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When I went into Old Homs just days after Bashar al-Assad’s regime regained it from the rebels in June of 2014, there was not a stray cat in the streets. The historic town was all but abandoned, though a few residents had returned to assess damage to their homes and shops. They could be seen a man or two here, a couple there, this one scratching his head, the other sitting on a plastic chair by the curb staring at what used to be his life before the uprising-turned-war. It appeared as if nothing was moving, except for the dust devils.…  Seguir leyendo »

Les chrétiens de Syrie subissent actuellement les effets de cette politique de division sectaire menée par le régime dans le but de consolider sa domination sur le pays. En prétendant protéger les minorités, il a, en fait, instrumentalisé les chrétiens et les autres minorités pour légitimer la violence et les crimes commis contre le peuple syrien dans toutes ses composantes. Cette politique a entraîné les chrétiens dans une spirale sans issue. Ils ont été soit contraints d’émigrer, quittant la terre de leurs ancêtres, soit de rester en Syrie, et d’être intégrés à une machine de mort qui contredit toutes les valeurs de la culture chrétienne.…  Seguir leyendo »

Numerosos occidentales están llegando a Irak y Siria no para unirse a las filas del Estado Islámico —o mejor dicho Daesh, el término que los yihadistas aborrecen—, sino para actuar como instructores o combatientes en diversas formaciones cristianas que luchan contra el avance de los responsables y autores del ataque más cruel y efectivo contra la bimilenaria presencia cristiana en la región desde los tiempos de la primera expansión musulmana a mediados del siglo VII.

No se trata necesariamente de fanáticos religiosos o personas con problemas de integración en sus sociedades, que acuden a la zona de manera semiclandestina, como ocurre con muchos occidentales que se unen a la yihad, sino que publicitan su acción y revelan su identidad, incluyendo entrevistas a medios de comunicación, con el propósito declarado de reunir fondos que sostengan la lucha para evitar la completa desaparición de los cristianos en esa parte del mundo.…  Seguir leyendo »

The Obama administration — with the backing of key Republicans in Congress — is poised to embark on a strategy that entails punitive airstrikes on Syrian government positions and stepped-up lethal aid to moderate elements of the Syrian opposition.

So far, however, the Syrian opposition has been unable to win significant support from the country's ethnic and religious minorities. Without such support, the opposition is unlikely to prevail even with stepped-up U.S. assistance. Moreover, the inability of the Syrian rebels, who are almost all Sunni Muslim Arabs, to win over the country's Kurds, Alawites and Christians raises the question of whether their victory is even desirable.…  Seguir leyendo »

The day begins here with the call to prayer and ends with the roar of gunfire. Syria’s pluralistic society, which once rose above sectarian identity in a region often characterized by a homicidal assertion of religious belief, is now faced with civil disintegration and ethnic cleansing.

In Bab Touma, the Christian quarter of the old city, the magnificently restored Ottoman mansions housing many of the hotels that only two years ago overflowed with Western tourists have become temporary sanctuaries for Syrian minorities fleeing their homes and cities.

A Christian doctor of Palestinian origin huddling with his family of four in a small room in one of the hotels was looking for a way out of the country: “My father came to Syria as a refugee,” he told me.…  Seguir leyendo »

More than a year has elapsed since the United States aligned itself with Syria’s Sunni-dominated opposition and the Middle East’s Sunni powers to overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad. While the United States pursues this goal in the name of the Syrian people, it is clear that its ultimate strategic objective is to render Syria, Shiite Iran’s most important regional ally, useless in its struggle for mastery of the Middle East.

To achieve its goal, the United States is employing economic sanctions, political backing for the Syrian opposition and lethal military support to the Free Syrian Army and other Sunni-dominated armed groups, channeled through Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey — all American allies with considerable democratic deficits, especially in the realm of religious and ethnic minority rights.…  Seguir leyendo »

Religious freedom is the common sense of our era. It is easy to be swept up in the hype. We are told that the guarantee of religious freedom is what stands between us and pre-modern political orders based on tyrannical forms of religious authority that leave women and minorities in the dust. If religious freedom is what you need to be for if you are against the oppression of women and minorities, then who could oppose it? Who could even question it? Religious freedom stands in for the good and the right in many complex, difficult and often violent situations.

Or does it?…  Seguir leyendo »