''This Is Simply Our Home''

In recent years, around 60-100 Syriac Orthodox families have returned from central Europe to Turkey. Encouraged by changes in the political atmosphere, the minority nonetheless faces a host of problems, from the expropriation of land belonging to a monastery, to a ban on special schools and kindergartens, and also a lack of places of worship in Istanbul.

A sign in Aramaic at the side of the road defiantly bids visitors "Welcome to Kafro" next to the official Turkish sign on which the village is called "Elbeğendi". Here, some 15 kilometres south of Midyat, live 17 Syriac Orthodox families. There are no shops in the village, but there is a café that allegedly serves the only decent pizza in the area.

 

"German is the lingua franca amongst the children in the village," says the pizza maker in flawless German, which he learned while living close to Stuttgart. All of the families here have returned to Kafro after living in Germany and Switzerland, some of them for decades.

 

Among them is also the muhtar, the elected village chief, Aziz Demir, who lived with his family in Zurich and near St. Gallen. "Even if our lives there as Christians were very pleasant, something was still missing," he says on the terrace of his house, where he lives with his wife, from a neighbouring village, and their youngest son, Josef, who attends secondary school in Midyat. With a sweeping gesture beyond the newly landscaped garden out onto the plain, he says "This is simply our home."



 

Urgent need of restoration

The Demirs and the other 16 families all live in new houses, because the buildings of the old village, within site of the new developments, were for the most part destroyed in the clashes between the army and the PKK. As was the old church, which is in urgent need of restoration but still awaits the necessary permits.

 

Land dispute with the Turkish government and Kurdish village leaders: The Mor Gabrial is the oldest surviving Christian monastery in the world. There have been claims that the monastery was built on the grounds of a previous mosque - regardless of the fact that the monastery was founded over 170 tears prior to the birth of Mohammed The inhabitants of Kafro have therefore erected a small chapel with the help of the "Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Württemberg", as the sign next to the entrance indicates. Services only take place here once in a month, however, as the village does not have its own priest. From the roof of the old church, Demir points out the surrounding villages from east to west: "One is Christian, one Arabic, one Kurdish, one Yazidi and then another one Christian: Enhil (in Turkish Yemişli), where Tuma Çelik comes from."

 

Çelik already moved with his family to Istanbul as a ten-year old, in 1974, and then emigrated to Switzerland in 1985. There, he became an activist fighting for the interests of the Syriac Orthodox church. He wrote for Aramaic magazines and was one of the founders of "Suroyo TV", which broadcasts in Aramaic from Sweden. He has been living again mostly in Tur Abdin since 2010.



 

Legal proceedings against Mor Gabriel

Last summer, he founded the first Turkish-Aramaic monthly magazine, Sabro (Hope), which is published by volunteers in Midyat. Also last summer, he launched a website called "We have grown up in this world together", devoted primarily to the legal proceedings against the region's oldest monastery, Mor Gabriel.

 

The Syriac Orthodox Church claims to derive its origin from one of the first Christian communities. It uses Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic spoken by Jesus Christ and his Apostles, as its official and liturgical language. Pictured: Altar in the Curch of Kafro Mor Gabriel was founded in 397. 1,611 years later, a complaint was filed by the surrounding villages alleging that the monastery was illegally occupying land, some of it even located inside the monastery walls and for which the monastery has paid property taxes regularly since 1937. Nevertheless, the courts have been handing down decisions against the monastery since 2008 and have granted around 28 hectares of its land to the Turkish forest ministry; the last judgement was passed in July 2012.

 

Now the only hope is to take the case before the European Court of Human Rights. Erol Dora, the first Syriac Orthodox member of the Turkish parliament, who was elected for the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) in Mardin in 2011 and previously worked as a lawyer for minority foundations, commented: "We as the BDP and as the Assyrian people will do all we can to support the monastery at the international level, because we believe that in this trial we have justice on our side."

