Remembering those other Arabs

I only recently heard of “the mad dog of Tripoli”. No, not that Tripoli. I mean Lebanon’s second city. The “mad dog” is Brigadier Mohamed Shaar, who was appointed Interior Minister just a few months ago by President Bashar al-Assad of Syria in what was supposed to be a reforming government.

Brig. Shaar earned his nickname in 2006 when he brutally put down an uprising in the Lebanese Tripoli. That December, over 700 people were killed.

It is natural that these days our main thoughts are about Libya. However, Europe should not take its sights off the rest of the Arab world. Brig. Shaar’s reputation gives us the flavour of the Syrian government.

Recently, President al-Assad made another appointment. The Defence Minister suddenly retired for health reasons. He was replaced by General Daud Rajhi. The latter is an Arab Christian (Greek Orthodox). His appointment was interpreted as an attempt by the regime to show that it represented a wide spectrum of Syrians against an uprising led, it claims, by criminals.

Gen. Rajhi is the first Christian Minister of Defence in Syria but the third Christian in the Cabinet, the other two being Catholic. His appointment has had a mixed reaction among Syrian Christians, who hardly want to be associated with the current crackdown.

However, his appointment is a good occasion to remember the other Arabs who are struggling for greater civil rights, in particular those who belong to religious minorities. Europeans often act as though Islam is the only religion of the Arab world. In fact, it is home to some of the oldest Christian communities.

In Syria, for example, some of the monasteries can give a tangible sense of being keepers of a great spiritual treasure. When I visited Damascus almost 35 years ago, we were taken by the road leading to Lebanon to see a small interior lake and a monastery that was built in a series of caves. To reach them, our group had to walk on a very narrow path, with a small stream passing through it. I remember vividly what seemed to be the most important part of the monastery. The sanctuary had no electric light but, to my astonishment, I realised that a few candles were more than enough to reveal that it was full of gold tabernacles, all touching or adjacent to each other, all studded with jewels.

Syria’s Constitution protects religious liberties. In practice, things are more complicated because to argue for one’s religion, to proselytise, a basic freedom, is interpreted as disturbing social harmony.

The complicated challenge of standing up for religious minority rights in the Middle East is illustrated by comparing Syria with Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. In the latter two countries, the conditions of Christians are generally acknowledged to be better. However, Syria compares well with Iraq, where, since the downfall of Saddam Hussein, the position of Arab Christians has become much more dangerous in the wake of the government’s instability and the hostility of some militant Islamic groups.

When I visited Iraq earlier this year, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Iraqi authorities were committed to the continuing presence of Iraqi Christians in the country. However, the official effort, as I gathered, was to train 600 Christians to protect their own community. The real issue was that such protection and guarantees were an important obligation of the Iraqi authorities, not the community itself.

The irony is such communities are often better protected under autocratic rulers if they are secular. If they are removed, or challenged and weakened, minority groups become more vulnerable to militant sectarian violence. It is a real danger during the period of transition to a stronger, democratic state.

It is a danger that we can see Christians facing in both the Palestinian Authority and Israel, where Christians are being squeezed between Israeli and Islamic militants. We sometimes become aware of the danger owing to sectarian violence in Egypt. A New Year bomb attack killed 23 people in Alexandria this year.

However, we hear less often in the news of the prosecutions and expulsions of Christians from Morocco and Algeria. Last November, Algerian prosecutors demanded a one-year jail sentence for each of four converts to (Protestant) Christianity, the pretext being the opening of a church without permission. In March 2010, Morocco engaged in a large-scale expulsion of Christians on the charge of “proselytism”, which is illegal.

One cannot help thinking that the actions of these two governments, which are in many ways secular, are guided by the need to appear to be guardians of national identity, given their weak credentials on other national issues such as job creation, social justice and accountability.

In addressing the Arab Spring, Europe has to keep in mind minorities as well as the societies as a whole. Europe itself is secular but the freedom of religion is an aspect of the commitment to freedom of thought and conscience. The European Parliament has often expressed its concern on these issues, most recently on January 20. It is important that the voters do too.

Dr Attard Montalto is a Labour member of the European Parliament.