Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is a program bringing
you information and updates
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on religious liberty
developments in the US
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and around the world.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
Editor of Liberty magazine.
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And my guest on this
program is Tina Ramirez,
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Founder and
President of Hardwired
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which is doing a fantastic work
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for religious
freedom in many countries,
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but particularly in
the Middle East and Iraq.
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But let's talk
about the country nearby
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because Syria
has been in the news
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for quite a while, hasn't it?
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And yet, by and large
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with all of the
political scandals,
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locally, in the US,
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there hasn't been much
talk of Syria in the US
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at least till,
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or since the president fired
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of how many, 50 cruise missiles.
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Yeah. But what's
happening in Syria?
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It seems to me religion
is a big part of the story,
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isn't it?
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Yeah, I think religion has
been a part of Syria's story
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for a long time,
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but it's kind of
been under wraps,
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I mean, you don't
hear much about it.
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So just as
background, thank you, Lincoln,
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for having me
here with you today.
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Always a pleasure. Yeah.
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And Hardwired for your
viewers is an organization
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that provides education training
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around the world
in religious freedom.
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So we establish
leaders in countries
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where there is
none, so Syria and Iraq
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would be great examples of that,
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and to try to turn the tide
against religious persecution.
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And I actually was in
Syria, when was it, 2010,
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I think, so right
before the civil war.
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I was able to travel
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with the current
patriarch of the Syriac church,
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Morry from all through
Syria and then into Turkey
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where there is seminary
and Mor Gabriel Monastery is.
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I'm telling you
got that at the top.
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Yeah, the Turkish
government is actually trying
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to take over
their main seminary.
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They claim that it was
built on top of a mosque
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which is silly
since when the Syriacs
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were predated them
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by about 600 or 700
years but, you know.
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It's usually the
other way around.
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So did you see signs of the soon
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to develop civil
war when you were there
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that was it obvious
something was about to happen?
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No, I don't think it was.
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I mean, he had to
really take control
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on the country at the time
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and we had security guards
that would be on the plane,
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like sitting behind us poking
their heads through our seats
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and, you know,
it's kind of funny
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because, I mean, you
know that they're listening,
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you might as well just
join in the conversation
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but, very tight
controls in the whole country.
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So it was very
safe, you never felt,
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you never felt like
there was any danger.
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And unfortunately, in
a lot of dictatorships,
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that's pretty
much the way it is,
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it's really safe
to go around there.
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You know, if
you're somebody like me
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that meets with
religious communities
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and tries to
understand what's happening.
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But when we were there,
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we did meet the former
head of the Syriac Church.
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And for your viewers
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who don't know,
the Syriac Church
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is really the
oldest church in the world.
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So it was founded by Thomas,
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the Doubting
Thomas in the Bible,
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he went to the Syriac...
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He was supposedly ended up
in India though, didn't he?
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Yeah, he went all
the way down to India.
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So you had the...
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Thomas go to, he's established
the Syriac Church in Syria
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and then a similar
Eastern Church in Baghdad,
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so those were the two
really prominent churches
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for the first 300 or
400 years of Christendom.
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And I think in the United States
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and in Australia for
that matter in the west,
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it's a better way of putting it,
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Christians tend to
forget that Christianity began
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in the Middle East,
that's its home base.
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Yeah, and it really was,
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it was the
missionary sending church for,
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I mean, long before
the Roman Catholic Church
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really emerged to do that,
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not until, you
know, 1400 or much after.
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And so it was
really the Syriac Church
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and the Eastern Syrian churches
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that preserved
the Greek language
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that interacted
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with the first
Muslim communities
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in the Middle East
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that had these
ancient dialogues going on,
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that where the first Christians
really live as minorities
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under a Muslim government
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where they had to
learn to interact.
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And they had missionaries
spread all through China,
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I mean in the Mongolian
region, so it was a big empire.
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That was the year of
the Gospel commission
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where they moved in and out.
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Now, it's
contracting a little, I assume.
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Yeah, now it's contracting.
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I mean, since the rise of Islam,
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it really has been contracting,
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so you've seen
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since at least
around the year 1000,
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a major downward
spiral on the church
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and it became very isolated.
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And so around 1500s,
many of those Eastern churches
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actually joined
the Catholic Church,
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but the Syriac Church did not,
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so that's still
separate in Damascus.
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And when we were there,
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the former head of
the church said to us,
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he said, "Tina, if
what happened in Iraq
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when Saddam was brought down
was to happen here with Assad,
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we will not
survive as a church."
