Keep the Faith in Syria

Bishop Nicolas Antiba of Bosra and Hauran (© ACN )

By John Pontifex - Aid to the Church In Need

A SYRIAN prelate – ordained a bishop only last month – has spoken of his dismay at the country’s mass exodus of Christians but is convinced that the future of one of the world’s oldest Church communities is assured.

Melkite Greek Catholic Bishop Nicolas Antiba of Bosra and Hauran described how his faithful in southern Syria were fleeing in their hundreds to the area around his bishop’s house in Khabab following attacks which included the destruction of reportedly one of the country’s oldest churches dating back to the 6^th century.

Referring to the attack on the 542AD St Elias’ Church, in Izraa, he said the exodus of Christians from Syria risked becoming as bad as in Iraq where most faithful left their homes.

Bishop Antiba stressed the urgent need for help both for displaced people arriving in Khabab and elsewhere, including food and shelter – a problem which will become more acute as the weather worsens.

In comments echoing those last month by Melkite Patriarch Gregorios III, who ordained him bishop on 25^th August 2013, the 67-year-old said the crisis is being exacerbated by the influx of fighters and weapons from abroad, which for Bishop Antiba are like “a cancer” threatening to destroy the country.

Bishop Antiba went on to reiterate calls for an end to plans for foreign military intervention in Syria, saying that his message to President Barack Obama is “leave us alone”.

Amid reports that up to a third of the country’s Christian population is now internally displaced or living as refugees abroad, Bishop Antiba said: “I believe – I know – that persecution will not destroy the Church.

“The blood of the martyrs gives new life to the Church.

“I have the hope that we will continue to live here as Christians. Yes, we will be fewer in number – just look what happened in Iraq – but I don’t think the country will be left without Christians.”

He was speaking after attacks earlier this month on the ancient Christian town of Maloula which was attacked and occupied by Jihadi groups.

Christians fleeing the town spoke of direct attacks on Christians and reports emerged that the fighters wanted “victory over the infidel”.

Earlier, Patriarch Gregorios told ACN that 450,000 Christians in Syria – nearly a third of the total – had fled their homes.

Bishop Antiba said: “Christians are a peaceful people. They do not fight, especially in Syria where we have been living with tranquillity without any problems.

“We are the people who have no way to fight. Instead we are a peaceful people who are the first ones who are attacked...

 “Christians have suffered very greatly. We are still suffering. It is not easy.”

He reiterated calls for the US and its allies to abandon options favouring a military strike.

The bishop said: “I hope that [the US and its allies] will leave us alone. If arms continue to come into the country, the situation will get worse. It is not Syrians who are fighting Syrians – those involved in the fighting are non-Syrians.”

He said: “Instead of bringing arms into our country, bring peace. Arms are like a cancer – a foreign body that threatens to destroy us.”

Calling on the US to keep out of Syrian politics, he said: “I would say to President Obama, you always talk about peace… please leave us alone and put these ideas of peace into practice.

“You have your own idea of democracy and it is beautiful but it is not necessarily our idea of democracy; let us work out our own idea of democracy.”

Editor’s 

Condemnation of rape of 5 year old Christian Girl in Lahore.

Lahore and her family, members of civil society gathered outside the Lahore Press Club to demand justice. Raising slogans against the Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and his Punjab government, the abysmally low turnout marched from the Lahore Press Club to congregate at the Charing Cross on Shahrah-e-Quaid-e Azam.

“Justice needs to be prompt and quick. Such barbarous acts against human bodies have become an incidence of power culture,” said Ms Michelle Chaudhry, President Cecil & Iris Chaudhry Foundation.

Part of the few who decided to let their physical presence matter rather than ventilate on the social media, the members of  The Cecil & Iris Chaudhry Foundation also went to the Services Hospital in Lahore to stand outside the Intensive Care Unit for a brief prayer for Sumbal’s recovery.

“The suo moto action by the Chief Justice of Pakistan was indeed quick, but is that the solution to our ills? Why did the police initially refuse to register an FIR when Sumbal’s parents went to register her missing?” stated Ms Chaudhry.

BPCA provides food parcels to victims of the deluge in Pakistan provides much needed help. Dengue fever rears it's ugly head attacking 6 victims.

Food Gifts were distributed by the BPCA at several locations including Narowal, this week.

The area has a significant Christian Community many of whom have lost the use of their mud houses, which were completely washed away in the floods. The families living there have made a number of temporary accommodations.  We have been advised that one of the walls of the local church has subsided as a consequence of the floods and the local school is currently out of action.  Families have put their children to work while the Government School has been closed to earn extra income to support the rebuilding of their homes and lost possessions.   The BPCA is very disturbed that the local school which serves a very poor community, has yet to set a date for a return to provision of learning. 

We have supplied medicinal supplies to 6 victims of Dengue fever which is causing much anxiety in the area. The BPCA intends to continue  our appeal while we support theses families rebuild their lives and desperately fight the onset of Dengue fever, which is a known killer in these parts.  We intend to purchase some more medical supplies, food and water tablets to support these families through their difficult time.

