This report was produced thanks to a contribution from Aid to The Church in Need 

Qaraqosh (Iraq) The Christians of Qaraqosh, persecuted by Isis, have been thronging the streets for hours, waiting to greet Francis, the first pilgrim pope to visit Iraq. Olive branches, photos of Bergoglio and Vatican flags create the setting for a great, unforgettable day of celebration. The Christians are colourful. The first we meet are heavily bearded Lebanese monks in grey robes and cowls, walking barefoot to the cathedral. A young mother has brought her little son dressed as the Pope. Some Rambo figures of the special security forces dressed in black and armed to their teeth have even put the flags of Iraq and the Pope on their bulletproof vests. A young priest and nun dancing wildly and singing at the top of their voices organise a choreography, shrieking the refrains in Italian at the crowd. A patrol of nuns is posted on a roof, including Patrizia, the only Italian in Iraq, who runs a kindergarten in Qaraqosh.

Jubilation greets the Pope’s arrival as the helicopter appears over Mosul. The crowd goes wild when they catch a glimpse of the Holy Father waving. Everyone wants to take selfies, but security is strict and Christians are satisfied with the photos with his image printed on a flyer. Before the cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, half burned down by Isis, the Pontiff blesses the entrance door that opens onto a part of the church that is still blackened.

“I encourage you: do not forget who you are and where you come from! Do not forget the bonds that hold you together, your roots!” the Pope begins before the altar still blackened by fire. Bergoglio urged Christians to remember that “forgiveness is needed on the part of those who survived the terrorist attacks. Please do not to grow discouraged. We need the ability to forgive, but also the courage not to give up.” As a memento the Pope received two stoles bearing the symbols of the crosses destroyed by Isis and he returns to Iraq a sacred book that miraculously escaped the Caliphate’s advance, having been taken to safety in Italy.

The Pope’s dedication as the guest of honour of the cathedral is moving: “From this destroyed and rebuilt church, a symbol of hope for Qaraqosh and all of Iraq, I invoke from God, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, the gift of peace…”

A few hours earlier, Francis was in Mosul, the former capital of the Caliphate, amid the shocking scenario of destruction of the Square of the Four Churches that was turned into a Taliban court and a terrible jail by Isis. Eventually the allied coalition against terrorism bombed it and razed it to the ground. “How cruel it is that this country, the cradle of civilisation, was struck by such an inhuman storm in which ancient places of worship were destroyed and thousands of people, Muslims, Christians, Yazidis – were killed,” Bergoglio declared before the rubble as he prayed for all the victims of the war.

The last stage of the historic three-day trip to Iraq is the mass at the stadium in Erbil, Kurdistan before a crowd of 10,000 people. When Francis arrives aboard the popemobile and drives around the stadium, the Christians are in raptures. Young and old run after the Holy Father as if he were a rock star. At the altar he shows many signs of old age, limping visibly, but the service is moving and Bergoglio avows that this journey “will remain forever in my heart”. In his homily he launches the message of resistance. “Today, I can see at first hand that the Church in Iraq is alive, that Christ is alive and at work in this, his holy and faithful people.”

L'articolo “The Church in Iraq is Alive”. Christians Celebrate The Pilgrim Pope proviene da InsideOver.

“My dear Christian brothers and sisters from Iraq, who have testified to your faith in Jesus amid harsh sufferings, I cannot wait to see you,” the Pope announced in a video message on the eve of his departure for Iraq.

Click HERE for the full report

L'articolo The pope is coming proviene da InsideOver.

Shagufta Kousar and Shafqat Masih have been sentenced to death in Pakistan for allegedly sending blasphemous text messages to a Muslim man. The illiterate pair from Gojra, Punjab province were detained and charged with “insulting the Qur’an” and “insulting the Prophet.” They claimed that they were forced into making confessions under duress and have protested their innocence.

Wilson Chowdhry, chairman of the British Pakistani Christian Association said to The Guardian that it was a “worrying trend of Christians accused for derogatory text messages and social media postings.”

He added: “The simple fact that the couple could not possibly have written the blasphemous text messages due to being hyper-illiterate should result in their immediate release. However in Pakistan primary evidence can often be ignored and worse still manipulated by powerful and wealthy people intent on doing malice.”

Yet, their story is not the first of its kind. On 4 Jan 2011, the governor of Pakistan’s Punjab, Salmaan Taseer, was assassinated by his bodyguard, Mumtaz Oadri. When further pressed about the crime, Oadri’s response was simply, “This is the punishment for a blasphemer.”

