The small city of Al-Suqaylabiyah has long been an indicator of Christian-Muslim relations in Syria. And two days ago, masked militants doused the northern Syrian city’s Christmas tree in petrol and set it alight. The message is clear: Christians beware. Now, Christians all over Syria are nervously watching what happens next in Al-Suqaylabiyah; among other things, places like this are on the front line between two very different conceptions of God.
If you ask Sunday school children to draw a picture of God, you often get two sorts of images. The first is a cloudy scribble, generally pretty abstract and amorphous. It could be fire or a depiction of wind. This is God the unknowable. The second sort of image is of a kindly face, mostly a man with a beard. Sometimes a baby. People have killed each other over this difference, and continue to do so right up to this day. It’s a difference that gets to the theological heart of why Christians in Syria are so nervous about the return of Islamism. This is a Christmas story set against the violence of world events.
Idolatry is probably the number one thought crime in the Hebrew scriptures. God alone is worthy of worship, and to imbue divine status to anything less than God Almighty is a capital offence. “Show them no pity or compassion and do not shield them. But you shall surely kill them; your own hand shall be the first against them to execute them. Stone them to death” as the book Deuteronomy puts it. Judaism and Islam share a profound hostility to any kind of depiction of the divine; for them, the real God is unrepresentable. The second commandment prohibits the representation of God, and representational art is profoundly suspect. So, in many ways, Rothko is the archetypal Jewish artist. And Islam focuses a great deal of its visual aesthetic energy into calligraphy. At the extreme end of this scale are the fighters of Islamic State blowing up statues in Palmyra.
But Christianity works in a completely different way, and because of Christmas. For the mad idea that God is born into the world as a child, and grows up to be a man, introduces the thought that the Almighty has a face. That He has a certain look. And all of a sudden, permission seems to have been given for this look to be reproduced. As the Epistle of Colossians puts it, “Christ is the image of the invisible God”. And with that idea everything changes, especially for artists.
The Arab theologian St John of Damascus did the most to defend the use of images for Orthodox Christianity. St John was an Arab Christian, born in 675, and into a city that only 40 years previously had fallen to the Muslim army. It was here that he defended the use of icons, focusing his argument on the incarnation, the coming of God into the world as flesh. “And the word became flesh and dwelt among us,” he says in the familiar Christmas reading. Suddenly there is something specific you can draw. In fact the whole tradition of Western art, with its representations of the birth of Christ, and of the Cross, owes its existence to a little Syrian monk writing in the seventh century. Long before Islam, Syria was the place of St Paul’s conversion and baptism, one of the great cradles of the Church. And though Christians have been leaving Syria in droves since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011, there is still a significant Christian population there.
In the centre of Damascus, along Straight Street, where St Paul rested after his traumatic conversion, a number of churches cluster together for security. They are all brimming with icons and images, twinkling with gold. These are identity markers for orthodox Christians. Far more than nice decorations, icons speak of the coming of God into the world. Not unlike the Eucharist for Catholics, they are sacramental, and represent what it is to be an Orthodox Christian. But to Islam, these images are an insult. And to radical Muslims of the Islamic State kind, an absolute abomination.
I left Syria in May 2015, and recall being driven at a ridiculous speed through the checkpoint into Lebanon to Beirut airport by a mad Syrian monk who had to get back for a service. It is the closest I have ever felt to death. Uninterested in the police who were attempting to flag him down through various concrete chicanes, he wound down the window to reveal his priestly robes — better than a passport, apparently. The fact that the Syrian police let him through was testament to the kind of relationship the Christian community had built up with Bashar al-Assad and his family. They didn’t like Assad, though they only whispered it, frightened like everyone else. But they were terrified of Islamic State. “Better Assad than ISIS” — I heard this several times. A few weeks after I left, ISIS detonated mines around the 2,000-year-old temples in Palmyra, out in the eastern Syrian desert. Their campaign against the idolatrous culture of the ancients was uninterested in pathetic Western cries of heritage. And now that Assad has gone, the Christian community are secretly terrified that this sort of Islamism is coming for them and their precious icons.