If you would like to donate to our relief work our bank details are as follows:

Sort Code: 20-67-90

Account number: 63468976

Bank: Barclays

Alternatively if you would like to send a one of donation please use the pay-pal facility on the top right hand corner of our blog, or simply send a cheque made payable to the  BPCA  to our address;  57 Green Lane, Ilford, Essex, IG1 1XG.

With your support we hope to change the lives of millions of Christians in Pakistan.

Christians gather to seek help towards a new wall for their church.

St Paul's Church Narowal, may not be very attractive but certainly has fervent support form the local community, who have expressed a desire for it to be repaired to its original state.

Repairs underway after flooding leaves homes unliveable

Some of the food gifts provided to affected residents.  The packages included; cooking oil, chappati flour, sugar, rice, pulses and money towards medical supplies for Dinghy fever - for those who had contracted the illness.

A grateful mother receives her food packages from Mr Yousaf Arman.

A father receives food packages for his family.

A young family receive food packages.

Food gifts were distributed at the house of a local Christian landlord.

A visit to the village highlighted the squalor these Christians face daily and the destruction caused by flooding.

Useful items had to be disposed of due to flood damage.

A very makeshift home provides little security or privacy to the affected families.

Flood damage washed away a mud home, but repairs have started on the external wall.

A young child put to work carrying farm produce on a donkey, to earn extra income while his school is shut.

Christians threatened with death, kidnapped, accused of gang, starved over inter-faith elopement

From VOP Christians (Facebook)

In consistency with details, forty Christian families in Toba Tek Singh are being harassed by the local Muslims as a result of a 17 year old Muslim girl Rabia elopement with a 20 year old Christian boy Azeem. The Muslim neighbours and landlords in their vengeance are refusing to hire local Christians for daily chores in their fields. What’s more, the enraged Muslim community has charged the local Christians of gang rape.
As stated by a local activist,” The Christians families risk starvation.”
According to details, Azeem eloped with Rabia on the evening of July 27. Both were residents of Chak (village) 375 JB, district Toba Tek Singh, about 15 kilometres from Gojra.
Chak 375 JB comprises of about 40 Christian families and 500 Muslim families. As a norm arranged marriages are still usually the rules with rural communities in Pakistan, young couples often elope. However, this incident is not parallel to an of such ordinary cases as it has evoked religious sentiments causing nuisance to local Christian families in the village.
As soon as the news of their run off spread masses came out onto the road and started firing. They subsequently, made a frenzied search for the missing couple in the fields and then returning to the houses of local Christians. The mob stormed in their houses and threatened the Christians that,” They would take their all young women along with them to humiliate them. Moreover, they would set their houses on fire and banish them all from the village.”
The mob then resorted to take along Azeem’s three sisters, and their mother as revenge. ”They hit the door with the butts of their guns and forcibly entered in the house. They started beating my father and called us names,” 18-year-old sister said. Then they dragged two of Azeem’s sisters out of the house and took them to a farmhouse.
“Dozens of men were present there. They hurled abuse at us but when some men started indecently touching us, a few of the elderly men objected to it, so they refrained from sexually assaulting us,” added the younger sister.
“We remained tied there until the next day without food and water,” she said.“The following day, a village council (panchayyat) decided that the Christian girls would be returned to the family, and in exchange Rabia would return to her father. The council also decided that Azeem would no more live in the village. Whereas, Azeem’s father agreed to all these conditions,” witnesses report.
However, despite an apparent settlement the Muslim group then registered a petition in the court for the registration of a case alleging that,” Azeem and four of his family members had forcibly abducted Rabiaand gang raped her.”
Aware of the seriousness of threats, the local Christians filed a petition before the Toba Tek Singh Additional Sessions judge and requested an order to the police of Saddar Police Station to register an FIR against the Muslim group for threatening to kill them. The judge issued an order instantly, directing the police to register a case against named group.
“Ever since, the police have been striving for a compromise deal between the Christians and the Muslim group. Even if the legal matter was resolved, the social boycott still continued. Almost all the Christians are poor and illiterate, and are hired by the Muslim landlords in their fields on a daily wage. They are also facing a shortage of food because of the boycott,” said Munir Gill, a social activist of the village

16 year old girl gang raped and forcibly married by neighbours

A 16-year-old Christian from Lahore was allegedly abducted, gang-raped and forcibly converted to Islam before being forced to marry a Muslim last month. When she and her family reported the case to police, they were insulted and harassed, although a case was registered.

Release partner Sharing Life Ministry Pakistan (SLMP), who are supporting ‘E’ and her family and pursuing justice for them through the courts, say the teenager and her relatives have received threats. Her alleged attackers are neighbours well known to the family.

Last Saturday, SLMP led hundreds of Christians in a peaceful demonstration outside the Lahore Press Club, demanding justice for E and protesting against police bias in the case. A judge has since summoned police and suspects involved in the case to appear in court on Monday.

Source

8 year old Christian boy raped by Muslim man.

Pakpattan, Punjab; September 8, 2013. (PCP) In Pakistan where Christian and Hindu women are abducted and sold as sex-slaves by Muslims, now Christian male children are not safe now.