 

Just one of many problems

For Çelik, however, Mor Gabriel is but one problem among many: "This is just a small drop in the ocean. Assyrians lived mainly in rural areas, where the land registry system was the least active. That's why so many churches, monasteries and community buildings are not even registered."

 

In Switzerland, he became an activist fighting for the interests of the Syriac Orthodox church: Tuma Çelik Today, the great majority of the Syriac Orthodox faithful lives in Istanbul. Sait Susin, chairman of the Syriac Orthodox Foundation in Istanbul, estimates that about 17,000 of the approximately 20,000 members live in Istanbul. Currently, there is only a single Syriac Orthodox church there, in the trendy district of Beyoglu, which was built in 1844 for the around 40-50 families living in the city at that time. The community, most of whose members now live in Bakirköy, close to Atatürk Airport, therefore also uses Catholic churches for services.

 

In addition, the foundation has been submitting applications for years to build a new church, for which it needs land to be assigned to it by the municipal administration. Last year, the city made two "immoral offers" of land confiscated from Catholic and Greek Orthodox communities. The Syriac Orthodox leaders therefore rejected the offers for the time being. Should the plot in question be returned to the Catholic Church, however, they would be prepared to try to reach an agreement with the Catholic priests to erect a new church next to the Catholic cemetery.

 

"You are not a minority"

But that is not the only problem confronting the Istanbul community. Outside of Tur Abdin, only a minority of its members are fluent in Aramaic. Çelik estimates that "around 3,000 people in Istanbul speak the language, but only about 200 can also read and write it." The foundation had therefore submitted a request to open a kindergarten with instruction in Aramaic. The response of the ministry of education was: "You are not a minority; therefore you cannot teach your children a foreign language."

 

Although Syriac Orthodox Christians are clearly not Muslims and thus should be able to benefit from the minority rights stipulated in the Lausanne Treaty of 1923, the Turkish State has granted these rights thus far only to Greeks, Armenians and Jews, with numerous infringements.

An adjustment of Turkish laws to European minority rights standards, long overdue, would not only solve the problem of the kindergarten, but would also create a modern frame of reference for all the other issues. Nothing revolutionary, just equal rights for all.

 

Ekrem Eddy Güzeldere

Urge Turkey to return Christian Churches

Earlier this year Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Scott Brown (R-MA) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) introduced "Return of Churches" legislation, calling on Turkey to return stolen Christian churches and to end discrimination against surviving Christian communities. A similar measure (H. RES. 306) was adopted by the U.S. House of Representatives in December, 2011.

The recent Turkish Supreme court's decision to confiscate the property owned by the Syriac Orthodox Church Mor (St.) Gabriel monastery and its declaration that Assyrians are "occupiers" is only a continuation of the same Ottoman/ Turkish policies of Genocide and religious persecution of non-Muslim ethnic groups of WWI and before which resulted in the death of over 2 million Armenians, Assyrians and Pontian Greeks and the forced deportation of hundreds of thousands of them.

We ask that you spend less than two minutes today and request that your U.S. Senators co-sponsor and work for the adoption of the "Return of Churches" resolution. Simply type your name below and then input your postal address, email address and send your message to your Senators.

 

Go hear to sign the petition:

 

http://www.causes.com/actions/1671927-urge-turkey-to-return-christian-churches

Christians in Syria Targeted for Kidnapping

Criminal gangs collude with Islamic extremist mercenaries, refugees say.

 

The remains of St. Mary's Church in Homs, Syria

 

 

ISTANBUL (Morning Star News) – In a poor gypsy neighborhood of Istanbul, a Syrian Orthodox refugee from Syria says he worked as a dentist in Aleppo as long as he could after fighting broke out in 2011; he finally fled when lack of food, electricity, water, and constant fear of sniper-fire and kidnapping of Christians made life too dangerous.

