Mahdi Darius NAZEMROAYA
Historically, the Levant is the birthplace of Christianity and the
oldest Christian communities have lived in it and the entire Fertile
Crescent since the start of Christian history. Early Christian called
themselves followers or people of «the Way» before they adopted the term
Christian; in Arabic their antiquated name would be «Ahl Al-Deen». [1]
Traces of this original name are also available in the New Testament of
the Bible and can be read in John 14:5-7, Acts 9:1-2, Acts 24:4 and 14.
From the Fertile Crescent these Christian communities spread across
Africa, Asia, and Europe. Since that time the ancient communities of
Christians, many of which still use the Syriac dialects of Aramaic in
their churches, have been an integral and important part of the social
fabrics of the pluralistic societies of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq,
Turkey, and Iran. Nevertheless, the Christians of the Levant and Iraq
are now in the cross-hairs.
Deceit and mischief has been at play. It is no coincidence that
Egyptian Christians were attacked at the same time as the South Sudan
Referendum, which was supposed to signal a split between the Muslims in
Khartoum and the Christians and animists in Juba. Nor is it an accident
that Iraq’s Christian, one of the oldest Christian communities in the
world, began to face a modern exodus, leaving their homes and ancestral
homeland in Iraq in 2003. Mysterious groups targeted both them and
Palestinian refugees… Coinciding with the exodus of Iraqi Christians,
which occurred under the watchful eyes of US and British military
forces, the neighborhoods in Baghdad became sectarian as Shiite Muslims
and Sunni Muslims were forced by violence and death squads to form
sectarian enclaves. This is all tied to US and Israeli project of
redrawing the map.
The Christian communities of the Levant and Iraq have long distrusted
the US government for its support of Israel, the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia, and fanatical militants with anti-Christian leanings. Lebanon’s
Christians have also been weary of US support for Israeli expansion and
ideas about resettling Palestinians into Lebanon. There is also a widely
held belief that the US and Israel have been involved in a policy to
remove or «purge» the Christians from Iraq and the Levant in some type
of Zionist-linked resettlement plan. Since the US-supported
anti-government fighters started targeting Christian Syrians, there has
been renewed talk about a Christian exodus in the Middle East centering
on Washington’s war on Syria.
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