On September 7, 2013, when a Christian student of grade 4th Zubair Salamat aged 8 years was going to school when a Muslim man kidnapped him and forcibly took him in his cattle shed and committed sodomy with him.

Rao Mohammad Waqas, child rapist left Zubair Salamat unconscious in his shed from where some people took him to District Headquarters Hospital Pakpattan.

Mr. Javed Sahotra advocate along with pastors Ayub, Yaqoob Amanat and other Christian community members protested and condemned this brutal act and visited police station Farid Nagar Pakpattan to lodge First Information Report FIR against Muslim Child rapist.

The police filed FIR and arrested Mohammad Waqas for further investigation.

Source Pakistan Christian post

Obama’s Machiavellian Moment

Joseph Loconte

Posted: 09/05/2013 3:47 pm

President Obama's plan to launch a military strike against Syria because of its deadly use of chemical weapons signals a moment of both clarity and contradiction.

Mr. Obama came to office vowing that the United States would not act "unilaterally" and without United Nations support -- which is exactly what will happen if Congress approves U.S. military intervention next week. His promises to elevate diplomacy in U.S. foreign policy earned him the Nobel Peace Prize -- yet he has failed even to persuade Great Britain, America's most reliable ally, to help uphold an international moral norm banning the use of these weapons. The president who once advocated a foreign policy befitting Mother Teresa has turned instead to Machiavelli: A spasm of political realism has seized the White House, and not a moment too soon.

This year, in fact, marks the 500th anniversary of the publication of Machiavelli's The Prince, a work that speaks with special urgency in our own day. Europe's emerging nation-states of the 16th century were vying for influence over Italy's quarrelsome city-states. As a result, Machiavelli's world, his beloved Florence, was not so different from our own: There were wars and rumors of wars, assassinations, social unrest, and the collusion of unscrupulous rulers with corrupted religion.

Although scholars debate Machiavelli's true intentions, there can be little doubt that The Prince was an effort to help achieve political and social stability. This could only be accomplished, Machiavelli argued, through a style of statecraft that was unsentimental about human nature. "A man who wants to make a profession of goodness in everything," he wrote, "is bound to come to ruin among so many who are not good."

A prince, especially an inexperienced one, must be ready to choose violence over mercy if violence is required to restore order, Machiavelli warned, or else the forces of barbarism will overwhelm him and his political regime: "He will be more merciful than those who, because of too much mercy, allow disorders to continue, from which spring killing and plundering, for these usually harm the whole community."

Apply that principle to the crisis in Syria: Mr. Obama's feeble attempts to broker a peace agreement between the government and rebel forces -- despite the documented atrocities and chemical attacks against civilians -- have only emboldened the regime. What else explains Bashar al-Assad's breathtaking decision to launch this latest massive chemical weapons assault at the very moment that UN weapons inspectors were in Damascus?

A once-powerful diplomat who fell from grace, Machiavelli is viewed today as the ultimate political realist, the thinker who divorced politics from morality. Yet he saw firsthand how weak and naïve rulers succumbed to violent and ambitious men. He observed the pious pretenses of the Catholic clergy, who manipulated politicians to serve their own will to power. Europe's political leaders, despite their Christian heritage, had mostly turned their backs on civic virtue when The Prince went to press.

For Machiavelli, the good intentions of a statesman were not enough. As he liked to put it, "si guarda al fine" -- one looks at the outcome. It can be argued that what Machiavelli ultimately sought was a more just and stable society. Quite often, he believed, the only way to achieve it was through pragmatism, shrewdness, deception, and ruthlessness. This is probably what Machiavelli had in mind when he famously wrote that "it is much safer to be feared than to be loved if one of the two has to be lacking."

A fair judgment of Mr. Obama is that he has sought to be loved by the international community, even by nations that threaten the interests of the United States. From Moscow to Mesopotamia, that policy is in tatters.

Thus, the crisis in Syria -- a moral and religious crisis -- seems to have delivered a dose of realism. Repudiating the foreign policy promises that got him elected, Mr. Obama is prepared to go to war over the objections of the UN Security Council, without the majority support of the American people, without a NATO mandate, without an international coalition of any kind. Is he right to do so?

Machiavelli was keen to distance himself from those who had "imagined republics and principalities for themselves which have never been seen or known to exist in reality." Mr. Obama has spent much of his administration engaged in this brand of imaginative thinking -- hoping that international peace, security, and human rights could flourish without a demonstration of American military strength and leadership. Instead, he has strengthened the hand of our enemies and turned potential allies into cynics. "Obama is full of talk," Uma Hama, a wife and mother in the Syrian city of Homs told a reporter. "He's so weak and useless."

Mr. Obama's beatific vision has collided with the images of the bodies of children, scores of them, cold as stone, wrapped in sheets and lying side by side on the floor of a hospital outside Damascus. Perhaps it is time to give Machiavelli his due.

Joseph Loconte, PhD, is an associate professor of history at the King's College in New York City and the author of Gospel of Liberty: John Locke and the Struggle for Religious Freedom in the West (Lexington Press, forthcoming).