Not every Christian image in the churches of Straight Street is a beautiful icon. The Armenian Orthodox church has a representation of the Armenian Genocide in its courtyard, one of the most gruesome and disturbing images I have ever seen. It recalls the Turkish (then Ottoman) mass murder of its Armenian Christian population during the First World War. During that period, more than one million Armenian Christians were wiped out by the Turkish authorities. Many Armenian Christians were forced to convert to Islam, others were driven into the Syrian desert to die of starvation. This is why what is now Turkey, once a wellspring of Christianity, is now pretty much Christian-free. “Who now remembers the Armenian Genocide?” Hitler once said, as he prepared to copy it in his genocide of Jews. Mostly, we don’t remember. But they do in Damascus. This is where terrified Christians fled from Ottoman bayonets. And Christians on Straight Street keep the memory of those horrors alive to this day.
Will Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, and his Turkish backers, bring liberation as he seems to have promised, or further misery for the Christian community in Damascus? In truth, no one yet knows. For now, a huge Christmas tree is raised in Abbasiya Square in the city centre. The lights are on in Straight Street. Joy to the world. Even the first Christmas was set against dangerous world events, with Matthew telling of Herod ordering a massacre of children. This may feel like an old story to us. It is all too horrifically real to the Christians of Damascus.
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SubscribeMerry Christmas everyone, Giles Fraser included. I understand that you have seen much, but the next time you send a message of hope or good cheer will be the first I have seen from you, sir.
What a terrible holiday focus! What do even suggest, Mr. Fraser, that we do about any of this?
Ive been energized by Giles Fraser’s contributions. Not entertained. Frank admission – I am one of the vast disapora of child sexual abuse survivors and maybe my views on hope have room for improvement. I am thankful that Mr Fraser writes for the present moment for those who have little reason for hope and maybe many others. I am genuinely thankful that Mr Frasers writes.
I’m sorry for what you’ve suffered. May I ask though: Energized in what way, or toward what action?
in re-reading Fraser’s article I see more substance in it, and an implied call for mutual tolerance that at least stops short of killing in the supposed name of God. That’s better than nothing, even if the focus seems to me inimical to the Christmas spirit, or the good news of Jesus of Nazareth.
Sometimes hope is more of a stubborn determination or a willingness, assisted by grace, to see goodness and joy alongside sorrows and horrors. It needn’t be mere naive wishing. I doubt the true spark can come from what I’d call an external source, instead of the kingdom of heaven that is within us. But small comforts may keep us alive and fed; hoping for hope so to speak.
That’s my experience as one who has weathered long seasons of emptiness and anguish, but thankfully not on a major scale for over fifteen years now. I’m glad you have taken some energy from Fraser’s writings. I should not have responded to what I perceive as his negativity with more of the same. Without running the risk of becoming a saint, I could be a lot less hypocritical and more understanding. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
It is a challenge to answer in what way i am energized and towards what action.
I acknowledge that I am not guided to action. I wish I was able to *do* something more. I am no social activist and I am reminded by your response about action that I could be much more supportive of those who are. That might be my aspiration for the new year. One action, one verb, however, is being. Through reading, reflection and inner work – through actively being – I can nurture that “kingdom of heaven that is within”.
I myself am energised based on reading many articles by Giles Fraser, starting with his criticism of inequality re St Pauls, where he long ago held office, during the Occupy movement right through to his last article, where he called on archbishop Welby to step down due to yet another abuse scandal. There is something about the man which fights against the injustice that is suffered by those who hold no power, those who don’t matter, those whose voices are silenced. In short, he gets my vote for righteous anger of the year award.
I was humbled by your reflective reply and want to say thank you as well as wish you well for the new year.
I appreciate your kind and thoughtful response too. You have much more knowledge of Vicar Fraser’s career than I do from over here, across the Atlantic. I seem to be detecting raw anger from him more than righteous defiance. Thanks to your details about his career, I’ll try to receive his articles in a fresh spirit. One of my challenges for the new year must be to stop expecting people to like or get energized by the same things as me. I accept that sort of difference much better than I did when younger, but too often more so in the abstract than in the way I act toward those who differ or disagree. Cheers and best wishes.
Christian populations of every Muslim country has dropped drastically over the last century, to almost nothing in Egypt, Syria, and yes, Turkey, that Muslim nation that brims with righteous rage against the bad things that Israel apparently does. In Israel alone, do the Christians worship in safety and grow in number. May God bless the God-fearing and those who are good of heart …
I think Copts are about a third in Egypt, and several in the cabinet.