Taseer had been a notable critic of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws; he spoke fervently about the case of Asia Bibi  – a Christian who had been sentenced to death for blasphemy. Bibi was an illiterate farmhand who had been convicted of desecrating the Prophet Mohammed. A row had escalated because her Muslim neighbours, who were incensed that Bibi had drunk water from the same glass as them–because of her faith. After spending eight years on death row, Bibi was eventually freed and moved to Canada earlier this month for her own safety.

Taseer’s assassination was not the only one of that nature to occur. Just a month after his death, another minister who petitioned for the law to be amended was killed in Islamabad. Shahbaz Bhatti, the only Christian in Pakistan’s cabinet, was shot eight times when two gunmen riddled his car with bullets before leaving leaflets at the scene. The pamphlets called Bhatti a “Christian infidel” and were signed as “Taliban al-Qaida Punjab”.

Under British rule in 1860, a law was enacted which made it a crime to disrupt a religious congregation, trespass on burial grounds, insult religious doctrines or willfully destroy or desecrate a place or an object of worship. It was a crime that was punishable with one year to 10 years in jail–with or without a fine.

In 1947, Pakistan came to existence following the partitioning of India by the British. General Ziaul Haq, the country’s President from 1978 until his death in 1988, changed some of the legislation, which heavily fringed on his regime’s “Islamisation” ideals. During the 1980s, the penal code was re-written for the death penalty to be used as a form of punishment for blasphemy specific to Islam. Furthermore, he re-defined what constituted as blasphemy.

A large majority of Pakistanis support the law with many believing the ruling comes directly from the Koran, oblivious that the act was manmade.

A report by Amnesty International, “As Good As Dead: The impact of blasphemy laws in Pakistan” stated: “The blasphemy laws are incompatible with international human rights law and should be repealed. As an interim measure, leading up to repeal, a number of key safeguards must be introduced. For example, a wide range of people can register complaints with the police, including those who are not direct witnesses to the alleged blasphemy. In some cases, the delays between when the alleged incident occurred and when the case is registered with the police by the complainant raises questions about the credibility of the allegations, especially when coupled with weak evidence against the accused…

“…Many people accused of blasphemy are forced to undergo a gruelling trial due to several factors: vaguely formulated laws, the low standard of evidence required for conviction, and the manner in which allegations are often uncritically accepted by the police, the prosecuting authorities, and even trial court judges, who may themselves also face threats and intimidation.”

Qibla Ayaz, who heads Pakistan’s top advisory body on religious affairs, the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), told BBC in February that no government was ready to make changes to the blasphemy law due to fears of a backlash.

L'articolo Pakistan’s Muslim Theocracy, Text Message Leads to the Death Penalty proviene da InsideOver.

(Istanbul)  An unused 19^th century cemetery tucked away behind high walls in an Istanbul suburb and surrounded by a park and playground is about to make history. 

A Christian community tracing its roots back to the earliest time of the religion and still speaking Aramaic, the language of Jesus Christ, has just received permission to use the cemetery to build Turkey’s first new church since the foundation of the republic almost a hundred years ago. 

“We have been working for seven years to get a construction site and a building permission, and now we have cleared all hurdles at last,” community leader Sait Susin said in a recent interview in his office just several hundred meters away from the cemetery in Yesilkoy, a western suburb of Istanbul. “Construction will start as soon as the weather allows it, most probably in March.” 

Turkey, a Muslim nation of more than 80 million people with a tiny Christian community of less than a half per cent of the total population, is facing criticism from the EU and the US for a crack-down on government critics and restrictions for minorities like the country’s Kurdish community. 

But Christian leaders in Turkey say their rights are protected. “We’re proud of living under the Turkish flag in this land,” Yusuf Cetin, the Syriac Orthodox Church’s Metropolitan for Istanbul and the capital Ankara, said when he received the building permit for the Yesilkoy church earlier this month, according to the Anadolu news agency.

Susin, whose official title is President of the Beyoglu Virgin Mary Syriac Orthodox Church Foundation, said in the interview that Turkey’s Christians and Jews had gained an unprecedented degree of freedom under the 16 year old government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), a group rooted in political Islam. “Many people abroad don’t know this,” Susin said. “We can have our own schools and now we can build the church. We could not even dream of things like this in the 1990s.” 

With the start of construction work for the Yesilkoy church approaching, Susin is raising money in his community for the $4 million project that will include a church building with a capacity of 650 worshippers, a community center and a car park. The money for the church will have to come entirely from the congregation of roughly 17,000 Syriac Christians in Istanbul. 

