A new documentary short by the Journeyman.TV company operating out of the United Kingdom shows evidence of the targeting of Christians in Syria, and apparent fighting back in the north of the country.
The video sheds light on recent incidents in the war-torn country, which include Islamists defecating in a Church, tearing Bibles to shreds, and pouring gasoline over a Christian man and lighting him on fire.
The video (below) is just eight minutes long, but goes some way to explaining how “Christians, who make up one tenth of the population, are being driven out.” The documentary claims that “in the Northeast, hand-in-hand with the Kurds, one group [is] beating back the Islamists’ advance.”
The news comes on the heels of recent news that over 450,000 Christians have been displaced since the start of the country’s civil war in 2011.
Mahjoub Abdulahad, an elderly Christian, said, “The extremists said the Christians and the Kurds were infidels and had to be killed!”
Abdulahad explained how he was trying to repair a church damaged by extremists: “The windows were broken, too. They made a mess of the church, even defecated on the floor… There were books on the floor, they ripped them apart, even the Bible.”
However, he also explained how a few towns are developing Christian militias to fight back against the Islamist terror.
“We have checkpoints around the town to protect it from strangers,” he said.
When asked about leaving the country, Abdulahad replied, “No, we must stay. We must stay and defend our land and, God willing, this crisis will be resolved.”
Early on in the video, Mohammed Jelloud, a local Arab man, told the filmmakers, “They said they’d chop our heads off if we stayed. They said we were supporting the regime and they burnt one of my cousins. They poured gasoline over him. But he is alive, and with the help of the Kurds we managed to get him to a hospital”.
Fadi, a young Christian, echoed Jelloud’s statements, telling the film crew, “I have came to work with [the Kurds] because they are working to secure, to keep my way and my style of life, not to let people from outside like Jabhat al Nusra [jihadis] to come and force me to change my style of life, force me to change the way I live.”
“Don’t wear pants, don’t do this, don’t do that, be a Muslim. I just wanna be like I was before and better, and have freedom.”
The film ends on a pessimistic note, explaining that the situation is not likely to improve at any point soon. “The Syrian civil war”, the narrator claims, “may be just another step in [Christianity’s] slow decline in the Middle East.”
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