close-up
Syria

In search
of peace
How will the future of Syria unfold? SIDNEY GRIFFITH, expert in Middle East history and culture, has a clear lens to read this complex situation threatened by a U.S. attack. Following the cue of Pope Francis, he exposes the reasonableness of an alternative to war, because “this is human life that we are talking about.”

by Mark Danner

The U.S. strike against Syria–the only Arab country with and allegedly using chemical weapons–was diverted at the last minute by a U.S.-Russia agreement. In the context of the Arab Spring, Syria’s regime responded to popular peaceful protests with a great brutality. The army began fracturing on sectarian lines, and the Syrian opposition took up arms. Rapidly and inevitably, the war took on complex confessional, regional, and international dimensions. The Syrian government, aided by North Korea, Iran, and Hezbollah, and fighting with Russian weapons, has confronted a civilian and military resistance made up of Sunnis and some Christians, led by the pro-Western groupings around the Free Syrian Army, as well as Islamic extremist fighters  supported by foreign  mercenaries from across the Arab and Islamic world  and funded by Arabian Gulf states and private individuals.  And on both sides are self-serving warlords and thieves, criminals and weapons dealers open to the highest bidder. Within the Manichean reduction–good against evil– it is almost inevitable that one loses sight of the intimately human face of the Syrian war.  But to Fr. Sidney Griffith, Professor of Syriac and early Arab-Christian thought at The Catholic University of America, Syria is anything but an abstraction.  As a leading scholar of early medieval Muslim-Christian relations, he has a clear lens to view the communitarian dimension inside a profoundly historical, ecclesial, and cultural dynamic.  Engaged for decades in Muslim-Christian dialogue and encounter, he has supported the Badaliya Prayer Movement founded by the great French scholar of Islam, Louis Massignon (1883-1962) in which Christians offer their lives in prayer for and friendship with their brother Muslims. Griffith’s  students have included many from the Arab and Islamic world who have returned to their lands enriched by his erudition and spirit of ecumenism. Traces met with Fr. Griffith to deepen our understanding of the players on this violent stage where much is at risk.

The Church’s voice in the debate over Syrian engagement risks being labeled “pacifist” or even “naïve.” Yet Pope Francis’s words of guidance provide a truly human outlook.
The Syrian conflict is both very complex and very dangerous and thus it is important to take our cue from Pope Francis.  His position is primarily a deep respect for human life as seen through his call for prayer, fasting, and the defense of human values common to all men.  He reasons well that we cannot counter war with war. 

An invasion based on “humanitarian concerns” as Obama has couched it contradicts its intentions...
One cannot argue that a U.S. attack on Syria is to prevent violence against civilians, for this would mean that, morally, the ends justify the means and that we do evil for the sake of a possible good. The true humanitarian response is not to bring destruction (by bombing Syria in order to teach Assad a lesson) but rather to bring food, medicine, and water.

Pope Francis has been very vocal about pointing out this contradiction.
Of course. In this context, it makes no sense to bomb any people. It is important to maintain a measure of evenhandedness without demonizing any party, and this can be seen in the Pope’s calls for protecting human life and not specifically Christians. He has been very bold in communicating directly with world leaders and in a manner that is not lecturing but rather on the basis of Gospel truth–the content of his communications is always and only the Gospel. 

It is clear that he takes this threat very personally.
Indeed he does as he has a great love for humanity. We can’t speak in the abstract about “collateral damage” (from a U.S. attack). This is human life that we are talking about. His position is the same as Pope John Paul II, who, on the eve of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, sent a personal emissary to President Bush pleading for peace.  For our current Pope, there are other personal dimensions that are at the origin of this call for a respect for human life. For example, he knows the effects of political violence from his experience during Argentina’s “dirty war” on leftist political opponents. 
And we can see his concern expressed during his meeting with fellow Jesuits on July 31st, two days after Jesuit Fr. Paolo Dall’Oglio was reported kidnapped in Syria. He prayed for “our brother in Syria,” an obvious reference to Fr. Paolo, during the Mass in Rome on the Feast of St Ignatius. It was immediately after this abduction that the Pope released to world leaders his strongest petition for peace.

