Dr Martin Parsons examines the implications the jihadist takeover of Syria will have for Syrian Christians and analyses how the UK government should think about these Christians’ fate before removing the terrorist designation from HTS
The British ambassador reported that “the greatest revolution that we know anything of has been effected…with the loss of very few lives” and that we can now consider this “a free country”. In response, the Prime Minister expressed his hopes for friendly relations with the new rulers.
Actually, that wasn’t in response to the takeover of Syria by the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), but the initial British reaction to the 1789 French revolution before it developed into its ugly bloodletting phase of guillotining those perceived to be opponents and its specifically anti-Christian character.
However, it could equally be said of more recent events in the Middle East, such as the 1979 Iranian revolution. There a movement of those who wanted freedom and democracy after the overthrow of the Shah was hijacked by supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini who wanted to create the first Islamic state in the modern world. Initially, the new regime spoke words of peace to Iranian Christians. Ayatollah Khomeini actually wrote to them seeking their support for the revolution, which he promised would bring freedom, equality and justice for all, especially religious minorities.
Sound familiar?
But once in power it was a very different story. Christians began to be arrested and killed either judicially or extra judicially. In fact, the first state-sponsored murder of a church leader took place a mere 19 days after Khomeini had arrived back in the country. Even today Iran remains one of the worst countries in the world for state-sponsored persecution of Christians, with more than a hundred Christians each year being arrested by the Iranian authorities. Earlier this year a report by the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran spoke of “systematic State-initiated persecution of Christian converts”, who are often arrested and are charged with “propaganda against the system”, “propagation of Zionist evangelical Christianity” or “administering and managing the home churches”.
It was the same in the Arab Spring which began in 2010. The overthrow of authoritarian regimes such as that of Hosni Mubarek in Egypt was seen by many western governments as the dawn of a new era of freedom and democracy. But what emerged was a Muslim Brotherhood government which used the election to gain power and then introduced a new Islamist constitution.
The truth we need to remember, which can be unpalatable to many western liberals, is firstly, that in our own history what we now regard as fundamental British values, such as freedom of religion and freedom of speech, emerged around two centuries before every adult was given the right to vote. Trying to introduce democracy first simply allows Islamists to use it to advance their own agenda. Secondly, freedom and democracy itself emerged in a specifically Christian context. In fact, its origins lie in the translation of the Bible into English, which within a century had led to debates on what were the God given limits to the authority of kings and how ordinary people should be treated. That is why freedom and democracy first emerged in the Protestant countries of Europe and North America. As Lord Daniel Hannan observes in his book ‘How we invented Freedom and Why it Matters’:
“The centrality of Protestantism to the Anglosphere’s cultural and political identity was the single biggest surprise to me when I researched this book. It is hard to recapture its importance today, partly because of the general decline of religion… we can see the traces of the political culture engendered by Protestantism, above all in the peculiar Anglosphere emphasis on individualism.”
So, what is actually happening in Syria?
There are actually at least three governments in Syria. First, there is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) who in a lightning advance which began three weeks ago seized the major cities of Aleppo, Homs and finally Damascus – all of which have substantial Christian minorities. Secondly, along the northern border there are jihadist groups backed by Turkey. Thirdly, there is an area in northeast Syria currently controlled by more secular Kurdish forces. This area also includes many Christians who the Kurdish forces rescued from the control of Islamic State. However, this area is now under attack from the Turkish backed jihadists. It also contains prison camps for a large number of jihadists from Islamic State and other jihadist groups. There are fears that the jihadist advance would lead to these jihadists being released, which would strike terror into the hearts of Syrian Christians.
What are HTS saying about Christians?
