Religious persecution & Geopolitics (focus Syria)

[Steven Gaal]

Religious persecution & Geopolitics (focus Syria) (please see deep

background at

bottom)

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Can Syria's Christians Survive?

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

http://online.wsj.co...3069060742.html

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Christians threatened by Free Syrian Army seek Government Protection

"Armed Islamist Opposition has murdered more than 200 Christians in the city of Homs"

http://globalresearc...xt=va&aid=31952

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A Nun from Damascus: "We have no trust in these so-called 'revolutionaries'

http://globalresearc...xt=va&aid=32004

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NATO Death Squads Attempt to Ethnically Divide Syria

Refugees fleeing NATO's "Free Syrian Army," not government troops.

http://globalresearc...xt=va&aid=32025

Image: Christians in Syria have been particularly hit hard by what is being described as

"ethnic cleansing," not by Syrian security forces, but by NATO-backed death squads under

the banner of the "Free Syrian Army." The LA Times has been quietly reporting on the tragedy

of Syria's minorities at the hands of the Syrian rebels for months - and indicates that wider

genocide will take place, just as it is now in Libya, should Syria's government collapse under

foreign pressure. ...

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Sectarian slaying: Syrian rebels attack Alawites, Christians - reports

http://globalresearc...xt=va&aid=32266

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New York Times Acknowledges that Syrian Opposition Is Targeting Christians and Other

Minorities

http://globalresearc...xt=va&aid=32217

Why Are Americans Supporting a “Humanitarian” War Where Minorities Are Being Targeted

by Terrorists?

Everyone from the Vatican to priests on the ground in Syria have reported that the Syrian

opposition is persecuting Christians.

Now even the New York Times is starting to report the truth:

Syria’s 2.3 million Christians, constituting about 10 percent of the country’s population, have

generally known a more privileged existence under the Assad dynasty than even the Shiite

Alawi sect to which President Bashar al-Assad belongs.

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As the rebellion became suffused with Sunni militants sympathetic to or affiliated with Al

Qaeda, Christians recoiled.

A churchgoing Syrian told me that he used to see himself primarily as “Syrian” and that

religious identity, in political terms, was an idea that never occurred to him — until an

opposition gang attacked his family earlier this year in Homs. “It’s a label they pinned on us,”

he said. “If their revolution is for everyone, as they keep insisting it is, why are Christians

being targeted? It is because what they are waging is not a struggle for freedom, and it’s

certainly not for everyone.”

As Saudi Arabian arms and money bolster the opposition, the 80,000 Christians who’ve been

“cleansed” from their homes in Hamidiya and Bustan al-Diwan in Homs Province in March by

the Free Syrian Army have gradually given up the prospect of ever returning home.

The rebels’ conduct has prompted at least some Sunnis who had supported the rebels and

once-wavering Syrians to pledge renewed loyalty to Assad. Many who once regarded the

regime as a kleptocracy now view it as the best guarantor of Syria’s endangered pluralism.

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This is the work of the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia,” he added, referring to the ultra

conservative Sunni sect.

Repeated attempts by Free Syrian Army fighters to destroy a shrine to Sayyida Zeinab, the

granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad revered by Shiites, have not yet caused the area’s

Sunni minority to flee — many Shiites here have refused to blame their Sunni neighbors for

the rebels’ crimes.

Over the past week, more than a dozen Syrians — chiefly Alawi and Christian, but also a

handful of Sunnis — affirmed to me their determination to pick up arms to defend Assad.

The seeming indifference of the international community to the worsening condition of

Syria’s religious minorities — and the near total absence of censure of the opposition forces

by the Western governments arrayed against Assad — is breeding a bitter anti-Americanism

among many secular Syrians who see the United States aligning itself with Saudi Arabia, the

fount of Wahhabism, against the Arab world’s most resolutely secular state.

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Washington is aware of the scale of the problem. As early as June 2011, Robert Stephen Ford,

the U.S. ambassador to Syria, briefed his counterparts in Damascus about Al Qaeda’s

penetration of the opposition forces. By still ploughing ahead with its support for Saudi

Arabia’s effort to destabilize Syria, Washington, far from assisting Israel or weakening Iran, is

helping to fuel a humanitarian crisis that will come back to haunt the United States.

The fact that so many Americans – including progressive liberals – still support a

“humanitarian war” where minorities are being targeted and Al Qaeda has somehow become

our closest ally shows the power of modern propaganda.

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from Modern Tokyo Times

http://global-securi...tians-refugees/

It must be stated clearly that Iraqi refugees never fled Damascus when under the full control of the Syrian Army and the leadership of Bashar al-Assad. On the contrary, various faith groups from Iraq were given sanctuary in secular Syria. These refugees in vast numbers fled the vacuum unleashed by America in Iraq. Therefore, Syria under Bashar al-Assad took in Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Shia Muslims, Sunni Muslims, Shabaks, Yazidis, and any Iraqi national fleeing the chaos of this country. Of course, the above refugees did not desire to flee to Saudi Arabia and Turkey. With regards to Turkey this applies to past history related to the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians, Greek Orthodox, Assyrian Christians and other minorities in the early part of the twentieth century.

These refuges also couldn’t flee to Saudi Arabia which is the bastion of “Sunni Islamic fundamentalism” and where women are kept in the shadows. Also, the ethnic cleansing of Orthodox Christians in Cyprus in the middle of the 1970s by Turkey is further evidence of anti-Christian hatred within the institutions of Turkey. Meanwhile turning back to Saudi Arabia it is clear that non-Muslim minorities would not flee to this nation. This applies to Saudi Arabia supporting the killing of apostates and the same nation will not allow one Christian church.

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Deep Background (creating Religious division for geopolitical gain )

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http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/05/070305fa_fact_hersh?currentPage=all

Edited August 11, 2012 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

UPDATE

Published on Aug 30, 2012 by RussiaToday

I saw rebels beheading men for religion' - Syrian cleric