A hundred years ago, Yesilkoy, then known as San Stefano, was a center of Christian life just outside Constantinople, as Istanbul was called at the time. Waves of forced migration, mostly in the 1950s and 1960s, have changed the picture radically. The Greek Orthodox community in Istanbul, which had more than 100,000 members in the early 20^th century, is reduced to less than 3,000 people and fighting for survival. The largest Christian community left in Istanbul is the Armenian one with around 60,000 people in a city of 15 million. 

As a result, many of the roughly 200 churches in the city are empty. But they are of little use to the Syriacs, whose members fled persecution and conflict in their south-eastern Anatolian heartland to settle in Istanbul and countries like Germany, which has 100,000 Syriacs today. Most Istanbul Syriacs live in Yesilkoy, far away from the empty churches downtown. 

“Up until know, we have only one church in Istanbul, but that is not enough,” Susin said. “We have been celebrating mass in churches of other Christian community, but they are bursting at the seams when we come, because we are many and almost everyone goes to church on Sunday.” 

So Susin and his colleagues took their plan for a new church in Yesilkoy to Turkey’s authorities. “We have seen much support from them, from the government in Ankara down to the municipality.” 

When Turkish authorities assigned the park and the unused cemetery as a building site in 2015, Susin hoped for a quick start to the construction process. 

But the Syriacs had to wait several years more, because Catholic representatives in Istanbul raised objections and took the municipality to court for handing the cemetery to the Syriacs. 

Turkish law says unused cemeteries become state property 50 years after communities stop using them, so authorities saw no problem in turning the 19^th century property into a church. But the Catholic Church, arguing it was still the legal owner of the site, stopped the project in Yesilkoy with an injunction. 

Behind the scenes, Syriacs like Susin were working to solve the problem. “Our patriarch asked the pope to intervene,” Susin said. Syriacs even enlisted the help of Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and spiritual leader of the Orthodox Church, who also appealed to the Vatican. “We lost three years with this. Turkish government ministers started joking that Christians were blocking a church project that had been approved by Muslims,” Susin said. 

In November 2017, Paul Russell, the Vatican ambassador to Turkey, informed the municipality that Pope Francis had given the green light for the Yesilkoy church, according to Turkish news reports at the time. 

The decision by the Vatican to withdraw its injunction paved the way for the start of the construction process despite the ongoing court case, but it came with strings attached, Susin said. 

“We donated €200,000 to the Catholics, and we have agreed to pay them a much higher sum if they win their court case against the municipality,” Susin said. He declined to say how much more his community would have pay in that case.

L'articolo Those Turkish Christians fighting for their own church proviene da InsideOver.

Relations between the West and Islam seem to be worsening with an increase in Islamist and far-right terrorist attacks. Why is Islamic integration in the West so difficult? How can dialogue be improved? We have interviewed Shadi Hamid, a Muslim-American who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of the book Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World, for a different insight on these pressing questions.

You have worked extensively on the relationship between Islam and the West – do you think the two can co-exist peacefully in the future, even as Muslims grow in numbers in Western countries, with what appears to be a proportionate rise in intolerance towards them?

I don’t think there is a real risk of serious violent conflict or war. Citizens with different attitudes towards religion can and should try to live together with that difference. I acknowledge that there are fundamental differences in how the religions are practised, for example, 54 per cent of French Muslims think religion is very important for them, compared to only 11 per cent of French citizens overall. The biggest problem in a country like France is that the latter believe Muslims are not respecting their secular ideals – and these are people who tend to feel very strongly about secularism. So it’s an interesting question to ask if Christians in Europe were more observant, whether they would get along better with observant Muslims, but what we know in the American case is that being a conservative Christian does not necessarily make you more sympathetic towards Muslims. But maybe in Europe, because secularism is more dominant, religious Christians sympathize with Muslims since they would both, in a sense, be religious minorities trying to live within aggressively secular societies.

The main question that has risen in Europe in the last few years with mass immigration from predominantly Muslim countries, is why Western society should accommodate Islamic practices while Muslim countries would likely not accommodate ours. What would you say to the people who bring up this double standard?

