The Christian reality in Assad's Syria

by an anonymous friend

My friends, I don’t want to look like a deep admirer of Bashar al-Assad or a groupie of the Syrian government, but it is necessary that we know a little about the situation of the Christians in Syria during the last decades, to really analyze if the revolting rebels who aspire the power would be tolerant with the Christians as the current regime. Let’s see:

In Assad’s Syria Islamism is not the official religion, indeed, the government itself recognizes and legitimates the Christian presence in the country, taking the duty to offer security and public services to these communities. Christians can be found in every social levels, including the government. Christian-owned markets can close on Sundays and holy days, and Christians are subjects to their on religious laws, be it about marriage, or divorce, or child custody, or inheritance etc. And more –amazingly – the federal government recognizes officially as public holidays the catholic Easter and the orthodox Easter. Christian Religious books are freely sold and distributed without governmental prohibition.

To the churches it is permitted not only the ringing of bells to call the faithful, but it is also authorized the use of sound equipment and megaphones to the celebrations be listened in the streets. The parishes are free to build, reform or extend their edifications – something impossible to be thought in any Islamic nation in the middle east -, and they also have real state tax exemption.

All the schools are state-owned, and the education obligatory, which includes religious education, but, for those subjects the classrooms are parted by their religion, and the Christian children receive Christian catechism, including a lot of schools being administrated by Christians or Jews.

And there is no law against proselytism, or that punish the conversion of muslins to the Christianity, although, of course, in a country of wide Muslim majority it is not well seen, cause scandal and can generate attritions and social pressures against the convert, what is something, to a certain extent, natural in a religious society.

Of course not all are flowers, the government monitory the churches finances, moreover, any meeting or encounter marked by a community must be authorized by the government, nevertheless, the worship are free from authorizations and occur normally. Of course that the religious services in the churches are subject to governmental vigilance, but the same vigilance applies to the mosques, and that being more because of the long state of siege in Syria than because of a systematic Christian persecution 

Now think, will the rebels assure one third of the freedom they have today?