The second of the photographs in this article shows me being honoured by Damascus’ Sunni community, who presented both me and Syria’s Grand Mufti with expensive robes; I quickly gave away to a local Sunni, who appreciated the robe much more than a potato muncher like me ever would. The first photo shows me, in the presence of Melkite Patriarch Gregory 111 Laham and Mother Agnes Mariam, the mother superior of a famous Syrian Melkite convent, being similarly honoured by that country’s Melkites. At the time of writing, Patriarch Leham is in exile, the Grand Mufti is in a coma and Mother Agnes is in prison. Although I could write many words in praise of my old friend, Patriarch Laham, this article concentrates on the latter two as much to bear witness by standing in solidarity with them as for any other more practical or immediate reason.
Though Mufti Hassoun was largely a ceremonial meet and greet guy, along with every other moderate Sunni cleric of influence, he was a marked man from the first days of the conflict. When I brought him to Ireland, RTÉ, the Irish government’s state controlled TV outlet, had Dr Ali Selim of the Muslim Brotherhood deliberately misinterpret his words, thereby putting the Mufti’s life, and my own, in danger from Dublin’s standing army of imported ISIS fanatics. Ivana Bacik, the head of Ireland’s far right Labour Party, continued Selim’s sectarian attacks in the Irish Parliament, after which RTÉ gave her a primetime platform where she again made a fool of herself. The only thing these MI6 running dogs can do to the likes of Mufti Hassoun is to blackball him or, as their Muslim Brotherhood comrades are currently doing in Damascus, mercilessly torture the septuagarian until he falls into a coma.
Although Mother Agnes Mariam, another septuagenarian, is not yet in a coma, that is how Syria’s new rulers would like her and all similar nuns to be. Mother Agnes Mariam first rose to prominence because she helped to debunk the false allegations Jolani’s head hacking rebels made about the Syrian Arab Army using chemical gas attacks in East Ghouta, which NATO, resorting to their usual playbook, was using as a pretext to bomb Syria to smithereens.
Although a detailed debunking of the East Ghouta chemical attack may be found, inter alia, here, a twitter search for Mother Agnes Mariam quickly reveals what a thorn in the side she was and still is for Syria’s new rulers and why, in mafia parlance, she has to go. Mother Agnes currently faces two charges, the first of which is that she lied about those chemical attacks and the second of which is that she advocated for Israel to invade Syria.
The second charge is totally absurd because, not only is Israel in full control of southern Syria and are squabbling with Turkey as regards which of them will control the T4 air base in central Syria, but Syria’s new rulers have long collaborated with the Israelis Mother Agnes Mariam is now accused of working with. And, whatever the rights and wrongs of the Muslim Brotherhood collaborating with Israel, Mother Agnes has the extenuating circumstance that she is trying to protect Christian, Alawite and Druze lives by affording them some kind of protection, however imperfect or self-defeating her efforts may be.
Her persecutors have no such excuse. Not only had HTS terror boss Jolani a $10 million US bounty on his head but there is overwhelming evidence their massacres of Alawites, Christians and Druze continue, even as you read this article.
Although her many critics, who argue that Mother Agnes should never have involved herself in what they term politics, may have a point, circumstances show them to be hypocrites at best and charlatans at worst. The thirteen nuns and three maids kidnapped by Jolani’s crew from Maaloua had no political involvement and yet they had to suffer the gravest of indignities for months on end. Franciscan priest Fr Francois Murad had no political involvement and yet Jolani’s finest beheaded him in Ghassaniya. Ditto Armenian Catholic priest Fr Hovsep Bedoyen, Dutch Jesuit priest Frans van der Lugt and so many saintly Assyrian and Greek Orthodox priests, bishops and archbishops I would be here until the Day of Judgement if I were to list them all.
Although Italian Jesuit priest Fr Paol Dall’Oglio did throw his lot in with Jolani’s crew, they thanked him by slitting his throat and throwing his body into a Raqqa lime pit for his troubles, thereby posing some pertinent practical and moral questions not only for all of Syria’s remaining nuns, priests and other religious leaders but for each and every one of us as well.
If Mother Agnes Mariam is convicted of raising, more than a decade ago remember, the plight of hundreds of Alawite children who were abducted and organ harvested by Jolani’s lot then even in her isolation, she should be quietly proud that she is following in the footsteps of St Paul, the great Syrian Apostle, who trod the same Golgotha twenty centuries earlier, and of Jesus Himself, Who Mark 15:34 tells us, likewise felt abandoned.
For me, the die is cast, my Rubicon is crossed and, though I am in this, on the side of the Syrian people, the Grand Mufti and Mother Agnes Mariam included, until the bitter end, I have the consolation that brave Syrians, of all denominations and none, are helping my small efforts in ways big and small, and that fortifies me
But, as with Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, we must all help our own champions in every way, big or small, that we can so that neither they nor we throw in the towel, which would be the ultimate betrayal not only of Mufti Hassoun and Mother Agnes Mariam but of the Syrian people and their thousands of years of standing on the right side of St Paul, St Thecla, of the nuns of Maaloula and Saidnaya, of the Armenians in their gravest hour of need and of all that is good, holy, brave and right. Although I am asking elsewhere for readers to give directly to a number of Irish, British and French-based groups, donations can also be sent here, where I will again pass them on to brave, apolitical nuns in Damascus who, like the great Syrian apostle, St Paul, before them, have fought the good fight, finished the race and, above all, kept the faith in the most trying and difficult of circumstances.
Reprinted with permission from Strategic Culture Foundation.