Egyptian censuses have not reported on religion since 2006. Current estimates for Copts are 10% at most.
I think this is a very good and important article.
People in the west really need to know this kind of history before allowing Muslims to settle here. I wonder if pro-palastinian demonstrators are aware of this aspect of the people they are supporting?
They’re not interested in the Palestinians. It’s only hatred of Jews that motivates them.
Not just the Jews
They’re not even very interested in that… it’s more about themselves and their obsession about feeling good about themselves via moral superiority.
The progressive outrage-ariti are not particularly worried about which cause they champion … it just has to be topical, in vogue and must have a clear victim-oppressor narrative.
At the end of 2010 I was on sabbatical study in Syria where I found over 90% of Syrians, especially, women, desperate for the West (US, Saudi, Qatar, etc) to stay out of Syria where the Assads were the ONLY bulwark against an exclusive and vicious Islamic theocracy: ‘We have seen the results of your humanitarian intervention to bring democracy in Iraq and we want none of it here. You do not understand the local realities.’ The West’s aim was always to destabilise the countries around Israel and for the US military industrial complex to profit by furthering the conveniently named ‘war on terror’. One could spot the infiltrators already present in Homs, Hama, Aleppo, etc by their boots, their cigarette packets, and their dialects or absence of Arabic. Syrian bishops had pleaded with our government and with Lambeth Palace not to support the incursion but neither would listen. When I returned to the UK in 2011 and watched and heard the egregious misrepresentations of the situation in the media I wrote to William Hague. The reply was the West’s totally self- interested line, ‘We are supporting our US colleagues in liberating Syria from a barbarous dictator.’ Those on the boards of the US companies and the US Zionists care only about their profits and the survival of the secular atheist state of Israel. Those who support Israel – and one should note this does not include orthodox religious Jews, only their self-styled ‘Liberal’ and ‘culturally Jewish’ contemporaries whose moral compass is so much in need of reorientation – should be ashamed of themselves for the death and destruction they have caused. The motives of AIPAC and their catspaws in the US Administrations, whether Republican or Democrat, I can understand; but it has always astounded me how so-called ‘Christian’ Zionists in the US can continue, in spite of the overwhelming evidence of apartheid and genocide, to support the secular atheist nationalism of an expansionist, colonialist oppressor of their brothers and sisters in Christ.
I worked in northeast Syria in 1995 and 97.
The evidence of a harsh totalitarian socialist government was everywhere. The bureaucracy, the inefficiency, the secret police.
But Christians and Jews existed relatively unmolested.
Women were visible and thriving, their heads and faces uncovered in the cities and towns.
(Not so much in the Bedouin villages)
The dark open secret was that Islamic fundamentalists were oppressed and imprisoned. As much as people hated the Assad regime, they were happy with this fact.
Then came that so-called “Spring”.
Yes indeed. Two things though. First, that was under Assad father; Bashir was trying to introduce reforms before the misnamed ‘Spring’ against the advice of his father’s old guard. Secondly, one cannot be soft with committed Islamists. Yes, it was the ‘dark secret’ but the alternative was darker by far as subsequent events plainly showed. Also, I would love to know why 8 people gave my factually correct comment a thumbs down. Is it because they have failed or do not wish to face up to geopolitical realities?
Because your accusations of apartheid and genocide are anything but facts.
So the Arab Spring was because of Israel? So Israel wanted to destabilize Syria, because it prefers an undeterrable Islamist state over a deterred Assad dictatorship? So Israel, the size of New Jersey, that gave back the Sinai to Egypt and Gaza to the Palestinians, is expansionist? So the return of Jews to their ancestral homeland is colonialism? So Israel is not the only state in the ME where Christians are thriving? Yes, right …
Well, I guess that if it soothes you to think that “zionists” (not Jews, mind you) are the ones behind every evil under the sun, and that if only secular atheist Israel was to disappear (something Israelis are well on their way to achieving by themselves, alas), humanity would be redeemed – then pesky facts don’t matter.
I suggest you read the facts from CIA, the State Dept, the Red Cross, MSF, and listen to Mearsheimer, Sachs, and Finkelstein rather than swallow your own propaganda because you cannot face up to the facts. I KNOW, I was there; you weren’t. How does your moral compass allow you to row in with the Israel loving supremacist billionaires on Wall Street? You and Ruri should do some research!
