Maloula: Christians and Arms

Nahed Hitter

AL-Akhbar daily

And the criminal militants of the Takfiri groups broke into Maloula, or what they chose to call as the "Capital of the Crusaders". They, of course, mean the capital of the Eastern Christianity. For these terrorists, a Christian is only a Crusader, who "invaded" the land of Muslims.

Meanwhile, the Divine providence, now, turned the real Western Crusaders, with all their military aircrafts, missiles, weapons, media and armies, into the service of the so-called "Islamic Jihad" against "the Crusader settlers"!
Maloula is an eastern sacred town that is older than the Crusaders; even older than Christianity.
In this town there exists pagan monuments that go back to the 10th century BC, as well as other monuments from the Christian, Romanian, Byzantine and Islamic ages.
In its towering mountains, there remain cults of individual worships linked to everything in this world. The central event for Maloula occurred finally, with the triumph of Saint Takla, who sought refuge for her faith, mountain, and Syria in face of the Romanian imperialism that time.
Thus, Maloula turned to a fort of spiritual resistance all along the decades. It even preserved the language of Jesus, Aramai- Syriac, i.e. the sister of Arabic, as a remaining piece of the divine incarnation time.

Maloula, the rare historic religious town...the exquisite natural architectural masterpiece in the Levant, the second to al-Quds, the site of pilgrimage to the Christians of the Orient ... Is it reasonable that it simply falls into the terrorist hands? Wasn't it expected that the Takfiri Wahhabi criminals invade the town to heal the blind sectarian patient? How, then, Damascus did not take care of protecting the town with more military forces sufficient to repel the invaders?

Should this Syrian jewel be left without the needed security; without the walls of soldiers protecting it from the herds of barbarism? The case isn't limited to the religious sites, but to an archaeological treasure that gives Syria its spirit.
The town is also related to the treasure of fine arts and other religious ideals that aren't available anywhere else in the whole world.

Now, the invading terrorists will have begun their usual banditry concert in Maloula: looting, vandalism, destruction, murder and rape. However, this tragic disaster against human beings, spirit, history and beauty, will not find its place in the debates of Western capitals that bustle in searching for the best ways to support al-Nusra Front in Syria, from the exhaustion of the Syrian Arab Army to the destruction of the infrastructure, passing through the timing of bombing missiles against the Syrian sites through thousands of mercenaries. In this context their plan imposes its progress, regardless of prior estimates, towards a single goal: Establishing another Afghanistan in Syria.

Of course, the Syrian Arab Army will retake Maloula. But the fighting will make the town, the historical masterpiece, loose much from what the history have handed it from evidences of civilization. Was it necessary?

Invaders of Maloula came, motivated by their black hatred, from all the countries. However, they as well as those who trained with them will return back to those countries, raising the death weapon against all what is Christian: remains, monastery, church, shrine, role or population. Among these, a Jordanian terrorist blew up his car at a military checkpoint at the entrance to Maloula, opening the way for storming it.

How many Jordanian will return from Syria to undermine the traditional tribal harmony between Christians and Muslims? Should we wait for the Takfiris and Wahhabis to blow, tomorrow, the churches of Jesus Christ on the Jordanian River? A question that must be answered by the Jordanian authorities that practice hypocrisy: They hold a conference to protect the Christians in Amman, while granting the local Takfiris political facilities and enabling them to stretch, crowd, and send more suicide bombers to Syria. It may be that Maloula's checkpoint suicide bomber is one of them, one of those full of hatred that began to penetrate the ranks of the country, and raise, as the Latins' Bishop in Jordan, Maroun al-Laham said, concerns and worst expectations.

Until now, the political and media coverage was neither proportional to the level of ethnic cleansing against the Syrian Christianity nor to the level of its current and long-term results.

Of the two million displaced Syrians, inside and outside the home, there are 450 thousand displaced Christians, i.e. nearly a quarter of the Syrian refugees. Comparing the ratio of the population, it is obviously clear, that the size of multiple forms of terrorism continues to attack the Christians particularly in wounded Syria.

And Perhaps the invasion to Maloula, including all its symbolic holy dimensions, will lead to doubling of flee of the Christian Syrians. I look forward that Hizbullah restores Maloula, and then protect it, like it is doing to the Holy Shrine of Sayyeda Zainab. But my major appeal is for the Christian Arabs themselves wherever they are exposed to threat and slaughter because of their identity: The response to the Takfiris isn't immigration, but raising arms. .