Fr. Paolo has been a good friend of yours for many years. Why did he risk returning to Syria this summer, after he had already been expelled?
His story is very interesting. Fr. Paolo was inspired in his work to build Muslim-Christian dialogue through the example of Louis Massignon and that of the martyred Trappist monks of Our Lady of the Atlas in Tibhirine, Algeria. Dall’Oglio, who is not an academic, spent three decades at the ancient Deir Mar Musa monastery in Syria working on its reconstruction and turning it into a place of encounter between Muslims and Christians. He spoke against the Assad regime from the beginning of the Syrian uprising, and as a result was expelled from Syria. In late July, he went back, through Turkey, into rebel-controlled Syria because he thought, with his intimate grasp of the language and culture, and his affiliation with the rebels, he could help to mediate violent tensions between local Kurds and the rebels. It was then that unknown persons kidnapped him.

He is among the Christians that have fallen victim to the violence...
There is no word on the fate of Fr. Dall’Oglio nor that of my friend, Syriac Orthodox Bishop Gregorios Yohanna Ibrahim and his travelling companion, Greek Orthodox Bishop Boulous Yazigi. It was unusual that those two, from different confessions,  would go together on a pastoral visit to a refugee camp in Turkey. Upon their return in April of 2013, they were kidnapped by suspected Islamic extremist fighters. Besides these events, recent incidents of violence targeting Christians have escalated to include the invasion of the historical Christian town of Maaloula by various rebel forces.

Where do the Christians stand in the midst of all this?
The situation for Christians in Syria is quite complicated, as much of the community and its bishops have declared support for the Assad regime.  Since the rise to power of the Ba’ath Socialist party under Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez, the Christian communities have been able to live their faith freely, including building schools and churches. One of my former students, whose episcopal ordination I was privileged to attend (and in fact it was my last trip to Syria) is now the Bishop of al-Hasakah in north eastern Syria, near the Turkish border. He suggested to me that the Christians can’t be blamed for not joining the uprising against the regime since they view Bashar al-Assad as their protector. Assad is a known danger versus an unknown danger from whoever would come to power if the regime falls. In fact, if the rebels win, some of the jihadist groups would likely treat the Christian community horribly. However, other Christians have supported the resistance, including not only Fr. Dall’Oglio, but others, such as Najib Awad, Professor of Theology at Hartford Seminary who has written about the morality of resistance to oppressive regimes.

So Syrian Christians are not hoping for any international rescue efforts?
Most Syrian Christians believe that there should be no intervention by any party in Syria’s affairs, but tragically this is not the case. One of the nuns who stayed during the rebel attack on Maaloula reported many of the rebels that she met spoke non-Syrian Arabic or no Arabic at all. The presence of outsiders among the local forces resisting the government is not just a Syrian phenomenon, but was also documented in the wars in Chechnya, Iraq, and Afghanistan. 

Do you think the Christians should remain in spite of the violence and the general uncertainty of the political situation?
Well, it is their home, and they are not the only ones suffering. Syria is the heartland of early Christianity for it is in this region of ancient Antioch that the Christian faith grew and developed in its Greek and Aramaic phases. And Christians have been living with Muslims since the rise of Islam in the 7th century in Syria, and therefore what is a tragic situation for Christians is also one for the traditional Muslim communities since both built society together–Christians were an integral part of classical Islamic civilization. In this sense, the militant Islamist movements are also a threat to traditional Muslim society. In any case, as carriers of Christ, Christians have something unique to offer by their very presence.

Can you give any examples of this?
There is an order of Trappist nuns who, in 2005, moved to Aleppo, Syria, to found a monastic community based on the example of the monks of Tibhirine. On August 29th, with the threat of a U.S. attack looming, the sisters wrote a beautiful reflection on the suffering of the Syrians and calling for peace. They asked, “Will the Nobel Peace Prize winner drop his sentence of war onto us? Despite all justice, all common sense, all mercy, all humility, all wisdom?”

What civil effort could turn the tide in Syria, if any?
The ideal case scenario would be a coalition of regional actors truly devoted to resolving the Syrian conflict.  Israel, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and others all have the potential to bring peace through a concerted effort. 

The situation is very delicate right now; you must have a lot of thoughts directed toward so many friends in harm’s way...
True; and the news changes every day–so we wait and watch and pray. One person I know, inside Syria, told me of his great concern that if the U.S. bombs a location where chemical weapons are stored it could have grave consequences for nearby civilian populations. This has prompted me to reflect upon the banality of evil and the seeming ordinariness of sin, as brought to our attention by the political philosopher Hannah Arendt. In her book on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Nazi holocaust, she described Eichmann as “thoughtless.” From the original German word, this thoughtlessness takes on the sense of a lack of self-reflection, of an “I” that is not present. Any moral action requires such thoughtfulness, especially in the dramatic situation we are now in.