SAFE AT LAST. A woman who fled the violence in the Iraqi town of Sinjar at a camp in Syria’s northern town of Qamishli.
From CNS, Staff and other sources
AMERICA MAGAZINE, Sept. 15, 2014 - Catholic and Orthodox patriarchs of the Middle East denounced attacks on Christians and called upon the international community to work to eradicate terrorist groups. The patriarchs met on Aug. 27 at the Maronite Catholic patriarchate at Bkerke, north of Beirut, for a special summit to address the crisis in the region.
“The very existence of Christians is at
stake in several Arab countries—notably in Iraq, Syria and Egypt—where
they have been exposed to heinous crimes, forcing them to flee,” the
patriarchs said in a statement after the summit. The church leaders
lamented the indifference of both Islamic authorities and the
international community over attacks against Christians, who have been
in the region for 2,000 years. “What is painful is the absence of a
stance by Islamic authorities, and the international community has not
adopted a strict stance either,” the patriarchs said.
“We call for issuing a fatwa [Islamic
religious ruling] that forbids attacks against others,” they said. “The
international community cannot keep silent about the existence of the
so-called ISIS,” the patriarchs said, referring to the Islamic State.
“They should put an end to all extremist terrorist groups and
criminalize aggression against Christians and their properties.”
The prelates stressed the need to cut off
the sources of terrorism and called on the world’s major powers to
deprive extremist groups of resources by compelling countries financing
them to stop their support. But solutions to the Islamic State crisis
must involve “dealing with the reasons that produced the miseries in the
Middle East,” and harmony must be restored between the components of
these countries, they said.
The church leaders also stressed “the
necessity of working to liberate the towns of Nineveh and facilitate the
return of the displaced to their homes, in addition to ensuring the
security of these towns with local and international guarantees to
prevent displacement.”
Returning to Beirut from a visit to the
Kurdish region of Iraq, Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III
Younan said, “What we, the five patriarchs, saw in Ankawa, Irbil and
other cities of Kurdistan, was something indescribable in terms of the
violation of human rights and the threat of disappearing of various
communities among the vulnerable minorities of Northern Iraq. It is a
pure and simple religious cleansing and attempted genocide.”
Patriarch Younan and Syriac Orthodox
Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II stayed in Iraq for six days after arriving
as part of a delegation of Catholic and Orthodox patriarchs who visited
Irbil to give moral and spiritual support to the beleaguered Iraqis from
the Nineveh Plain. Members of displaced minority groups—Christians,
Yazidis, Shiite Muslims and Shabaks—sought refuge there from their
besieged towns and villages, which fell to Islamic State militants in
early August.
Patriarch Younan said the most-asked
question by many of the Christian refugees was, “Can we ever return?” He
said “no answer could be given” to that fearful question.
A number of Catholic organizations in the
United States have launched public appeals to fund assistance to
Christians and other religious minorities displaced in Iraq and
Syria—among them the Catholic Near East Welfare Association, Jesuit
Relief Service, Knights of Columbus, Catholic Relief Services and Aid to
the Church in Need.
As for the threat to Lebanon from the
Islamic State, particularly in light of the Islamic militants’ incursion
into the country near its border with Syria in early August, the
prelates underscored “the importance of the Lebanese political system
that separates between the religion and the state, and which
acknowledges religious freedoms.”
About 33 percent of Lebanon’s current
population of four million are Christian; the majority are Maronite
Catholics. But that demographic has changed with the flood of refugees
from neighboring Syria, mostly Muslim, who now make up more than a
quarter of Lebanon’s population.
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