You don’t need to know a word of old Syriac or Aramaean, not a word of Arabic. You don’t need to know the stories of kidnappings, death threats or the desperate flight to the border. You don’t need to know how these people have lived for years in exile on borrowed money, tea, sugar and bread. Iraqi Christians have been killed for being Christian. The survivors now in Beirut and Damascus have walked away from their homes, their history and their country holding on to nothing but their faith.
In Syria and Lebanon they’ve been given refuge. In Syria they can get their passports stamped every three months and remain as legal residents with the right to send their kids to public schools — though not the right to work. In Lebanon they have no legal status, but as long as they stay in the Christian neighbourhoods police leave them alone and they can enroll their kids in school.
For the mostly middle class refugees — many are educated people who once had careers, not jobs — being a refugee is life in limbo, life on hold.
If we Christians are a communion — one body, drinking from one cup — how can we leave them there?
But if we take every Christian refugee out of the Middle East, relocating them into the comfortable suburbs of North American cities and into the bosoms of generous, sympathetic Roman Catholic parishes, have we left a hole in the body of Christ? If we fill out the refugee sponsorship forms, have we simply helped the sectarian hate mongers and the armed mujahedeen cleanse their territories of Christians?
“The persecution and the killing, it’s unbelievable. Why is the West so silent?” asked Assyrian Church of the East Archbishop Meelis Zaia. “The solution is not finding them a new land in Canada or America.”
‘We do have a witness to bear,’ but voice must be united
The Eastern churches are not asking Western churches to rescue their people by taking them away.
It would be wrong to think we’re ever going to resettle all the Iraqi refugees in Europe, North America and Australia, or even just the Christian portion of this enormous refugee population.
“The problem is that the resettlement needs will never be met, despite the generosity of the resettlement communities,” said UNHCR Damascus representative Renata Dubini. “We will not be able to resettle 160,000 persons in the next four years. It will not be possible.”
For now, the refugees along Za Aytiryya in Beirut, and in the Geramana neighbourhood of Damascus, are quite sure that whether or not resettlement will solve the refugee problem in general, it’s the only solution for them and their families.
“Just give me a chance to resettle somewhere, to find a real life,” pleaded Hanah Salumi, a widow surviving alone in Damascus with her four children. “I know that’s very difficult for the Church, but I have nothing else to ask for.”
But Salumi will probably never be resettled in the West. As much as she fears returning to Iraq she’s had no specific threat against her. Her husband died in a car crash. Though she’s too traumatized to even think about going back, she doesn’t meet the basic criteria to be considered for resettlement in Canada or anywhere else.
Can we give her and her children a real life right now, where they are?
When we’ve finished filling out our refugee sponsorship forms we won’t have done anything for Salumi and her children. Nor will we have done anything to sustain Christianity in the land that first witnessed to the joy of life in Christ.
“There should not be an effort to empty the region of Christians in order to protect the Christians. It’s really counterproductive,” said political scientist Oussama Safa, director of the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies. “This is forcing a change in the nature of the region. This region has always been Arab with Muslims and Christians and it should remain as such.”
But for Christianity to survive in the Middle East it needs a different kind of Middle East. Iraq is only the most naked example of how the region has been and is being carved up into sectarian and ethnic cantons — fiefdoms that can be manipulated and controlled by political powers married to military capability. In Iraq’s case, there’s some hope democracy (not just voting but a free press and an open process of government) may break the pattern. But it hasn’t happened yet.
If there ever will be such a thing as a democratic Middle East, it’s going to depend on the full participation of Christians, Muslims and everybody else in society. As North American bishops, including Ottawa’s Archbishop Terry Prendergast, tour the region this month they should be talking about how we North Americans can help Middle Eastern Christians push their societies toward democracy.
When the world’s bishops meet for a synod in Rome Oct. 10 to 24 to discuss the Middle East they should crack open their copies of Gaudium et Spes and remember how the church intends Christians to follow Christ’s incarnation in the world — in their own time and in their own societies.
“(North American bishops) should encourage Iraqi Christians to stay in Iraq, or go back to Iraq and take part in politics,” said Safa.
It’s not that Safa doesn’t appreciate the peril such a proposal entails for the average Christian refugee.
“There is decidedly a wave to make Iraq unlivable for the Christians. What is happening there is direct violence against the Christian community,” he said. “It’s not a political issue there. It’s, you know, blowing up churches and shooting Christians in the streets.”
The politics of violence and cantonization demand an answer, a Christian counter proposal, said Fr. Farid Botros, the pastor of the Chaldean parish of St. Terezia in Damascus.
“Citizenship is the most important thing,” he said.
Christians have to be able to put themselves at the service of their fellow citizens as Christians, even if they are a tiny minority.
“How can we convince the authorities in all this area that Christianity is good and not just use Christians (for political purposes)? How can we convince our people to stay here?” asks Botros.
There are no easy answers in the Middle East, where the idea of citizenship is very recent, said Safa. If there’s going to be democracy in the region, a deeply felt sense of citizenship is a precondition.
“Citizenship is just a passing nuisance. Really, this is more about sectarian loyalties and allegiances. This is more about upward mobility of individuals within their sects, and not within the government or nation,” he said.
“We should talk about citizenship, integration and the contribution of each human being to his or her country,” said Samer Laham, director of ecumenical relations and development for the Greek Orthodox patriarchate of Antioch and All the East. “We have to overcome this dilemma and this complexity that we are a minority, and therefore we have to live all together in a small canton, and then feel insecure all the time, and then to think that we have to leave our home countries.”
Christians can’t defend themselves, or claim their place in the Middle East, by turning inward, said Laham. Christians need to propose themselves to Middle Eastern societies, including Iraq. But that requires some degree of unity among Christians, putting aside rivalries.
To make this more than abstract theory, rich churches of the West must fund education, health care and development projects for all the refugees who won’t be resettled — Christian, Muslim, Yazidi, etc. Those projects could build a sense of citizenship and common purpose across sectarian lines, working from the bottom up.
It’s what the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Damascus already do with their social work and health programs. But the scale is too tiny.
“We also help Muslims. This is Christianity,” said Sr. Therese. “(Our work) for psychological stability and social stability, we need money, projects.”
“You have to encourage people, to give them hope,” said Botros. “Not by speech, not by speech. By actions. We need actions. We need help from others, from the Church in Western countries, from all people who can help us to stay here.”