World leaders need to realise the gravity of the crisis Christians are facing in Syria, and so Barnabas Fund have produced a sample letter* to politicians which Christians in the UK are being encouraged to use to contact their MPs, it was reported in October.
The deliberate targeting of Christians by Islamist rebels within the opposition is an ‘angle’ that the Western media has largely ignored, while Western political leaders, especially from the US, UK and France, are actually backing the side that is intent on destroying the Syrian church.
Courage to change
The difficulty for both the media and political leaders is that they ‘bought’ a particular line on the Syrian uprising that has turned out to be false, and they need to be persuaded to have the courage to change.
The Western ‘line’ on the Syrian conflict is that it has been about the masses rising up against a cruel dictatorial leader in pursuit of democracy and freedom. But, as the war has gone on, it has become increasingly clear that, while this may have been the goal of some revolutionaries at the beginning, the battle against President Bashar al-Assad is now largely being fought by jihadists, many of them foreign, who do not represent the Syrian people and want to create an Islamic state.
The 400,000 Christians among the 2.25 million people trapped in the rebel-held part of Aleppo are experiencing the grim reality of this, and yet this does not make the UK headlines. They have been completely cut off for many months. While Muslims are able to travel in and out freely, Christians trying to leave the besieged areas are stopped at rebel checkpoints. Few supplies are getting in and many are now suffering from malnutrition.
Christian men are kidnapped and/or killed, while women and girls are forced to convert to Islam or else be raped and/or killed.
Syria’s sizeable Christian minority is largely defenceless and unarmed; they are in danger of full-scale genocide in a country where the church has existed for nearly 2,000 years. This terrible prospect can no longer be ignored.