The answer is that Western democracies are different – do we want to compare ourselves to repressive regimes? That is not the standard by which we should be judging this, by comparing ourselves to states like Morocco, Saudi Arabia etc., where there are fewer freedoms and dysfunctional or nonexistent democracies. But if they were to say that to me, my answer would be that I don’t have another country; I consider myself a Westerner and an American Muslim. I also don’t think Western countries are radically changing – no-one is asking them to change their constitution or basic laws. Muslim grievances in European democracies are often times about asking for more accommodation for things like work-place prayer, halal meat, wearing the headscarf etc.. I understand these practices may sometimes be in tension with secular ideals, but if it remains a personal relationship with God – it’s not too much to ask to accommodate those personal beliefs. And it’s problematic to tell them they can’t live up to their religious aspirations.

Even if individual Muslims were left to practice their faith privately and within the law, there are cases of foreign influences which threaten the sovereignty of Western nations – like that of Qatar – which funds Mosques and think tanks with a fundamentalist view of Islam. What are your thoughts on this issue, often lamented by right-wing populists?

In that case, it’s a legitimate question about sovereignty, and there are laws that can regulate that. I don’t have a problem with regulations on certain kinds of foreign funding; I just worry about assuming people become more conservative primarily because of foreign influence. Empirically that does not hold up. Foreign influence may exacerbate some of these divides, but in many countries, it’s the European children of immigrants who become more conservative than their parents, so you can’t explain that in terms of funding from the countries of their parents. I find myself in a strange place in these debates, because I think that right-wing populists are not completely wrong on some of these issues – it’s not fair to say that their concerns are solely based on bigotry and racism because there is a kernel of truth in what they say. After all, there is a difference in how Islam and Christianity are practised in Europe, but I disagree with the conclusion they reach after that. Right-wing populists ask that Muslims become the same as them, whereas I want to find a way where different groups can live together with their differences. That being said, we can’t just condemn right-wing populists, as they are speaking to a real, cultural and religious divide. There is a clash of cultures taking place.

On some issues, however, both Muslim and Christian conservatives appear to agree – for example, they both oppose progressive agendas, like the LGBTQ movement. Why then, don’t they find common cause against progressivism, instead of using these ideas as a “weapon” to show how intolerant each side is?

The right-wing in general feels a kind of insecurity towards Islam because they’re lamenting the loss of Christianity and an ideological vacuum in their own societies. Part of the reason right-wing populists are able to appeal to voters is that they speak to a sense of civilizational and cultural loss – they look at Muslims and they see a resilient, powerful, and unapologetic religion. It’s hard for them to be happy about that because that’s what they want to see in their own faith and civilization. They fear that over time Muslims are going to be more influential than even conservative Christians. So when you’re in this position of cultural decline, it’s hard to reach out to the other side from a position of weakness and insecurity. I don’t see much evidence of dialogue between the two sides– it requires one side to reach out to the other. It’s not realistic to expect Muslims to reach out to the other side when they feel under attack. I personally oppose the kind of fluffy, superficial interfaith dialogue we see sometimes, but would like to see conservative Christians, conservative Muslims, and conservative Jews in the same room and see what might happen, even if some of them deep down think the other will spend eternity in hellfire. Once I spoke to this evangelical conference in Nashville, and a guy basically said to me: “It’s the first time I shook hands with a Muslim, but I want to be clear that I still think you’re going to hell.” There was something very refreshing about that theological honesty – I don’t agree with it, but I think it can also encourage honest dialogue.

Media outlets like Al Jazeera, funded by Qatar, have an Arabic channel which supports a fundamentalist view of Islam and a Western channel which supports progressive liberalism. This appears to be a subversive way to undermine Western democracies, what would you respond to this? Why would they advocate for the same ideas in Western countries that they despise in their own?

This obsession with Muslim Brotherhood infiltration and that every Muslim in the West is a potential Trojan horse worries me – the Brotherhood has very little influence in America – someone like Ilhan Omar, the Muslim congresswoman who is a pro-LGBT Muslim is obviously not a Muslim Brotherhood member. Ilhan Omar does not have a grand plan to overthrow her country. They view their progressive activism as part of intersectional solidarity. Personally, I’m pro-gay marriage, and I don’t see how that leads to American decline. I hear that criticism of Western decadence from European Muslims, but I don’t hear it as much from American Muslims, and that reflects the shift that I’m talking about, in part because American Muslims generally feel lucky to have this level of freedom. The best place in the world to be a Muslim today, in my view, is America, even more than Muslim countries, where there are restrictions on what you can say or do religiously. This is why American Muslims don’t want to mess with the freedom of other minorities – they feel they might also lose their freedoms in the process.

Do you believe that, fundamentally, the reason why many Muslims can be hostile towards Western integration has to do with the history of Western imperialism, religious incompatibility or something else?