 

“Some people would come to my dental office and threaten me with kidnapping,” he says. “I finally had to close my practice.”

 

Living in an unheated house and keeping their voices down for fear of attracting police attention, 20 Syrian Orthodox Christians bundle up in winter jackets, drink Turkish coffee, and discuss the dangers of fleeing war-torn Syria and illegally crossing the border into Turkey. The middle-aged dentist, identified only as Ilyas, says in fluent English that friends and relatives were kidnapped by criminal groups operating freely due to the removal of central government control.

 

The refugee says he paid $6,000 to a smuggler to help him leave and crossed the border while under gunfire from an unknown group. He cannot get legal employment here but works occasionally translating Arabic to Turkish.

 

Another refugee from northern Syria, identified only as 35-year-old Ibrahim, fled when his aunt was kidnapped by a local criminal group. He said criminal group members were colluding with foreign Muslim extremists who have been flooding into the country to fight President Bashar al-Assad and set up an Islamic state. His aunt was eventually ransomed for $6,000.

 

Having crossed into Turkey after paying bribes at the border, Ibrahim worries about his future since Syria is no longer safe for Christians, while local charity groups in Turkey have ignored Syrian Orthodox refugees, he said.

 

“How can we stay in Turkey?” he said. “Nobody gives me a job because they don’t like Arabs, and it would be worse if they knew I were a Christian. Even charity organizations in Turkey don’t assist me when they find out I am a Christian.”

 

These refugees are among the thousands of Syrian Orthodox fleeing to nearby Middle East countries and Europe.

 

Those that flee to Europe face dangers by entrusting themselves to smugglers, who have created a multimillion dollar human trafficking business in the fallout of the war. Christians who stay in Syria risk attacks and executions by extremists. Either way, church leaders and activists fear Syria will soon lose its Christian population.

 

“There is a silent exodus of Christians from Syria,” Nuri Kino, a Swedish journalist of Assyrian background, told Morning Star News. “Unfortunately there are signs that what happened in Iraq is happening here – there are kidnappings, rapes, and YouTube videos put up of people being forcibly converted to Islam.”

 

Before the war, 1.4 million Christians lived in Syria, or 6.3 percent of the population of the Muslim-majority nation, according to Operation World. It is unclear how many remain now.

 

“It’s hell out there in Syria,” Kino said. “The Christians have a lack of faith and hope and are massively fleeing the country. They don’t believe someone is speaking out for them.”

 

Christians in Syria dwell among many other ethnic and religious groups, including Arabs, Kurds, Alawites and Druze. Assyrians are the largest Christian ethnic group. They speak Syriac, a Semitic dialect similar to the spoken language of Jesus, and have been established in the country since Christianity’s beginning.

 

Christians have been vulnerable since the beginning of the civil war that has left 60,000 dead. Unlike ethnic groups, they do not have armed militias to protect themselves and are scattered across the country. As a result, kidnappings of Christians have accelerated due to the perception that they are wealthy and lack armed security.

 

In the city of Hassaké, 50 Christians were kidnapped last month. Most recently, a Christian pharmacist was kidnapped earlier this month and held for a ransom of approximately 11,000 euros.

 

Many of those kidnapped are doctors, lawyers and other professionals, but now the poor are beginning to be kidnapped, Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Hassaké-Nisibi Jacques Behnan Hindo told Fides News Agency.

 

In the wake of such dangers, an intricate human smuggling ring has sprung up to profit off Assyrians fleeing inter-ethnic violence. Kino, who conducted interviews with more than 100 Assyrian refugees, released a report in early February entitled “Between the Barbed Wire” that describes the hardships refugees face and the atrocities Christians encounter in Syria.

 

In one case, smugglers packed a young man named Jacob into a shipping container with 70 other refugees for hours. They traveled four days to Italy in a tiny boat’s cargo hold and were forced to swim for shore a mile off.

