Your report on and condemnation of the recent massacre of Egyptian Coptic Christians should be seen in the context of the 100th anniversary this year of the most terrible war crime of the Great War, the Armenian genocide.
Although there will be a number of large but mostly symbolic events internationally to highlight this massive crime, I wish to draw attention to the one I am involved in, which takes place in Damascus University from 23 to 27 April. Syria is, in fact, a fitting place to have such a conference as the Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis and Palestinians gave refuge to the Armenians of 1915 and today’s Armenian diaspora are almost all the descendants of those earlier refugees the Levant’s Arabs gave selfless succour to.
Their actions are in marked contrast today’s British, Irish and American governments who still refuse to recognise the Armenian genocide, which remains the greatest crime ever committed against the Christians of the Middle East and which remains the template for much of what is happening to the Levant’s largely defenceless minorities.
Although Edmund Burke's dictum that the only thing necessary for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing remains as true as ever, there is a deeper truth at foot here, one that Jesus perhaps had in mind in, for example, all of his parables that mentioned the Samaritans, his era’s equivalent of the non-Christians who are doing much more to help the Levant’s Christians than the much better resourced nominal Christians of the West are.
Dr Declan Hayes, Highfield, Southampton
Loading ...
