To Syrian Christians, Assad is the lesser evil

It is easy for the West to preach – but they face exile or death in lands beyond the dictator’s control

Iwas invited to visit Syria last week to meet local Christians, but had another engagement in the diary, so had to decline. Turns out I missed an historic sight: Western missiles shooting across the Damascus skyline to punish Bashar al-assad for a chemical weapons attack. Giles Fraser, an Anglican priest and friend who did make the trip, says many locals slept through the “firework display”. His photos on Twitter of meetings with local clerics and state officials have sparked controversy. They apparently illustrate what Giles calls “the long tradition of religious pluralism in Syria”.

You can infer from the tweets an important, if uncomfortable, point: many Syrian Christians support the regime. Three Orthodox patriarchs have not only questioned whether Assad in fact used chemical weapons in Douma but have saluted “the courage, heroism and sacrifices of the Syrian Arab Army”.

The Middle East is complicated. Syria is an ethnic patchwork squeezed into borders created by long-gone empires, and held together for decades by a regime that played one side against another. Assad is Alawite, a sect that regards itself as Shia Muslim but drinks alcohol and believes in reincarnation. He is a client not only of Orthodox Russia but the Iranians too, who want to build a Shia empire among failed states.

The Sunni resistance found its most extreme expression in Isil, which dreams of a regional caliphate, and it’s no wonder that many Syrian Christians look at the territory beyond Assad’s control – where they face exile or death – and conclude he is the lesser of two evils. They have certainly received insufficient support from the West, which has been slow to grasp the role of religion and reluctant to acknowledge the particular suffering of non-muslims.

We’ve found it easier to cast the choice faced by Syrians in secular terms that fit with our own recent history: dictatorship versus democracy. But “democracy” in Syria could mean tyranny by the majority, which is what pushes Christians into a painful compromise with Assad. Before any Westerner rushes to judge, ask yourself this: didn’t we make a similar calculation when we started bombing Isil, effectively joining the civil war on Assad’s side?

As a Westerner, I do accept the verdict of my government that Assad has gassed his citizens. The thought revolts me and I want to see him face justice. But I’m British: I’m not a Syriac Orthodox taxi driver in Damascus with a wife and children. The greater the stake you have in a situation, the less attractive a moral crusade looks, especially in a conflict that lacks clear right and wrong. I suspect the point of Giles’s tweets was to reflect the human reality of life on the ground, in a country where some people simply want the war to end – and perhaps resent the West’s preaching.

Where was I rather than Syria? Washington DC, where I took a friend to see the Supreme Court, joined a line in the street and only when we were inside did I realise we’d been queuing for half an hour to get into the Library of Congress. It was worth it. One of the most beautiful buildings in DC, the library was constructed in the 19th century to prove that Americans were every bit as civilised as their European forebears. The walls and ceilings are covered in murals depicting virtues such as prudence, temperance, patriotism and courage. The early republic believed America was a project in creating not just a better country but a better individual, and that success would be judged by quality of character.

If the federal government built a library today, it would be a modernist box dedicated to equality and diversity. Those are the Left’s obsessions and they contain little moral substance at all (something isn’t inherently better because it’s more diverse, otherwise the Spice Girls would be regarded as the greatest band in history).

But is the contemporary Right at an advantage? Hell, no. Donald Trump fails all the moral tests the Founding Fathers posed for a president: the only regard in which he is superior to many of them is that he doesn’t own slaves. The EX-FBI chief James Comey labels him “morally unfit to be president” and says he treats women like “pieces of meat”. Mr Comey has published a book to prove his salacious claims, which to me suggests he’s just as crass as the president.

In the good old days, the only people who wrote kiss-and-tells were preachers’ mistresses, and they would advertise them on TV dressed like an angel: “Oprah, he did things to me that were too shocking to publish”. And not only were they in the book, but were the only bits anyone bothered to read.

I admire Neville Lawrence, who has forgiven the murderers of his son, Stephen. Here’s an example of someone doing the right thing in an impossible situation. “I am sorry” and “I forgive you” are the hardest things a human being can ever say – but also, the most liberating. When the wars and scandals are over, those words can rebuild nations.