The hostility some European Muslims feel is mainly about socio-economic dislocation, which overlaps with the cultural and religious divide. In the Middle East and North Africa, however, it’s more about the history of Western imperialism. Also, what I would say makes integration easier in America, is that we don’t have the strong welfare component that Europe has, because we’re more sceptical of state intervention in the economy. While in Europe, this sense of hostility towards immigrants is exacerbated by the fear that they will take disproportionate welfare benefits. More immigrants put stress on that basic conception of a social contract – if you give benefits to people you don’t know, you want to feel you have something in common with them. A weak welfare system like the one we have puts more pressure on immigrants to integrate while having immigrants depend on government largess in countries that give a lot of benefits can be counter-productive because it does not encourage integration.

L'articolo Islam and the West: is Peaceful Coexistence Possible? proviene da InsideOver.

(Damascus) Syria, considered by many around the globe to be the cradle of Christianity, is believed to be the only place on earth where Aramaic, the language of Jesus Christ is still spoken and taught. The historic small town of Maaloula, located some 65 kilometers to the northeast of the Syrian capital Damascus, and the two nearby villages of Jubb’adin and Bakhah have enjoyed this unique privilege for centuries.

Aramaic which is relayed only through verbal communications amongst the inhabitants of those three small villages at the foot of the Qalamun mountains, 1500 m above sea level, has received special care and subsidies from the Syrian government since 2007. The first institute that teaches both spoken as well as written Neo-Aramaic was opened 12 years ago, with hundreds of local and national students, both Christian and Muslim joining the popular classes.

In 2013, Islamic fanatics including ISIS and Al Nusra terrorist militias invaded the area, and wreaked havoc, inflicting large-scale destruction all over Maaloula. The town’s holy unique monastery and historical church were brutally ravaged. Rare statues, monuments and artifacts were destroyed or stolen by the Jihadi extremists. The town was later liberated by the Syrian Army and its allies after fierce and costly battles with the fanatic invaders. The majority of the edifices that were worst hit have now been restored. Maaloula now boasts the second largest statue of Jesus Christ in the world, straddling a scenic hill-top near this historic cave-riddled Mecca for Christians from all over the world.

Similar to their plight at the hands of Islamic terrorist groups in Iraq in recent years, Syria’s Christians, who make up around 12 % of its 23 million population, had a presence of over 30% prior to 1967 according to some statistics. Christians were a prime target for Islamic fanatics and Kurdish separatist militias, mainly supported by the United States who had a 2000-strong force in the region. Some of the worst affected areas were the northern and northeastern cities of al-Hasakah and Qamishli, where a massive exodus by local Assyrians took place, and numerous churches were reduced to piles of rubble by ISIS terrorists. Over one million Syrian Christians fled the country as extremist Jihadi groups, backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and even Israel, ravaged the hitherto peaceful and prosperous Christian neighbourhoods in the northern and northeastern parts of Syria. ISIS and other Jihadi barbarians killed, kidnapped, ransacked and raped wherever they arrived and were able to rule; Christian areas were no exception. Archbishops Yazji and Bouloss of Aleppo were both kidnapped 5 years ago by pro-Turkish Islamic militias, in the border area between Aleppo and Turkey, on their way back to Aleppo. No word of their fate or whereabouts has ever been confirmed, despite desperate calls and efforts for their unconditional release.

Hundreds of thousands were forced to flee their homes and relocate in other safer places within Syria, and a larger number of Syrian Christians headed mainly for Europe, Scandinavian countries, Australia and the United States.
Oriental Christians have always displayed strong nationalist feeling, unwavering bonds and affiliation to their Eastern roots and heritage. Widely perceived as preservers of the region’s rich history, traditions and even the Aramaic language, with Oriental Christians both home and abroad having been some of the region’s top linguists, poets, writers, artists and politicians particularly in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.

The call by Pope Saint John Paul II, who made an historic visit to Syria in 2001, on Christians to remember Syria’s “magnificent contribution” to the history of Christianity, still brings proud memories here.
“We remember that it was in fact in Syria that the Church of Christ discovered her truly catholic character and took on her universal mission,” added Pope John Paul II in Damascus on May 6, 2001.

“At the gates of Damascus, when he met the Risen Christ, Saint Paul learned this truth and made it the content of his preaching. The wonderful reality of the Cross of Christ, upon which the work of the world’s Redemption was wrought, became present before him,” proclaimed the Pope who also praised the great contributions of Syria’s saints throughout history.