 

Despite paying at least $17,000 to the smugglers, the refugees were forced at gunpoint to hike through miles of forest, squeeze into small spaces with little air, and go for days without food or water. Thirty of the 70 drowned since they could not swim after being stranded in a boat in the middle of a river.

 

Most Syrian Christian refugees attempt to reach Sweden, where a large Assyrian community has been established and many have family members. Approximately 30 Assyrians a week come to the Swedish town of Södertälje, 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of Stockholm, and Arabic and Syriac have supplanted Swedish as the lingua franca.

 

Those that do survive the trip and reach Sweden face a life of menial work as laborers even if they come from an educated background, Kino said.

 

“I know of [an Assyrian] doctor in Sweden who is seeking a job as a cleaner in an elderly care [center] while learning Swedish,” he said. “He doesn’t want to do this, but he has to [in order] to provide for his children and give them a safe future.”

 

Christian aid groups and monasteries in nearby countries are natural places for Syria’s Christians to seek refuge. Church leaders in Lebanon and Turkey are overwhelmed with the numbers arriving every day.

 

In Turkey’s southeastern city of Mardin, the Syrian Orthodox Deyrülzafaran Monastery has hosted hundreds of transient immigrants who avoid refugee camps in Turkey for fear of harsh treatment by Syrian Muslims. A refugee in Istanbul who requested anonymity told Morning Star News that he fled the Syrian army – and bypassed the refugee camps – in fear that he would be drafted into fighting for the rebel forces.

 

His aunt, he said, stayed in such a refugee camp and hid her Christian identity. An imam admonished her to return to Syria and commit jihad (Muslim holy war) against state forces, he said.

 

Rebels – Worst Option for Christians

Human rights groups have condemned the attacks against Christians and others as war crimes. Human Rights Watch (HRW) said assailants “deliberately destroyed religious sites” in moves of “unjustified attacks against minority places of worship” after areas had already come under opposition control.

 

According to an HRW reported released on Jan. 23, opposition gunmen raided churches after taking control of the Christian villages of Jdeideh and Ghasaniyeh in December. They broke into the churches, fired shots inside, stole numerous items and looted nearby houses.

 

Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at HRW, said in the report that such attacks are fueling sectarian fears and could drive Christians away from the country. Attacks on religious buildings not used for military purposes are war crimes.

 

“The opposition in Syria should back up its claims that it will uphold minority rights by protecting places of worship, and more generally ensuring that gunmen acting in its name respect civilians and civilian properties,” she said in the report.

 

Christians fear the opposition National Coalition more than Assad’s government. The worst prospect for them would be the rebels taking power, because the main fighting force is Jahdat al-Nusra, an extremist group with an ideology similar to that of al-Qaeda.

 

The civil war evolved out of the 2011 Arab Spring protests against the Syrian Ba’ath Party and decades-long rule of Assad’s family. After troops fired on protesters, these slowly changed into an armed opposition.

 

The Assad family is Alawite, a Shi’ite Islam sect that makes up only 12 percent of the population. They have marginalized Sunni Muslims, which make up three-fourths of the population, leading to sectarian resentment. Many analysts worry that such pent-up tensions will lead to a long, bloody insurgency similar to the Iraq War.

 

Overwhelming Influx

From such violence the refugees flee, with some ending up stranded in Turkey when smugglers lie to them about their final destination. Yakup Atuğ, director of the Syriac Help Foundation in Turkey, recalls assisting 30 refugees who were abandoned by smugglers in Turkey’s port city of Çanakkale.

 

The smugglers had told them they were in Greece.

 

“They were left in a forest in the rain with no money,” Atuğ said. “When the police came, they said, ‘We are Palestinians,’ and were sent to Istanbul to be processed through customs. They would have been deported if it were known they were Syrians.”

 

The smugglers had collected 1,000 euros each from the refugees, who wanted to reach Greece, as entering would facilitate access to the rest of the European Union. They were promised a German passport upon arrival. Instead, the refugees were abandoned in the port city, told it was Greece, and stayed in a rainstorm all night until the threat of severe illness forced them to seek out police.

