Lebanese Patriarch Condemns Syrian Uprising

[HuffingtonPost]

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis                

AMMAN, Feb 10 (Reuters) - The head of Lebanon's Maronite  Church evoked his country's long civil war to condemn the  futility of conflict, on the second day of a controversial visit  to Syria's war-ravaged capital Damascus.                

At a Sunday mass broadcast live on Syrian state television,  Patriarch Beshara al-Rai appeared to dismiss the revolt against  President Bashar al-Assad's 13-year rule as not worth the  bloodshed.                

"Everything that is said and demanded in the name of what is  called reform and human rights and democracy is not worth the  spilt blood of an innocent person," said the 72-year-old  patriarch.                

Rai is on the first visit to Syria by a Maronite patriarch  since the official independence of Lebanon in 1943. At a  celebration in a Damascus church to mark the inauguration of a  Syrian Orthodox patriarch, Rai did not refer to Assad directly  but likened the 22-month uprising to the 1975-1990 civil war  that tore apart neighbouring Lebanon.                

"We come during a difficult time while dear Syria is in  pain. We lived in Lebanon this deep wound as a result of futile  wars," Rai told the mass.                

His visit comes as Christians in the region feel under  threat from the rise of fundamentalist Muslim forces. Syria has  about 850,000 Christians, about 4.5 percent of the population,  of which about 400,000 are Catholics of the Syrian, Greek  Melkite, Maronite, Chaldean and Armenian churches.                

Few Christians have taken up arms in the war, which broadly  pits Assad's Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shiites Islam,  against the Sunni Muslim majority.                

Many in the Christian communities feel that the fall of  Assad could open the way to Islamist rule in Syria and  jeopardise their future.                

They point to events in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen  where popular uprisings strengthened the position of Islamists  and provoked fears among liberal Muslims and religious  minorities that their rights would be trampled.                                

CONTROVERSY                

But some Christians expressed concern over Rai's public  appearance in Damascus.                

Bassam Ishaq, head of the Syriac National Council, a  Christian opposition group, said: "Rai publicly supported an  illegitimate regime. He could have sent a deputy to attend the  inauguration and met himself with the heads of other churches to  discuss their fears," Ishaq told Reuters from Amman.                

"Christians can guard their future by playing a part in the  revolt and coming out in support of a democratic Syria of equal  citizenship," he added.                

Some 60,000 people have been killed in the Syrian uprising,  which started as peaceful street demonstrations but turned into  war after authorities fired on protesters with live ammunition.                

The Alawite minority has dominated power in Syria since the  1960s. Assad's late father, President Hafez al-Assad, cemented  the Alawite grip on power by forging intricate alliances with  the Christian ecclesiastical establishment, Sunni clerics and  members of the Sunni merchant class in Damascus and Aleppo.                

The Soviet-style system banned all political opposition -  Hafez al-Assad used ruthless force to crush an Islamist  challenge to his rule in the 1980s - but allowed freedom of  belief for minority faiths.                

Christians played a leading role in the opposition to Assad  family rule, but few have supported the revolt.                

Lebanese President Michel Sleiman said Rai's visit must not  be interpreted politically, describing it as part of the  patriarch's duty to comfort his flock during upheaval.                

But Fares Soueid, an official in the March 14 movement,  Lebanon's largest opposition parliamentary bloc, said Rai did a  disservice to Christians by associating them with Assad.                

"It is akin to the silence of the Catholic church faced with  Nazi atrocities in World War Two," Souaid said.        (Additional reporting by Laila Bassam in Beirut; Editing by  Stephen Powell)

Via: HuffingtonPost