During a visit to Rome, the Syriac Catholic Archbishop of Homs reflected on the situation in Syria, following the recent massacres targeting the Alawite community on the western coast. Source: Vatican News.
Syria’s transitional president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, signed a constitutional declaration on March 13. With it, the former regime and constitution were abolished and elections set to take place within “four to five years.”
This came in the context of a month marked by the massacre of almost 1600 people – mainly Alawite – in the western part of the country by the armed forces of the transitional government, supported by radical Islamic sects.
During a visit to Rome, Archbishop Jacques Mourad, the Syriac Catholic Archbishop of Homs in central Syria, said that “unfortunately, violent acts, massacres, are not over.”
The fact that massacres still happen calls the “sincerity of this government” into question because “there is a big difference between the speeches made and the reality” because either the government is “being manipulative or they are incapable of managing the country”.
What is happening in the country negatively affects Islam in a country like Syria which has never “had the face of fanatical Islam,” he said. Archbishop Mourad argued that Islamophobia exists “because of these violent acts, these massacres, these faces that present Islam in a negative way.” He stressed that “Islam, at its core, is not like that.”
The new constitution and the transitional government have placed the country under Islamic law. The Archbishop stated that he is not in favour of this, but the “problem is not whether or not Syria should be Islamic”.
Archbishop Mourad said that the problem is that “Islamic law does not respect individual freedom and there are many differences between human rights and Islamic law.”
Archbishop Mourad argued that “what we are living today in Syria is due to the lack of responsibility from the international community.” He challenged the global population to achieve peace in Syria first, because “Syria is the key as it is the country that links all of Asia and Europe.”
FUILL STORY
Archbishop of Homs: Syria is key to global peace (By Olivier Bonnel and Kielce Gussi, Vatican News)