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And so that was just
before the civil war,
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but he was very
right and I think that,
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you know, for everybody
that's watched the news,
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you've seen how the
Christian Church in Iraq
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was really decimated
after the fall of Saddam.
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You had a church
of 1.4 million go down
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to about 400, 000 now
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since ISIS it's, like half,
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only half of the church...
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We talk about
Syria, yeah, we can...
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That's Iraq.
Like divert to Iraq.
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But Syria, it's the same thing.
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But, may be you know
the answer to something,
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you know, I give talks
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on religious
liberty all the time
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and I give some of
those same statistics,
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what I don't know is, yes,
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it was the Christian
population in Iraq was down
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to about 400,000 recently.
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Pre-ISIS, yeah.
Yes, that's the point.
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Then ISIS took over Mosul,
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which is the second
largest city in Iraq,
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there is not
that many big cities.
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I don't know
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how many
Christians were in Mosul,
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but it had to have
been a couple of 100, 000
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or at least a 100, 000.
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Yeah, surrounding Mosul
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you have a lot of
Christian villages
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and so what happened
when they came into Mosul,
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they also went
into dozens of villages
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that were predominantly
Turkmen, Christian, Yazidis,
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there are number of
different communities.
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And they couldn't get away,
they were essentially trapped.
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Well, they were
given the option,
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you have 48 hours,
you convert or die.
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Right. And so or be killed.
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So those Christian villages,
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at least seven or
eight of them in that area
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around Mosul were
completely wiped out
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of any Christian,
any Christian I believe.
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That's what I haven't heard.
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The number of Christians
that were martyred there,
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must have been large.
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Well, there
weren't very many martyred
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that Christians actually...
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Most of them paid them off?
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Well, no, what
they did is they fled
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so they lost everything.
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I mean, you had about seven
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to eight billion
dollars in assets
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that the Christian community
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around Mosul
just lost overnight.
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And then, I mean,
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they just escaped with
their lives essentially
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and, but they lost everything.
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So to rebuild
after they've rebuilt
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so many times
including after Saddam fell
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and then, you know,
they've been moved under Saddam
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and they've been
moved after Saddam,
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I mean, it's
decimated the community.
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So many of them
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instead of trying
to try again in Iraq
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one more time are
deciding to leave,
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so that the numbers,
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they went down from 1.4
million to 400,000 pre-ISIS now,
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I think there's around 200,000
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maybe left in
the country in total.
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But it's not that
they've been killed,
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most of them have just
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are living in refugee
camps in Jordan or have fled
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to the United
States and other countries.
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You're right.
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I remember reading of
one refugee camp in Jordan,
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I think it was 500,000...
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or 200,000...
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Hundreds of thousands,
most of them Christians.
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Yeah, many refugee camps.
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So that situation,
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the patriarch in Syria saw
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that if what happened in Iraq...
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I'm sure he was right.
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And so when Assad was...
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I mean it's still an
ongoing civil war there,
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but Assad always
protected the Syriac Church,
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and so even when I was there
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he used to send his
kids to vacation at the area
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where the Syriac Church
was and south of Syriac Church
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was in cahoots
with the Assad regime.
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It's just that they
had a good relationship,
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they were protected
under him in the same way
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that many of the
Christian churches
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were protected
under Saddam in Iraq.
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And...
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Well, I'm glad you're
saying this because...
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Viewers on this
program who probably heard me
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and I'll tell the story again.
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A few years ago
when the unrest started
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under the Obama administration,
00:08:34.78\00:08:37.11
President Obama in good
faith I'm sure but acting
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on his advisors
said very publicly
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that Assad needed to go.
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And about that time,
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they asked a number of
us with religious liberty
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to come down and
to talk to the faith
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based initiative group
for one of a better term
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out of the White House,
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you know, the group in
charge of religious activities.
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And they wanted to
persuade us on something.
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But after that, the
small group that came,
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they're about 10
or 12 of us no more,
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they asked us to
give some feedback.
00:09:07.74\00:09:09.74
And I remember telling them,
00:09:09.78\00:09:11.11
I said, "Please,
tell the president,
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whenever he gets up and
says that Assad should go,"
00:09:13.21\00:09:16.69
that's like a green
light in Syria for Muslims
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mostly to go and
attack Christians
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because if
you're opposed to Assad,
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don't like his regime,
00:09:25.53\00:09:26.86
the soft
underbelly of what he stood
00:09:26.90\00:09:29.83
for was to attack Christians.