 

Smugglers are notorious for cheating refugees of all backgrounds and did not target the Assyrians because of their Christian faith, Atuğ said.

 

“If they were Palestinian, they would have done the same,” he said. “They are like the mafia. They will take your old passport and promise to exchange it for a [European] one, only to copy down your address, come to your house armed, and rob everything.”

 

In Lebanon, church leaders are overwhelmed with the influx of Syrians. St. Gabriel’s Monastery in Ajaltoun, 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Beirut, opened up its 75 unheated rooms to 100 refugees. School buildings and other structures are converted into temporary shelters.

 

Christian leaders hope that the refugees will eventually return to their homeland, but many believe it does not appear likely in the near future.

 

Another Arab country is losing its Christian Assyrian minority, said Archdeacon Emanuel Youkhana of the Assyrian Church of the East in an interview with Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.

 

“When it happened in Iraq, nobody believed Syria’s turn would come,” Youkhana told Shea. “Behind the daily reporting about bombs there is an ethno-religious cleansing taking place, and soon Syria can be emptied of its Christians.”

Mardin monastery becomes shelter for Syriac refugees

Vercihan Ziflioğlu

Syriac refugees escaping clashes in Syria are temporarily taking shelter in Mardin’s Deyrülzafaran Monastery before finding a way to a third country, the metropolitan bishop for Diyabakır and Mardin, Saliba Özmen, has told the Daily News.

Deyrülzafaran Monastery is the first Syriac foundation in Turkey to welcome the Syriac refugees, who have been avoiding refugee camps over security concerns.

The Syriac Union Party, Syriac National Council and Turkey Syriac Associations Federation members have recently conducted meetings with Ankara officials, including officials from the prime ministry, Özmen said, adding that Ankara agreed to provide support.

“We told them of our limited resources and we asked for financial support. Ankara promised to help and will soon begin providing financial support,” Özmen said.

Hospitals have also offered to help the monastery with the increasing number of incoming refugees, with the governor’s office working with health service officials to provide assistance.

There is no current need for a camp, according to Özmen, as those who arrive in Turkey then move to countries where they have relatives. “We don’t have the numbers for a camp, and we don’t need one currently.”

Turkey Syriac Associations Federation head Evgil Türker said they will continue to maintain contact with the Mardin Governorship to help refugees.

Syria reportedly has around 300,000 Syriacs within its borders.

Election Day in Armenia

Armenian President Serge Sarkisian, who has overseen a modest economic recovery in his country, was re-elected in a national election on Monday, according to an exit poll.

 

The poll of 19,130 voters conducted by Gallup and other pollsters and carried by ArmNews TV showed Sarkisian winning 58 percent of the ballots. The closest of his six rivals, the American-born Raffi Hovanessian, who was post-Soviet Armenia's first foreign minister, polled 32 percent.

 

Just over 60 percent of Armenia's 2.5 million eligible voters cast ballots in the election for the country's top official, according to the Central Election Commission. Full preliminary results are expected Tuesday.

 

A strong performance by Sarkisian appears to have helped him avoid a runoff, which would be required if no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote.

 

Sarkisian's victory had been widely expected. He has overseen a return to economic growth after years of stagnation, although the former Soviet republic still suffers from widespread poverty. World Bank figures for 2010, the most recent year tallied, show nearly 36 percent of the country living below the national poverty line. Average wages are about $300 a month.

 

The landlocked country's economy is hobbled by the longstanding closure of its borders with Azerbaijan and Turkey, both connected with the occupation by Armenian troops and ethnic Armenian local forces of the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. That conflict shows no signs of imminent resolution despite years of international mediation attempts.