Along with its political intractability, the brutality of the Syrian war has taken on dangerous religious and sectarian dimensions that have exposed structural imbalances in Syrian society, and poisoned with a climate of mistrust, anxiety and uncertainty in the lives of several minorities, ethnicities, religions and sectarian segments of the historically cohesive and harmonious Syrian society.

These 8 years of catastrophic war have had a heavy toll on Syrian Christians, and have almost definitely rekindled memories of the humanitarian disasters and massacres suffered by Oriental Christians. Such memories have perhaps made them feel they were targets for annihilation and that migration was their only chance to survive.
Syria is a country considered by Christians as the cradle of Christianity, and the site of many sacred spaces, from churches to monasteries and shrines. Damascus hosts both the Syriac Orthodox and Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and the Orient, as well as the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarchate of Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem.

As the war in Syria rages on, the trickling departure of individual Christian migrants has developed into a mass exodus. The number of Christians in Syria has dropped from 30% of the population in 1967, to less than 10% according to recent statistics. UN data from 2016 stated that, of the 5.5 million Syrian refugees, 825,000 were Christians.

The plight of Christians in Syria remains and the continued threat on their existence is a hugely important to Syria’s historical identity, heritage and the makeup of its society. The Church as well as the world at large have a moral and human responsibility to prevent the the cradle of Christianity from disappearing all together.

L'articolo Syria’s Christians, and the Toll of War proviene da InsideOver.

Beit Jala, West Bank –We are at gate leading to Bethlehem, and in this village of fifteen thousand inhabitants, rich with centuries-old olive trees and dry stone walls that depict a landscape not dissimilar to the Puglian hinterland of southern-Italy, there sits the oldest catholic school in Palestine: the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. These scholastic institutions make up part of the Patriarchate which comprises 44 schools in total: 13 in Palestine, of which 6 are located in Gaza, 6 in Israel and 25 in the West Bank, for around 20 thousand students in total. But not just for Christians. The one we visited Beit Jala, in the heart of the this Sacred Land, was founded in 1854.

“Here there are 900 students divided into 31 classes, from 4 to 18 years. At first the majority were Christians. Now we have many classes where Muslims are the majority,” says Suhail T. Daibes, the head teacher for the Patriarchate School of Beit Jala. “It isn’t just because the number of Christians in Palestine is in constant decline. It is also because many Muslim families choose for their children to study here, rather than send them to government schools.”

Another teacher, Suhail is convinced of this fact: only education can stop the disappearance of Christianity. Christian Palestinians are generally more wealthy than Muslims and have a lifestyle more similar to those in the West. “Because of this the majority choose to emigrate. Christians are more individualistic. We suffer greatly from limitations to our freedom, with the ground around us seeming less every day, with Palestine becoming more and more like an open-air prison. You must understand also that with the barrier it is difficult even to go and pray freely at our sacred sites in Jerusalem. Because of all this, it is simply easier to just leave. I, in contrast, am certain that I must remain. To resist. This school is the only thing that permits me to do so, because it teaches you to persist in the struggle to find a path of dialogue, and not one of fundamentalism and closed-mindedness, which would serve to purpose.”

For this reason, it has always been the Schools of the Patriarchate that have been open even to Muslims and Druzes. Today we have schools, like Nablus for example where out of 615 students only 71 are Christians. “The  Christian children don’t have to attend school only with other Christians. They must study as part of a mix, which is representative of outside society. Otherwise, when they graduate from this school, they will confronted by a different reality, it will trigger in them the desire to emigrate, or perhaps to embrace some sect of fundamentalism,” implores the teacher.

However, if we also have government schools, and those run by UNRWA, the UN agency for refugees in Palestine, why would a Palestinian family choose to send their children to a Christian school? “It is because of the quality of education that they receive here. It is very strict, but at the same time allows for the children to play and have fun. Here you will rarely see problems between the Christians and Muslims, because from a young age they are taught constantly to respect the beliefs and traditions of everyone.”

The right to be respected, however, according to Suhail, is to have a clear identity. “If my identity is strong, if I do not waiver in my identity, they will feel encouraged to respect my rules, from the moment they enter my space. In response, I will try to do the same for them.” To make it easier for us to understand, the teacher, who is very familiar with Italy, gave us an example we could understand: “I heard that there is an ongoing debate on whether or not to keep crucifixes in classrooms. I find this absurd. You are a secular country, but still you have a tradition of Christianity, and must fight to defend it. Otherwise, you risk losing your history. Take my school for example. Here we have at least half of the students being Muslim. Still, everyone came to class today. Do you know why? Because we celebrate Christmas. No Muslims are subject to being left out because it is not a festival of their faith. The Christmas spirit here involves everyone, Christian and Muslim children alike, to whom we have taught to exchange gifts among themselves. What is important however is not just to give, but to receive. Everyone participates in singing Christmas carols, even their Muslim parents. Together with their children, and together with us. We do not have to change just because they are the majority. They have knocked at my door, and I have welcomed them in: my school is honoured to accommodate all of them. However they can’t dictate the laws under my own roof. They can’t do it even here, where Christians has come to represent only 1% of the Palestinian population. Remember your history, because you should not give up on your beliefs and traditions in Europe.

