excess baggage and needs to be neutralised.
Although peace with justice might seem like an unachievable dream, all things are possible to those who believe and who not only have the right civilian and military forces behind them, but who are prepared to utilise them for the greater good of all, those like the Armenians, Syrians, Sudanese, Pakistanis, Indians and Nigerians, who are all getting it in the neck this very day.