 

The top challenger, Hovanessian, accused Sarkisian of losing the arms race with Azerbaijan. He also contended that billions of dollars have disappeared from the state budget because of corruption under Sarkisian, and emphasized the large number of Armenians leaving the country of 3 million to pursue better opportunities. The outward flow is estimated last year to have been about 3.3 people per 1,000 of the population.

 

Sarkisian's first term in 2008 started traumatically. Within weeks of his election, clashes between police and supporters of Sarkisian's vanquished challenger, Lev Ter-Petrosian, left 10 people dead and more than 250 wounded.

 

But Sarkisian adroitly reduced tensions by talking with critics and allowing opposition protests. The next year, parliament granted a sweeping amnesty to hundreds of people who had been arrested in the post-election violence.

 

This year's presidential campaign lasted only a month, but was packed in drama that included the shooting of one candidate and another contender going on a hunger strike.

Paruir Airikian, the candidate who was shot in the shoulder in a mysterious attack, finished third Monday with 3 percent of the ballot, according to the exit poll, apparently thanks to the outpouring of sympathy for him over the shooting.

 

A fringe candidate, political analyst Andrias Gukasian, has been on a hunger strike outside the national academy of sciences building in central Yerevan since the campaign opened Jan. 21, protesting alleged widespread vote-buying by Sarkisian's party.

 

An interim report on the campaign by the elections-monitoring arm of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe noted that some of Sarkisian's campaign offices are located in government buildings and that "the distinction between campaign activities and state functions appears to be blurred."

Religious symbols: taking faith too far?

By Brooke Anderson

The Daily Star

 

On dashboards, rearview mirrors and car windows are symbols that tell stories of different communities in a small divided country.

 

Owners of the small crosses, Qurans, religious verses, swords and fish symbols say that they are displaying their faith for protection or for a blessing. But those who refuse to profess their faith publicly scoff at it as a sign of sectarianism.

 

“People shouldn’t display religious symbols on their cars. If they do, they should put a Quran and a cross together,” says Ali Saleh, a taxi driver on Hamra Street, waiting for passengers. “The Bible and the Quran both have the same message – to treat people well. I keep my Quran at home.”

 

Fellow driver Abu Ayman has a Quran on his dashboard because, he says, “It gives me protection.”

“Don’t say that,” Saleh says. “People will laugh at us. God doesn’t protect people based on whether or not they have a Quran in their car. Mine is at home.”

 

“Ninety percent of people displaying religious symbols are doing it out of sectarianism,” he adds.

In Lebanon, where sectarian divisions pervaded in the Civil War and even other times of more recent strife, religious symbols serve as both a reminder of what divides Lebanese society as well as a comfort for those seeking solace in their faith.

 

Some people wear symbols of their faith around their neck, while others, more noticeably, plaster it on their cars and trucks, in what sometimes can seem like a competition. About five years ago, a trend among Christians was to plaster a large sticker on their rear window that read “King of Kings.”

Shortly thereafter, a sticker in the same pattern depicting Mecca also started appearing on cars.

 

At the Bible Society, a Christian souvenir shop in Downtown Beirut, Rita Khoury says her customers have various reasons for buying religious symbols. “Some people want to show people they’re Christian when they’re driving through different areas in Lebanon,” she says.

 

“Other people want a symbol to show their faith because if they get into an accident they would want to see a priest in their final moments. We also have a few Muslim customers who buy these as gifts for their Christian friends.”

 

At Nader, a shop that sells prayer beads on Hamra Street, Dima Dakakni, a regular customer, says she has at least 30 sets of prayer beads at home. She started making them at her mosque when she was a child during the war. Her brother likes to display his in his car. “Some people say they’re a blessing or good luck. I used to live in Jordan, and they weren’t as into religious symbols as they are here.”

Precisely because of the prevalence of these symbols in Lebanon, a country largely divided on religious and sectarian lines, secular activist May Abi Samra, who was part of the now-dormant anti-sectarian movement that began around five years ago, worries that they are intended to mean more than just a blessing.

