Message from a Christian of Syrian Ancestry to the Americans

Message from a Christian of Syrian Ancestry to the Americans

by Abu Daoud (8/2013) 

Today I was running errands and I happened by my local pharmacy to pick up some stuff for the family. The man there is a Greek Catholic Christian of Syrian ancestry and he told me about how his ancestors had migrated from Syria to where I am, back in the days of Ottoman Empire. 

We got to talking and, as often happens with this sort of thing, he became rather impassioned and started to tell me his thoughts in detail about what was going on in Syria. He told me, You are American, you voted for this guy (President Obama)!  I promised him I would relay his message to people in the USA as best I could. So here I am, trying to do that. I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says, of course. But I did think that people in the USA (and elsewhere, too) would be interested to hear the unvarnished thoughts of an Arab Christian whose ancestral home is Syria, in Wadi al-Nasara (it’s on Wikipedia). 

His main source of frustration was that, in his mind, the Obama administration was actively funding the genocide of Middle Eastern Christians. He felt that the USA and the UK were arming terrorists (Jabhat al Nusra, which is a branch of the Syrian rebels, and is affiliated with Al Qaeda) who were killing Christians. He said that these people were beasts and monsters, and that he hoped that Al Assad would kill them all. Not just beat them or chase them out. But kill them. He believes that the Obama administration is lying then they say that they think they are supporting Syrians fighting against Al Assad, because in fact they know that these people are foreigners (from Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Gulf, the USA, Europe) and not Syrians. He mentioned the famous video clip of one such fighter cutting open a man’s chest and then taking out his heart and eating it, which, yes, really exists. He said, when I’m hunting and I see a wounded animal, I kill it. I don’t feel good about it, but I do. The implication is that these Al Qaeda people are wounded beyond recovery—their humanity irrevocably damaged.

He says that before the revolution he didn’t much like Al Assad, but now he likes him. This is because Syrian regime left the people alone, and didn’t enforce religion on anyone. 

I explain that the Obama administration says they only want to support the liberal, secular democratic rebels, not the terrorists who are bent on destroying Christianity in Syria (though they are working together). The logic behind this explanation seems so entirely incoherent to him that he concludes it is a lie: the Obama administration (and John McCain as well, it appears) is merely saying this to cover their tracks. The logistics of giving weapons to one portion of an army while keeping them from another portion of the same army (and a more powerful and larger portion, at that) is ridiculous, and no one would ever think that is a realistic goal, he said.

Based on this evidence—the Obama administration’s clear and unequivocal support (in his mind) for a branch of Al Qaeda bent on eliminating Christianity from the region, he concludes that Obama must be a Muslim—there is no other logical way of explaining it all. He concludes that he hates Obama. He says his wife’s parents are in Canada and he could have easily emigrated, but he loves this land and will not leave. He wants American Christians to know about his point of view.

I told him I would tell you, and I have. I will leave the evaluation of his opinions to you. As for me, he told me to pass this on, so please link to this or copy and paste. The material is not my own.

--Abu Daoud