By Theodore Shoebat
A major Church leader from Syria, the Melkite Archbishop of Aleppo, the Most Revd Jean-Clément Jeanbart, has declared to the British government that they are arming the very Islamic terrorists who are slaughtering Christians. According to the report:
A SYRIAN archbishop has pleaded with Britain to stop backing Islamist rebel groups in the war against President Bashar al-Assad.
At a meeting in the House of Lords on Tuesday, the Melkite Archbishop of Aleppo, the Most Revd Jean-Clément Jeanbart, accused Britain of siding with “fundamentalist jihadists who want to kill everyone who is not similar to them”.
He said that Britain was “investing in fundamentalist jihadis and mercenaries who are killing anyone who is saying anything about freedom, about citizenship, about religious liberty, about democracy”.
It was a “big lie” that moderate rebel forces in support of freedom and democracy were at war with the Assad regime, the Archbishop said. The four-year civil war was, he said, a contest between a modern secular state, and jihadis who were smashing its culture and massacring religious minorities.
He accused the Western media of presenting an inaccurate depiction of the conflict. “Please, I ask you, I beseech you to have another look at our situation to see what is underneath what is happening,” the Archbishop told a meeting organised by Aid to the Church in Need, a charity set up to help persecuted Christians.
“It is terrible for us to see all the marvellous things we had, destroyed for pretend democracy and freedom,” he said. “Our country was fighting for 50 to 60 years to become a secularist regime, a pluralistic country, to give citizens their rights of religion and freedom of choice . . . and you are destroying this work and pushing on us fundamental jihadis who want to kill everyone who is not similar to them.
“They don’t accept anyone who is different. Anyone who is not a fundamentalist Muslim has no rights: no right to live, no right to be in society, no right to be a citizen.”
He went on: “We are suffering a lot; we are suffering because we have lost many, many dear people, many beloved people. We are suffering because our country has been in a flood of blood. We are suffering because they [the jihadi rebel groups] have destroyed everything — our economy, our industry, our churches, everything.
“The most important thing we are suffering from is that they are destroying man. They are taking away our right to choose what we want to be.”