Christians in Middle East face dilemma to emigrate

December 20, 2010 - 09:33 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - Dismissing calls to leave the region amid increased sectarian attacks, Christians in Syria are heeding their clerics and are holding fast to their communities.

Religious leaders in Syria at a government-sponsored conference called on Christians to remain in the Middle East despite recurring attacks against them, blaming Israel and the West for their suffering.

The appeal was made last week at the opening of the Islamic-Christian Fraternity Conference in Damascus. An annual event, the conference was organized by the Ministry of Islamic Endowments and local Syrian churches.

A terrorist attack against the Our Lady of Deliverance Syriac church in Baghdad in late October which killed 58 Christians weighed heavy on the minds of participants in the Syrian capital. The church raid was the last in a chain of anti-Christian attacks which have dispersed the once thriving Christian community of Iraq.

"I urge Christians of the East, from Palestine and Iraq, to cling to the land of our nation," Patriarch Ignatius Zakka 'Iwas, head of the Syriac Orthodox Church, was quoted as saying by the Kuwaiti daily Al-Rai. "What is happening in Palestine and Iraq is the best proof of attempts by the enemies of good to divide our united house in order to control it and plunder its riches, with the support of Western countries," ‘Iwas added.

But a different message, less defiant and steadfast, came from one of the Church's representatives in Europe.

Archbishop Athanasios Dawood, head of the Syriac Orthodox Church in Great Britain, called on Christians to leave Iraq en mass. In a televised interview with BBC last month, Archbishop Dawood warned that "if (Christians) stay, they will be finished one by one."

According to the State Department's International Religious Freedom Report for 2010, Christians constitute between 8 and 10 percent of Syria's population of 21 million. Christians reside around the urban centers of Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, Hama and Latakia. The largest Christian group is the Greek Orthodox Church, the Media Line reported.