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The Vatican collaborating with Saudi Arabia’s hosting of the second Islamic Arts Biennalehe in the Western Hajj Terminal of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz International Airport is, to my mind, very good news. The more that Saudi Arabia concentrates on such endeavours and running events like the 2034 World Cup, the better for all of us, the Levant’s minorities in particular. And, if the multitudes who descend on King Abdulaziz International Airport on their way to Hajj derive pleasure, joy and inspiration from this exhibition, so much the better.

For its part, the Vatican has loaned the Saudis ancient translations of the Quran, texts on astronomy, and a unique, almost six-meter-long, 17th-century map of the River Nile. Which is much more than many Saudis did with respect to Shia shrines they helped to destroy in Iraq. And though those Shia shrines are not for me, I was impressed beyond words by the loving dedication Iranian imams and artisans in the holy city of Qom put into restoring the relics they salvaged, because such wanton anarchism really gets my uncultured goat, as it did on Easter Sunday 2014, when, in the company of Syria’s religious leaders, I witnessed the massive destruction Syria’s current rulers wrought on Maaloula.

Although Syria’s President Assad had toured the town some hours earlier, MI6’s hard line Daily Telegraph denied that their pet ISIS rebels had done any damage to the fabled town and instead insisted it was all “Assad disinformaiton”, a claim that would have been a revelation to the Melkite men who were slaughtered there and the young schoolgirls the rebels gang raped there, but whatever.

Some months later, I was back in Homs for the 2014 Presidential election and, though the civil society support Asssad enjoyed was a joy to behold, it was as nothing compared to the joy I experienced, when I entered a looted Syrian Orthodox church in Homs’ Old City, when a group of AK 47 toting Christians and a brace of Assyrian bambinos suddenly appeared through the rubble, entered the Church and sang some old hymns in Aramaic, that haunting language Jesus and Mary spoke and that is so fitting for the holiest and most solemn of occasions.

Although the church was all but destroyed, they had adorned the wrecked altar with a crucifix and a Madonna statue that you would pick up for less than a euro in Rome. Although there may be greater testimonies to faith, I have yet to witness anything that surpasses that which the Christians of Syria, Iraq and Palesitine exhibit.

Before leaving Syria and the Assyrians, it is important to say that the recent destruction by Syria’s new rulers of ancient Assyrian statues in Tartus is as barbaric as anything Palmyra witnessed after the murder of the universally acclaimed and universally loved Dr Khaled al-Asad.

And, for what it is worth, on one of my Syrian journeys, I attended an art exhibition, which some of Bashar al Assad’s family hosted. And, though I hope those members are fine, I would be at least as equally concerned about the fate of the young, beautiful, cultured and intelligent Syrian women, who did the donkey work for that exhibit. Reading Lolita in Tehran, how are you?

On the subject of the Shias and Iran, I might add that the Iranian Shias I met on pilgrimage in the old city of Damascus were friendly, polite and just delighted to visit the Umayyad Mosque, the Sayyida Zaynab Mosque and the many other high water landmarks of their faith and culture.

Moving south to Palestine, I find their iconography pleasing, not only because of its own intrinsic worth but how it differentiates itself from other expressions the Catholic and Orthodox faiths exhibit elsewhere, in places like Estonia, whose pipsqueak government has declared a war of extermination against the Orthodox Church there and its faithful who partake in the June 5^th annual Velikoretsky procession just over the border in Mother Russia.

Although I should now really call out Estonia’s leaders for the savages that they are, their psychoses, like those of their highly strung Ukrainian Nazi chums, go much deeper than that. This is evident in their protests about Catherine the Great featuring in Civilization VII, a video game which allows players to “assume the role of a famous historical leader” and “guide a civilization through history”, which is exactly what Catherine the Great did and which is why she is included in that childish game.

Not, as France proves, that the myopic Estonians are the only barbarians in the room. France, the eldest daughter of the Church, has forced the removal of a statue of St Joan of Arc, their greatest saint and their most pre-eminent national hero and has forced the statue’s evacuation to distant Hungary, which has no such childish hangups about saluting one of Europe’s best known historical heroes.

And, though a sense of history and perspective are dying, they are not dying alone, as the most recent batch of Syrian martyrs attest. I am referring here to my good friend, Dr. Rasha Nasser Al-Ali, an acclaimed feminist literary critic of Arab literature, who had her fingers chopped off and whose corpse was found with its throat slit from ear to ear by Syria’s moderate literary Uyghur critics.

Although the Pope has claimed he cannot imagine Iraq without its indigenous Christians, whose ancestors were converted by Jesus’ apostles, I can as it is an integral part of NATO’s Greater Israel project, which must rid the entire region not only of bothersome Christians, Mandaeans and Yezidi but also of all they represent in the fields of culture and related fields.

And, though the collaboration between the Vatican and Saudi Arabia is to be commended (and let’s hope the Saudis don’t nick the Vatican’s artefacts, like NATO did with Russia’s), there are much bigger issues, not the least of which is the right of Syria’s Alawites, Armenians, Druze and sundry Christians to life, liberty and the practice of their own rites, at stake here. These vulnerable minorities and all they represent, no more than similar groups in Estonia and Ukraine, are not sacrificial lambs who can be criminally thrown on a pyre to win some brownie points with Saudi Arabia, Israel or the bigger NATO nexus. They are the very essence of life and their rights should not be compromised even by one iota by the Pope or by anybody else. Sure, collaborate with Saudi Arabia, send delegations to the head hackers in Syria but remember Saudi’s Filipino Christians, its cowed and persecuted Shias and every other minority whose lives and limbs are at risk throughout the Levant and Russia’s borderlands as well. Be a shepherd to your flock and get some fearsome guard dogs to protect them as well.