00:09:29.86\00:09:31.20
And it wasn't
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that he
particularly like Christians,
00:09:32.60\00:09:34.34
just as in Iraq
00:09:34.37\00:09:36.60
the Ba'ath Party
Socialist Secular government
00:09:36.64\00:09:39.74
had given equal
rights to all faiths.
00:09:39.77\00:09:42.54
And the radical Muslims objected
00:09:42.58\00:09:44.98
that here the Christians
are being protected so.
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We saw the same thing,
00:09:47.92\00:09:49.35
attacks on Christian churches
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would follow all of these
public denunciations of Assad.
00:09:50.79\00:09:54.26
Well, that mean
00:09:54.29\00:09:55.62
the Assad regime
itself represents
00:09:55.66\00:09:57.66
a religious minority,
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they're the whites
and so within Islam,
00:09:59.06\00:10:00.90
and so they obviously
need their own protection
00:10:00.93\00:10:03.06
and I think
that's their problem.
00:10:03.10\00:10:04.43
But I think it comes
from the Ba'ath Party,
00:10:04.47\00:10:05.80
not from Assad.
00:10:05.83\00:10:07.40
Yeah, it's part of that.
00:10:07.44\00:10:09.10
They don't want
religion involved in politics.
00:10:09.14\00:10:11.74
It's very similar
to the Saddam era.
00:10:11.77\00:10:13.44
Remember, Saddam
was in an ongoing...
00:10:13.48\00:10:15.54
Non-religious.
00:10:15.58\00:10:16.91
A violent battle
against Islamic fundamentalists.
00:10:16.95\00:10:19.25
Yeah, and I
think it's definitely
00:10:19.28\00:10:21.68
a very controversial situation,
00:10:21.72\00:10:24.22
do you, you know, it's
churches, there you go.
00:10:24.25\00:10:27.49
It was no easy
answer, of course.
00:10:27.52\00:10:28.89
Yeah, I mean there is no...
00:10:28.92\00:10:31.43
I mean with any
of these dictators,
00:10:31.46\00:10:32.79
it's like, I think
00:10:32.83\00:10:34.16
what Thomas
Jefferson said about slavery,
00:10:34.20\00:10:35.53
you can't keep holding the line,
00:10:35.56\00:10:38.37
but you can't let
him go and it's like,
00:10:38.40\00:10:40.84
you know, it's not sustainable.
00:10:40.87\00:10:44.87
And you can
certainly make a good argument
00:10:44.91\00:10:46.64
that the dictatorial regime
00:10:46.68\00:10:48.38
of both these
countries created a situation
00:10:48.41\00:10:51.31
that eventually blossomed
the way it has in Syria.
00:10:51.35\00:10:54.45
And that's where
diplomacy comes in,
00:10:54.48\00:10:56.42
and is so important
and the international arena
00:10:56.45\00:10:58.79
and how they navigate
that and unfortunately
00:10:58.82\00:11:00.42
they just didn't
navigate it well.
00:11:00.46\00:11:02.36
But for, you know, historically
00:11:02.39\00:11:05.66
many of the
Christian communities
00:11:05.69\00:11:07.03
have been protected by Assad,
00:11:07.06\00:11:09.96
by even Russia in
that region of the world.
00:11:10.00\00:11:13.20
And so for those communities,
00:11:13.23\00:11:15.87
they just, they live
between a rock and a hard place.
00:11:15.90\00:11:21.48
Well, that's worth saying.
00:11:21.51\00:11:23.51
Some of our
viewers perhaps try to make
00:11:23.55\00:11:25.31
some sense of the
politics in the world.
00:11:25.35\00:11:28.58
One of the reasons that Russia
00:11:28.62\00:11:30.32
I think is showing
an interest in Syria
00:11:30.35\00:11:32.49
is because Russia
00:11:32.52\00:11:33.86
has an Eastern
Orthodox sensibility
00:11:33.89\00:11:37.03
and they are one
00:11:37.06\00:11:38.39
of the protective
religious dynamic there.
00:11:38.43\00:11:41.53
Oh, absolutely, I'm
sure that is part of it.
00:11:41.56\00:11:44.67
And we don't know
00:11:44.70\00:11:46.03
that not Assad is
going to be any better
00:11:46.07\00:11:48.80
and that's part of the challenge
00:11:48.84\00:11:50.17
is that when the
civil war began in Syria,
00:11:50.21\00:11:53.81
you had a lot of diverse
democratic movements spring up.
00:11:53.84\00:11:57.98
But across the board,
00:11:58.01\00:11:59.81
they quickly
silenced the Christian
00:11:59.85\00:12:03.75
and the more religious freedom
oriented members of the party.