The first thing to notice is that there is a major difference between the impression HTS are trying to create for western audiences and their past record. For the first two years of the Syrian civil war Christians suffered as everyone else did, but generally speaking, they were not specifically targeted. Then in April 2013 two Syrian bishops, the head of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Aleppo and the head of the Greek Orthodox Church were abducted. No-one knows what happened to them, but there was a widespread assumption that HTS’ predecessor organisation, the al-Nusra Front were responsible. That event kickstarted the widespread abduction, murder, rape and religious cleansing of Christians by a range of jihadist groups including Islamic State, which led to the US State department in 2014 declaring that Christians were victims of genocide.
While this was happening, HTS’ leader al-Julani in a 2014 TV interview with Al Jazeera made clear that his vision for the future of Syria was the enforcement of shari’a and that religious minorities such as Alwais and Christians would not be accommodated.
More recently he has said that Christians would be protected and given their rights under the law. However, the law he is referring to is of course shari’a and the “rights” it sets out for Christians are that, unlike adherents of non-monotheistic religions, they are permitted to live as dhimmis. This is a non-citizen status whereby they can worship behind closed doors, must not allow Christian symbols or even books to be visible to Muslims and may not defend themselves. It is symbolised by the payment of jizya. Any perceived breach of any of these terms removes the “protection” which the Islamic government has granted them and they may be killed with impunity by any Muslim. It is exactly what Islamic State did in 2015 to Christians in the city of Qaryatayn in north east Syria where local Christians were given the choice of forced conversion to Islam, fleeing or signing a dhimma contract.
So what is the UK government doing?
The UK government is doing two things: first, immediately after the fall of the Assad regime it suspended all asylum applications from Syria; secondly, it is considering removing HTS from the UK’s list of proscribed terrorist organisations.
The suspension of asylum applications reflects a wider problem within the Home Office. Its administration of the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Refugee scheme which the UK government set up to take 20,000 refugees fleeing Syria at the height of Islamic State, saw Christians and Yazidis massively underrepresented – despite the fact that they were being specifically targeted by jihadists. The suspension of asylum applications as soon as the Assad regime fell suggests that the Home Office saw those fleeing the Assad regime as the only ones it needed to protect – and now they were returning, it could suspend applications for asylum.
In fact, it is precisely now that the UK should be making sure that Syrian Christians fleeing the jihadist take over CAN claim asylum in the UK. This is particularly important as, in the past whilst Syrian Muslims could flee to any of the surrounding Muslim countries, the only place Syrian Christians could safely flee to was Lebanon…which is now overwhelmed with coping with the aftermath of the recent conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.
The second issue is even more serious because of the signal it sends to jihadist groups around the world who persecute Christians. The day Damascus fell to HTS UK Cabinet Minister Rt Hon Pat McFadden MP told reporters that the government would now “review” whether HTS should be removed from the UK’s list of proscribed terrorist organisations. In fact, this would be almost unprecedented – only four organisations have ever been removed from the UK’s list of proscribed terrorist organisations.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer later tried to deflect criticism by saying that any review would not happen immediately. However, his official 10 Downing Street spokesman suggested that the government could “hold talks” with HTS and that this might not technically be a breach of the Terrorism Act. Even leaving aside this rather questionable interpretation of the Terrorism Act, this last statement is actually far worse.
It is probably safe to assume that all western governments have back channels through which their intelligence services maintain a basic level of contact with some terrorist organisations, as we now know the UK government did with the IRA while it was trying to persuade them to lay down their arms and enter a peace process. However, for a Prime Minister’s official spokesman to publicly announce the government wants to hold talks with a proscribed terrorist is tantamount to saying to every jihadist group in the world who persecutes Christians:
“if you are successful, topple an existing government and seize power – we will in effect recognise you as the government of that country”
Sending such a message to groups such as Boko Haram in Nigeria or al-Shabab in East Africa, both of whom have slaughtered large numbers of Christians and continue to do so, is beyond reckless…
Dr Martin Parsons Is CEO of the Lindisfarne Centre for the Study of Christian Persecution and has been accredited by the Academy of Experts as an expert witness on Christianity.
