From 2007: A people teaches tolerance
by: Charlotte Wiedemann for ZeitOnline.de
date: February 22, 2007
The article is in German but automatically translated into English on my pc.
“Nowhere in the Middle East is there so much peace between the many religions as in Syria. But the fear is reversed: a decaying Iraq can tear the neighbor into the abyss.”
It is an educational experience to start with an inspection of Syria with a Christian. For this Greek Catholic priest surprised by an angry political outburst, as soon as one asks him about the current situation of Christians. “Bush and his people are ignorant! They do not understand politics, but we, we understand politics, we live in the middle of politics!” That Iraqdisintegrates, plagues the priest as a constant nightmare; It is his bad suspicion that the Americans also want to destabilize Syria ethno-religiously. Not everything is rosy to the Christians in Syria, he continues, but the big threats come from the outside, not from the inside. “Bashar al-Assad likes the Christians, he knows that they are loyal to him because they benefit from the stability, and precisely because we so desperately need stability, we say to the West: Leave us alone! ” And then the Father falls dramatically into French, the language of the West in which he studied the whole spiritual world: “Laissez-nous tranquilles, take care of yourself, we do not need you, you need us, you need our oil! ”