If it weren’t for Israel, we often hear, the Middle East’s lions would all lie down with the lambs. The terrible fate of a Christian community in Syria is a fresh reminder of just how untrue this is.
The place is the northern city of Raqqa. There, an offshoot of al Qaeda, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), has forced local Christians to submit to a treaty that grants them protection in exchange for paying a tax in gold and giving up public displays of their faith. As bad as that is, it clearly beats the other choices: convert to Islam or “face the sword.”
In return for ISIS protection, the Christians cannot renovate churches, display crosses, read Scripture too loudly, perform religious ceremonies outside the church or sell pork or alcohol and must pay a twice-a-year special tax equivalent to hundreds of dollars per individual.
Nor is this an isolated occurrence. Being Arab does not insulate Christians from attack in today’s Middle East. Indeed, such has been the persecution — from Iraq to Egypt and the Palestinian territories to Syria — that ancient Christian communities are fleeing their ancestral homes.
Britain’s former chief rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, calls it “a human tragedy that is going almost unremarked.”
The Syrian conflict is especially tragic because of the iconic role Syria has played in Christian history. It was on the road to Damascus that Paul had his revelation, and it was in Antioch that Christians were first called “Christians.”
Christianity implores its followers to turn the other cheek. It does not mean the world should turn a blind eye.