Government Policy Leading to Persecution of Christians
Most Americans are Christians.
But few know that the acts of our American government are leading to the persecution of Christians in numerous countries.
According to the Vatican’s official news service – Fides – and many other Christian news sources, the Syrian opposition is targeting Christians. Priests and bishops on the ground in Syria confirm these reports.
As a Syrian priest writes in the Guardian:
Despite what you might read in much of the western media, Syria is an enlightened, secular society with a deeply spiritual core and the common belief is that Syria is for everybody. A fundamentalist state would destroy the traditions of co-existence and religious harmony that have existed here since the fall of the Ottoman Empire nearly 100 years ago. Syrian independence was won with the blood of all Syrians – Muslim, Christian, Druze, Alawite and Kurdish.
As BBC notes:
Syria has for much of the century had a sizeable Christian minority, making up at least 10% of the population.
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In recent years Syria has been considered one of the easier Middle Eastern countries for Christians to live in. Power is concentrated in the hands of the Alawite minority – a Shia sect considered heretical by many Muslims – which has clamped down hard on extreme forms of Islam.
Indeed, PBS reports that Syrian Christians are accepting arms from the government to protect themselves against Islamic terrorists.