L'articolo The Cohabitation of Christians and Muslims Living in Palestine proviene da InsideOver.

It was Easter of 2016, when across the whole city of Lahore rumors stared spreading about a kamikaze explosion inside the Gulshan and Iqbal Park, which caused a massacre.
It is one of the most heinous actions ever committed by the Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan. The final count was 70 victims, mostly women and children. One year has gone by since that tragic event. Now it is Easter Eve 2017 and the amusement park has been reopened and, as a sort of challenge to terrorists and terror, today the park is crowded with families and children, the attractions are working again and nobody wants to talk about what happened, probably to remove the horror, the panic, the death, and to make  life prevail.

But it is still Easter Eve in Pakistan, the alert is at the highest level; the soldiers patrol each single entry of the Gulshan and Iqbal Park, but not just them: all the streets leading toward the churches and Catholic places of worship are closed and controlled by the soldiers of the Pakistani army. The Lahore cathedral is going to host the celebration of the festivity. Hundreds of people are converging toward the church. It is evening, there is a celebratory mood in the air and there is a great desire to participate in the scene. There is the Lahore bishop Sebastian Francis Shaw, and there is father Mani, who explains: “In the past they tried to make a terror attack here, but they didn’t make it.  However they made a massacre in the Yohannabad quarter and on the day of Easter and just before the Holy Days there are always critical moments because, taking advantage of the vast participation of the devotees, the terrorists try to infiltrate and to cause a mass killing”.
The Easter watch begins, hundreds of candles fill the naves of the cathedral with an intense and delicate light but, all around, there are undercover policemen, bomb disposal engineers sifting through the temple in search of possible bombs and snipers on the roofs.“See, these are Muslim soldiers, but they are still here to protect us Christians. We shall not generalize; we Christians have a lot of problems in Pakistan: the blasphemy law, the terrorism, the hate of the jihadists…but there are also Muslims who are the first in line to risk their lives to protect us and to allow us to pray”.

The same scene occurs the day after in the Yohannabad quarter. This is the Christian ghetto of the city of Punjab, more than 40 thousand people live in this neighborhood, a target of the Taliban who, only 2 years ago, attacked the Saint John Church and made a massacre. The streets leading to the church are controlled by the soldiers, and armed volunteers wait everywhere: on the roofs, behind sand sacks and on the balconies, protected by the parapets in which they dug embrasures to shoot from. “This is our Easter. But it doesn’t matter. What is important is that thousands of persons took part in the celebrations and that today the church is full of people”.

These are the words of Francis Gulzar, general vicar of Lahore who, after the function in which an incredible number of families took part, went on saying: “A lot of fearless people came here to celebrate Easter. This is the most important demonstration and the strongest message we could send. We proved that we do not surrender to fear, that we do not leave even 1 centimeter to the Taliban, and that our will to live and our faith in God is stronger than any bomb. This is an important message the whole planet should learn”.

Pictures by Marco Gualazzini

L'articolo Those Muslims defending Christians proviene da InsideOver.

It is sunset. The green fields and ochre terrain are illuminated by a dazzling light. The landscape stretches out into infinity, unvaried, towards the horizon of the Pakistani Punjab countryside only a few kilometers from the Indian border. The road leading to India is a silver slither, fleeting to the gaze, under sky speckled with pink-hued clouds.

Suddenly a spiral of smoke breaks out on the horizon of the Lahore countryside. Columns rise out of dozens of chimneys, standing high, invading. the sky, torchbearers of a memory appointing them as iconographies of evil. They were the symbols prophesizing the great Horror of the 1900s, and it is they who today, again, announce religious hatred and discrimination in modern-day Pakistan.