So you were in Syria and you are listening to Mearsheimer, Sachs, and Finkelstein (so do I) and therefore “YOU KNOW” that Israel is behind each and every evil on the face of the earth … everyone else is just an innocent victim of the “Israel loving supremacist billionaires on Wall Street” … and these, of course, are facts, not propaganda …
This is an interesting, and not-so-new, theology. It allows you to relieve yourself of having to examine what you could do to make the world better. If it is all due to these devilish fiends, then eliminating them is all that’s needed.
The problem with living in such a fantasy world is that reality has a way of biting back. This is what all the antisemites eventually learn. Unfortunately, not before causing untold harm to Jews and to non-Jews.
Well-said, but the futility on our side is that our geopolitical strategists adhere to an ideology as absolutist and devoid of humanity as the Islamists.
The future of Christianity in the Middle East looks grim.
The question is will this country follow suit
Christians …Arabic speaking ones….Arameans, Armenians, the Philippine workers on kibbutz….all are openly praying and thriving in Israel. If the Guardian can print an article on allegedly one Haredi Jew who allegedly spit on a Christian …it’s big new above the fold..and NY Times too. If only NY Times can print a full page story on the burning of a Christmas tree in Israel…how happy would that make Raja Abdulraham and Patrick Kingsley! The “as a Jews” would be out protesting the genocide of Christians in Israel…such fun for Christmas time.
“Show them no pity or compassion and do not shield them. But you shall surely kill them; your own hand shall be the first against them to execute them. Stone them to death” as the book Deuteronomy puts it.
These words are pulled from one of the foundational books that underpin Judaism, Islam and Christianity. We don’t even need to get into what happened to the people who inhabited the ‘promised land’ when Joshua and God’s chosen ones arrived although that story is a real humdinger!
Who could possibly doubt that these are the words of the one true God? The God that created the universe. The God that created the earth and brought forth all life on it (including his worshippers).
Who could possibly doubt the truthfulness of these foundational texts?
The killing will commence there, soon. As it does everywhere these three ‘faiths’ come into close contact – especially when they do in the Holy Land.
Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy Ramadan.
Have at it.
The holy texts of all sincere religions contain a core of truth, and much that it would have been better to leave out. Yet perhaps we can privilege the words of Jesus on Christmas Day: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her”.
As it is written, these words—plus scrawling on the ground and a presence of authority—saved the life of one woman from a vengeful mob that was raised in a version of the Old Faith.
Islam is very different for multiple complex reasons. We see those play out in realtime across the world today.
Let’s introduce some of that complexity then: Christianity played out in a warlike way in centuries past and it can happen again. There are strains of violent, jealous faith in modern Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism too, evident (for example) in Israel and India.
We can compare percentages and raw numbers, which indeed show present-day Muslims to have more fundamentalists and extremists than other major religions. But warlike origins and practices needn’t prevail among believers, as they do not among Sufis or most mainstream Muslims. In a similar vein, the Chosen People ideology or violent campaigns and outbursts (like Moses’ indiscriminate slaughter of thousands of other Jews for idolatry) do not force, or usually lead to violent zealotry among present-day practicing Jews.
For an instructive look at a blood-spilling version of Christianity, we can look to the state of the faith about 1,400-1,650 years after it was founded—the period Islam began earlier this century. Of course the Islamic world’s theocracies and homicidal/suicidal crusaders must be opposed, from within and without. But those of us who value the better traditions of the West won’t have a strong rational or moral appeal to make from a place either of nihilism, or chauvinistic religiosity.
I think we can see evidence of an underrepresented majority of peaceful and relatively moderate Muslims. Much like Timothy McVeigh and the Westboro Baptist Church, or Luigi Mangione and hordes of online influencers can’t be said to represent (what’s left of) Christendom in any fair or complete way.
It’s strange how the various bad guys we have deposed or helped to depose managed to keep a lid on sectarian tensions.
Syria is likely to join Iraq and Libya as states we have broken or helped to break. And for what?
Yes indeed. I was in Libya when we took Gaddafi out and utterly destroyed the country on a totally dishonest pretext of liberation and democracy … Arabs don’t do democracy … however, in fairness, I’m not sure what passes for democracy here in the West today works very well for us either.