00:12:03.79\00:12:09.16
And so people like Bassam Ishak,
00:12:09.19\00:12:10.66
you know, were really,
00:12:10.69\00:12:12.06
the Syriac was
really not treated well
00:12:12.09\00:12:15.36
even by those
democracy advocates.
00:12:15.40\00:12:19.87
But, and so until
those democracy advocates
00:12:19.90\00:12:22.84
and the opposition
00:12:22.87\00:12:24.21
that have been meeting in Europe
00:12:24.24\00:12:25.57
and coming to United States
00:12:25.61\00:12:27.01
are really
unequivocal about their stance
00:12:27.04\00:12:29.38
for religious
freedom as a red line.
00:12:29.41\00:12:31.25
I don't know that
they should be given
00:12:31.28\00:12:32.81
that kind of support politically
00:12:32.85\00:12:34.45
because they could so easily
00:12:34.48\00:12:36.58
just turn into the next Assad
and so how do we really know.
00:12:36.62\00:12:39.69
And then the
alternative is obviously
00:12:39.72\00:12:42.22
the different factions of
ISIS and other terrorist groups
00:12:42.26\00:12:45.63
that have been
trying to take power
00:12:45.66\00:12:47.60
within Syria as well
which is very dangerous
00:12:47.63\00:12:49.53
and something that no
one, you know, would want.
00:12:49.56\00:12:51.03
And far from anything else,
00:12:51.07\00:12:52.40
it is the civil war
and civil wars are never...
00:12:52.43\00:12:54.77
Very messy.
00:12:54.80\00:12:56.14
Amenable to outside
interference anyhow,
00:12:56.17\00:12:58.64
and they're always messy.
00:12:58.67\00:13:00.41
It's worth remembering
00:13:00.44\00:13:01.78
even in the US
there was a civil war,
00:13:01.81\00:13:03.14
a massive event
that I think in many ways
00:13:03.18\00:13:05.88
we're still living
00:13:05.91\00:13:07.25
through the
aftereffects of that.
00:13:07.28\00:13:08.72
Yeah, and there's a lot to lose.
00:13:08.75\00:13:10.72
So there are parts of
Syria that haven't been affected
00:13:10.75\00:13:13.62
I think by what
we see in the news.
00:13:13.66\00:13:15.89
It's not like
completely decimated,
00:13:15.92\00:13:19.19
you know, country
that's been leveled,
00:13:19.23\00:13:20.56
but there are
parts that have been
00:13:20.60\00:13:22.43
that are really
sad and will take,
00:13:22.46\00:13:23.87
I mean, just years to rebuild
00:13:23.90\00:13:26.30
and it is
unfortunate because it did,
00:13:26.33\00:13:29.07
Syria was really I think
the gem of the Middle East.
00:13:29.10\00:13:32.87
I've traveled
all over the region
00:13:32.91\00:13:34.34
and it is by far
00:13:34.38\00:13:36.04
one of the most beautiful
and just nicest countries.
00:13:36.08\00:13:40.95
But now sadly, you
know, it's that's hard.
00:13:40.98\00:13:43.59
Well, as you say, I get
the distinct impression,
00:13:43.62\00:13:46.72
it's not uniform destruction
all over, there are...
00:13:46.76\00:13:49.16
That's not uniform, yeah.
Safe pockets of even normalcy.
00:13:49.19\00:13:52.99
In parts of
Damascus, I think is still...
00:13:53.03\00:13:55.76
Yeah, parts that the government
still controls, absolutely.
00:13:55.80\00:13:58.03
But I've said it on this program
00:13:58.07\00:13:59.40
before you reminded me
00:13:59.43\00:14:00.77
when I was in Israel
nearly two years ago,
00:14:00.80\00:14:02.80
they took us up on
to the Golan Heights,
00:14:02.84\00:14:04.31
you can see down
the Sea of Galilee.
00:14:04.34\00:14:06.24
And it wasn't
real clear that they,
00:14:06.27\00:14:07.94
but they say when it's clear,
00:14:07.98\00:14:09.31
you can actually see
the outskirts of Damascus.
00:14:09.34\00:14:11.68
So this is all sort
of compacted in together,
00:14:11.71\00:14:14.68
and the potential
to affect other areas,
00:14:14.72\00:14:18.45
another religious dynamics
even in Israel, very strong.
00:14:18.49\00:14:22.49
We need to take a break.
00:14:22.52\00:14:23.86
We'll be back
shortly, stay with us.
00:14:23.89\00:14:25.73