Where there is a smokestack, there is a brick factory and dozens of Christian families living and working there. Discrimination against the religious minority and the law on blasphemy which since 1986 arbitrarily punishes those who name Mohamed and the Quran have relegated a great part of the Christian minority, 2% of the population, to a condition of poverty and subordination. Therefore a number of Catholic believers are forced to accept the most miserable and soul-crushing jobs in order to survive. There are over six thousand brick factories in Punjab with nearly 24,000 children working there according to Punjab’s Labour Department. Shahzad Masih and Shama Bibi also worked in a brick factory in Kasur, near Lahore. In November 2014 the Christian couple were taken prisoners for two days by a hate-filled mob and then burnt alive in the factory oven with the accusation of having burnt pages of the Quran.

Taking a right turn off the main road leading to Amritsar, a row of mud brick houses precedes the entrance to the Manaawalla plant; approaching the factory, from afar shadows hunched next to each other appear indistinctly. As you get closer their outline becomes clearer: they are the silhouettes of men and women ho drain life, moment after moment, rooted firmly and deeply in the land of their misery. Like in a Millet painting, a landscape of extreme realism with apocalyptic tints announces the entrance to the factory. Everything is the colour of clay: the smokestack towers domineering, the bricks with geometric precision underpinning the ground like the foundations of a persecution fort made up of the faces of thousands of manual labourers.

Men and women wrapped in salwar kamiz have been trudging through the mud for hours, carrying pounds of bricks and stacking them on trucks; others, still squatting, get through the ticking of time continually turning blocks over; others still bake them by inserting them into the furnace; and then there are those who, covering their mouths and noses with a scarf to protect themselves from the soot and dust, shovel coal into the fire. The activities go in incessantly. Foreheads dripping with sweat, hardened hands, backs bent over and wrinkles, outlining maps of desperation on their faces, photographs of lives consumed by sacrifice and exhaustion. Fifty-five Christian families live in the small houses built within the perimeter of Manaawala factory. From the moment the sun rises until darkness completely shrouds the plant, the labourers never stop producing, not even for a minute.

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Iqbal Bashir is the Muslim owner of the factory. He oversees the work and with no hesitation and the hauteur of those who detain unconditional power, he describes flat out what life is like in his factory: “The labourers work between 10 and 12 hours per day. Sometimes even more. They are paid per piece, and every one thousand bricks they receive 890 rupees (9€ approx. A/N)”. Iqbal walks slowly and examines every face he meets. Then when asked if he doesn’t think it shameful that in 2016 people should be exploited in such a manner he smiles and replies: “Shameful? Do you call feeding these people shameful? This is the only option they have, it’s very simple.” He goes on to tell us that his workers are happy, that they like working for him and don’t want to leave; but the owner’s words slowly seem to drift off, becoming a distant and senseless chatter, void of any sense in the face of the deafening noise of the tragedy that surrounds us.

A boy wearing an image of Jesus around his neck, a man making the sign of the Cross before shaking your hand, an image of the Madonna. The labourers live hanging on to a faith which is rejected by the majority, their only personal lifeline, the means to survive a sentence which knows no mercy. That is what it’s like for Nargas Munawar, 35 years old and her son, who, aged 7, already works alongside her: ”I’ve always done this job. I did it as a girl and I still do it today. I’ve worked in many factories and now I’m here. I haven’t seen the world, I’ve never been to the city, so this is my life and this is the work I do. But I do know that I don’t want my son to suffer the same fate as me and I pray that one day he will be able to leave”.

But fate does not seem to offer any way out for now and the present of children and adolescents seems to run along set rails. They toil and labour with no respite: some carry panniers full of grass, others dig in the mud, and then there is Safina, who recently turned twelve and spends her days moving identical rows of bricks. She turns them on one side and then on the other so that they take on a good shape; she spends her day bent over, her gaze always set on the slabs and on her numbed hands which nimbly continue to turn them around. She is alone: the sun is setting, only a thin ray of light is left to illuminate the girl in her endless labor. Then, Safina abruptly stops, looks up and with a delicacy which appears in stark contrast with everything surrounding her, she moves her hand to raise her scarf and reveal her eyes. They are the eyes of a Gorgon, green with hints of blue, they will turn you to stone, they are frightening. Her irises look like they have been painted by Caravaggio; those eyes are absolute, petrifying but at the same time void of any emotion. Pure light but no life. They are eyes which see no way of escape, not even in the form of a dream. They are eyes that have no past, no future, eyes worn out by the bricks which they have stared at for their entire brief existence. They bear their weight in the pupils and know of nothing else. There is no world except for those obsessively identical blocks in those eyes borne of the sublime, which terrify: this is the look of slavery in Pakistan today.

Photos by Marco Gualazzini www.marcogualazzini.com

L'articolo Slaves Because they are Christians proviene da InsideOver.