Mother Agnes-Mariam of the Cross Higumen of Saint James the Mangled Monastery
Many are predicting the end of Christianity on the land of the divine revelation. The Byzantine Empire (313 -1452) has fallen, the Crusaders were banished. The golden eras of the Omayyad (661-750) or the Abasside (750 -1517) Caliphates has been eclipsed by betrayal and invasions. The Oriental Question remains vivid. The struggle between foreign States continues on the land of Abraham.
Instead of Protectorates or Colonies, the International players, are today engineering the chaos, activating the dark shadows of the clash of civilization and manipulating ad nauseam false flags, hoax and casus belli to provoke their desired geopolitical transformations. Today we experience attempts to substitute a refined and millenary civilizing cross cutting between the Ancient world, Judaism, Christianity and Islam in their best declinations with a barbarian hybrid product that debases religions to use them as a tool of destruction, of discrimination and of hatred.
The hegemony of the Ottomans has broken away, concluded as it was by terrible genocides where Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks where heartlessly slaughtered (1915) but whose tragedy was not really acknowledge. By then two forces were molding the Arabic world and they are incompatible: on one hand the Arabic Renaissance (17th – 20th century) and on the other hand the Muslim Brotherhood (1928 -). One is inclusive and the other is exclusive, politicizing some Islamic arguments.
The Pan Arab ideologies either disavowed both or manipulate both to build a society exclusively on ideology. And they failed because they did not have the spirituality to bypass rivalry. Those who, seeing the repeated casus belli (massacres, beheadings, burnings and destructions), believe in the reality and authenticity of such a beast are still under the effects of the orchestrated propaganda. No, one hundred no, the problem is not between Islam and Christianity or Islam and Judaïsm and the clash of civilization is not a matter of religions that are incompatibles. The incompatibility is artificial and is induced by political maneuvers.
All over the Middle East and North Africa moderate Muslims have paid their moderation with their lives tens of time more than Christians and eminent Jewish scholars disavowed the excesses of Zionism. The survival of Christians who is now deplored with crocodile’s tears and melodramatic decisions of the last hour, is not linked to religious affairs, it is subdued to politics that can be subdued to hidden God Fathers. Politics can redress and politics can subvert.
This is the big challenge and the responsibility of the International Community and that of the High Commission for Human Rights. Ambiguity or selectivity in the approach of gross human rights violations is destructive and cannot remain without accountability. How will there be accountability when facts are biased by the International tool that was created to implement accountability? I mean the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic that on 5 February 2015 published another deceitful report addressed to the Human Rights Council in session from 2 to 27 March 2015.
We have to diagnose the tumor to know how to excerpt it. In this venerable precinct I lament the fact that our region, otherwise cradle of civilization and source of heavenly wisdom, has became the Bermuda Triangle where the International laws disappear and Human Rights are swallowed and systematically bypassed by enigmatic maneuvers of international players. Ever more sophisticated and cruel ways are used to deceive the international opinion.
No care is given to the horrendous collateral damages that are afflicted to innocents in an unprecedented way. The camouflage is becoming an unscrupulous obsession. Even the international NGO’s and religious authorities regrettably fall into the trap of believing the stories transmitted by the international players and the mainstream media that report only one part of the truth.
Oriental Christians want to represent the values of moderation, social unity, pluralism and tolerance. They always represented a factor of cohesion for their own societies. Nevertheless their openness upsets those entities that are hostile to a pluralistic society in Orient.
In Saint James the Mangled monastery we live in a region where 90% of the inhabitants are former Christians converted by will or by necessity to Islam. We lived without the minor problem. Like in the Lebanese Mountains in 1860 the religious discord was only the pretext or the alibi and politics the motor. The rich fabric of the oriental social tissue is endangered but still resist. In the north shore of the Khabour river Kurds and Arabs helped Assyrians to resist then to flee and finally to be redeemed from their abductors. Humanity is greater than religious animosity.
While in the fertile Crescent different cultures, religions and ethnic groups used to live together in peace, respect and harmony and mutual fecundation, some geopolitical architects think that to stay in control of the region it is worthy to torn out the social tissue, segregate populations and redistribute them on an ethnical or religious basis. The transformation of a political strife into an artificially induced sectarian war is generating the worst abuses that amount to crimes against humanity. We are not afraid by the diverse mutation of the perpetrators: let them be presented as honorable rebels of the FSA, al Qaeda affiliates or ISIS barbarians and ….who knows who’s next in the plans of the chaos’ engineering? May be some aliens?
We are afraid from those who create them, feed them, command them and destroy them randomly, remaining themselves safely in the darkness. But history and divine judgment will unveil and chastise. War on terror has been launched with an international consensus. Important resolutions have been taken in the United Nations to stop financing terrorists, stop arming them and organize an international coalition to defeat them (resolutions n°1170, 2178, 2199). We ask to apply them immediately with the utmost seriousness safeguarding the sovereignty of the countries where the strikes are launched so that the operations are done with the approval of the Iraqi and the Syrian Governments.
On the other hand, yes there are issues that we have, once for all, to address if we really want to support freedom in the Arab world. While cataclysmic interventions are justified by the chaos engineers with the motivation to change regimes or to eradicate a fire that their selves have ignited, little is done to promote essential and elementary rights in large swaps of the Arabic world: 1. In the Arabic countries, except Lebanon, freedom of consciousness is still limited for Christianity and thus Christians are under inequality of chances.
I could not enter into Saudi Arabia with my cross and Bible, nor could we build churches.
2. Non Muslims are still subjects to the Dhimmis status that has never been reviewed nor adapted nor was it ever condemned by the Human Rights Council as was the case for Anti Semitism, Apartheid or Homophobia. It is time!
3. Christians have always abided to the concept of State. They support the ruling authority as long as it is legitimate because they wish to enjoy the security of the Law. They were accused in an ugly manner to stand with the dictator and thus were designated as targets for political retaliation. Human rights are above politics and concede to anyone the freedom of choice. Thus political discrimination is as dangerous as the religious one.
4. When the Government of a country is illegally declared illegal what is the alternative? Should this country be left to chaos and vacuum? When the State is demonized and the floor is left to terrorists…what can we expect? To consider the legitimate army and the terrorists as equal is to leave the citizens to themselves. The war on terror cannot be carried out without the active involvement of the Governments that are recognized by the United Nations.
5. Our prelates consider that the war on terror is biased. How to fight an evil that we nourish? Stop opening borders to terrorists, stop allowing their financing, stop arming them. And yes, the beast will vanish! Peace has requisites let us provide them. Meanwhile, there will be a lot of distress and the death, scattering and misery of thousands of innocents. Let us work together to make a breakthrough.
Thank you !