Further, you can’t rule Arabs and be what we would consider a ‘nice guy’ … you would last 20 mins especially if you have to deal with sectarianism as well.
When the Americans leave Iraq soon it will implode faster than a core collapse supernova … every Libyan I know would have Gaddafi back in a heartbeat. But will we learn? I fear not.
Geopolitical strategists and Islamists share one supreme principle: ideas count, people don’t. The cause is higher than the casualties. The Islamists know this. A few Christians in a strange foreign sect? Our cause is sacred. We understand each other.
Christians and Jews are ethnically cleansed everywhere Muslims go. They are now coming to Europe. Giles – why not bring out the logic of your position. Stop Muslim immigration entirely. Eject those who won’t assimilate consciously and full heartedly. And privilege Christians in all cases of asylum. Without a foundation at the urban core of civilization, Christianity will succumb to the violent interloper. This is why St Paul and St Peter went to Rome – and through their martyrdom and hundreds of years of evangelism, the construction of the catacombs….the one true religion was able to transform the west, and through the west the world. Turn our back on this …in the spirirt of what Gad Saad calls suicidal empathy…which is Christianity without Christ….and a world in which all individuals (Imago Dei) matter….will disappear into the rearview mirror. Perhaps at that moment of final eclipse, compelled to where a Burkha and to watch the public beheading of the last remaining Martyrs and Muslim apostates……perhaps at that moment, those ‘kind’ liberal women (and the men in their wake) will have cause to understand what they have thrown away in the most self-harming temper tantrum in history (because that is what woke is)
For goodness sake face the facts! It isn’t war between ‘Islamism’ and Syrian Christians, it’s between Islam and the rest of the, non-Islamic, world.
They’re probably more nervous of being killed by Israeli bombs or having their land annexed by Israeli settlers.
Hardly.
Unlike Western terrorist apologists, they are realistic enough after years of civil war to know that Israel is not the main threat, or even the second or third threat.
To be fair it’s just as bad in London or Brussels … once Islamism is let in the door it grows like a virus. Weak Left/Liberal democracies with their tolerance and apathy have no real defence.
Look at the Middle East 100 years ago and look at it today. The Polish model is the only effective bulwark … too late for the UK or France though unless remigration becomes a reality.
The use of this soft-focus word “Islamism” must stop. It’s Islam, in its purest form, unadulterated by the moderating influence of Christendom, which brought Islam’s worst excesses to heel in the last couple of centuries, until 2001.
Don’t think for one minute that the Muslim enemy that have naively been allowed to corrupt our societies which infect all of Europe want anything less than the annihilation of Christianity here too. The example of the Turkish pogrom is the facsimile of 7/10/23.
Name a school, local authority, supermarket chain, or anything else, that has “banned Christmas”. No one who has ever been into an Asian-owned shop in December will have noticed any “War on Christmas”. But such a war is being waged in Syria.
Backed by NATO Turkey, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham has burned the Christmas tree in predominantly Christian Suqaylabiyah, which was founded by refugees from Ottoman persecution, while the IDF has destroyed the cross at the summit of Mount Hermon specifically in order to declare that what had been the highest point in Syria was now in Israel, which has cancelled Christmas in Bethlehem for another year.
Why is it that 80 years after the smoldering crematoria that the Pope in the Vatican and the Archbishop are so hostile to Jewish self determination and survival? They are among the Christians outside of the Muslim dominated Mid East Arabic speaking Christians that continue to slander and abuse Jews. And preach Palestine supercessionism….the Infant Jesus on keffiyah. SHAME.
For those who still have hope:
.
Germany to open its first anti-Muslim racism reporting center next spring:
.
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/germany-to-open-its-first-anti-muslim-racism-reporting-center-next-spring/3436777
Thank you for this article. Any journalist who can explain in a few clear paragraphs who St John of Damascus was, and the theology of icons, and the Armenian Genocide (plus history of St Paul) deserves an award. Thank you for the kind of writing one doesn’t see very often any longer, Fisk comes to mind.
One thing you can count on is if the Syrian Christians are slaughtered, you won’t hear anything from Pope Francis or other Christian leaders. If they can’t blame the Jews, it doesn’t it doesnt deserve a view.