 

“It shows how sectarian Lebanese society is, and it makes me think I don’t want to be like that,” she says. Abi Samra recalls once asking her friend why he put a cross on his rearview mirror. He told her it was “for protection,” to which she responded: “Then why does it have to be so visible?”

Asaad Thebian, who has also been involved in anti-sectarian activism, disagrees with the practice of displaying religious symbols in cars, particularly in taxis, where passengers don’t have the choice as to what they see.

 

“I think in the public vehicles there should be a law that bans using any religious symbol since the vehicle is to be used by different people from various backgrounds and it is not the right of the driver to confiscate their opinions. This also applies to the religious radio stations people listen to,” he says.

“As for private cars, I think it is a [matter of] personal freedom. But I do not agree it is a sign of faith; I think it is rather a sign of lack of faith when a person needs a visual reminder to let them know that God exists.”

 

For Father Tony, a Maronite priest based in Harissa, the question of whether someone should show a religious symbol on their car isn’t clear-cut. For him, it depends on their motivation.

“There are extremists, there are those who show their religion out of fear of God, and those who love their faith and aren’t ashamed of it,” he says.

 

Father Tony believes the third reason is the only justification to show one’s faith. If people decide to display their faith on their car, then they have the responsibility to represent their faith well by not littering and obeying traffic laws.

 

“Obviously people I ask give intrinsic motivations,” says Charles Harb, a psychology professor at the American University of Beirut, who specializes in identity and group dynamics. “But these symbols are also there to declare and perceive someone’s identity with a particular group.

 

“At the same time, there was the reverse trend. You’d see people with stickers on their cars reading, ‘Say no to sectarianism,’” Harb notes, adding that when someone doesn’t display a symbol – particularly in Lebanon, where they’re so prevalent – it’s tantamount to making a statement.

“It’s odd. People are also taking a stand. The absence of a symbol is just as noticeable as the presence of one.”

 

Although he’s not overly concerned with overt displays of religion, Harb, himself a secularist, says, “At the end of the day it’s a symptom of group division. Lebanon is particular because of the presence of multiple sects. In this country, the power and resources are based on sectarian alliance and group identity.”

 

He sees symbols on cars as a much bolder statement than those worn around the neck.

 

“On the car, it’s a bigger statement. Either you’re proselytizing or you’re showing your sectarianism. You’re claiming space, and that’s potent in Lebanon,” he says.

“Imagine what it looks like to someone who’s feeling fear.”

2 priests kidnapped in Syria

To all my family and friends: Please pray for the release of the 2 priests who were kidnapped in Syria by the militants. Please read the story as was told by the catholic news agency.

ASIA/SYRIA - Two priests kidnapped by the rebels. Archbishop Marayati: let us wait to know what they want

Aleppo (Agenzia Fides) - The fate of the two priests Michel Kayyal (Armenian Catholic) and Maher Mahfouz (Greek Orthodox) kidnapped by a group of armed rebels on Saturday, February 9 on the road that leads from Aleppo to Damascus remains unknown. So far the purpose of the seizure is not clear nor the faction of the group of kidnappers, but eloquent details emerge on the dynamics of the kidnapping. "The two priests - the Armenian Catholic Archbishop of Aleppo reports to Fides Agency, Boutros Marayati - were traveling on a public bus, along with many other people. They were heading to the Salesian house in Kafrun, together with the Salesian priest Fr. Charbel. Thirty miles outside of Aleppo, the rebels stopped the vehicle, checked the passengers' documents and then they told only the two priests to get out of the vehicle and brought them away with them right away. They said nothing to the Salesian priest. Before leaving, they said that they would say something about their conditions. But so far family members and all of us have not received any message." Among the priests' relatives and all the Christians of Aleppo, as time goes by, there is growing apprehension. (GV) (Agenzia Fides 12/02/2013).