Christians in Syria will mark a bitter Christmas this year as churches and their followers in the country have had their share of the ongoing violence. The places of worship of approximately 2 million Christians in Syria have been the target of attacks in the clashes between the forces of President Bashar al-Assad and the rebels.
“The religious leaders in Syria have declared that the churches will not celebrate Christmas because of the ongoing violence in the country,” Jamil Diarbekirli, a 25-year-old Syrian, told the Hürriyet Daily News in an e-mail interview.
Diarbekirli, who was a law student in Aleppo before the civil war and had been arrested at the beginning of the incidents before being released after a short time, pointed out that sacred spaces had become targets of regime powers.
“When our churches were attacked, our Muslim friends helped us repair them. The Syrian people and the opposition are respectful to God’s house,” said Diarbekirli, adding that if the situation continued in this way, there would not be any living people, not only no Christians. The Western powers are in complete ignorance of “this horrible catastrophe,” said George Gawrieh, a Syrian dentist who recently fled from Hasekeh city of Syria and moved permanently to Istanbul. “The Christians were so worried at the beginning of the revolution because they already knew that whatever the results were in the end, they would pay a higher price than other people and other sects.”
