How could we allow America, NATO, Israel or other Arab states to destroy something so ancient and valuable for all humanity as Syria - the last secular Arab state? Australian peace activist, Susan Dirgham, taught English for years in Syria and got to know the country and its people very well. She argues that, without deception and our complicity through ignorance, there could be no war in Syria. But how do we work out for ourselves what is really happening in Syria and who to help? We need to understand more of Syria's history and its geopolitical position, to which she provides insight here. Just as we need to severely question the notion of US-NATO presenting a 'majority' opinion, we also need to very carefully assess what NGOs are doing in Syria. Susan is the national co-ordinator of “Australians for Mussalaha (Reconciliation) in Syria" (AMRIS). She has travelled very widely and even lived in China before it was opened to the West. When she speaks she provides testable facts and does not talk down to her audience or ask for money. Please consider asking her to speak. You may contact her at susan.dirgham51[AT[gmail.com. There is a question and answer session at the end of this video.

First Part of two part transcription of the above video.

The reality of war is complex. Fiction is often needed to make sense of it.

Inspiration:

Graham Greene’s “Our Man in Havana” is the story of a somewhat ordinary Englishman in Cuba in the 1950s, Jim Wormold, a vacuum-cleaner salesman, whose failing business and acquisitive daughter induce him to be recruited by MI6. His heart isn’t in espionage, but he has a flair for invention and his bogus reports are taken seriously by London HQ.

”He had no accomplice, except the credulity of other men.”

Tragedy results from Wormold’s deception, and it brings knowing.

”I don’t give a damn about men who are loyal to the people who pay them, to organizations… I don’t think even my country means that much. There are many countries in our blood, aren’t there, but only one person. Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?” Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana ”

Without deception, there would be no war in Syria.

Faith in Secular Syria

I taught at the British Council in Damascus for two years and met hundreds of Syrian people. It is those Syrian people that I met and the peaceful, secular Syria that I explored that is in my heart and that motivates me to be a peace activist. I was also a peace activist during the Vietnam War and I realized then how important it was to investigate, to research, to understand what was really going on and to expose the lies and to know that there were a lot of ‘men from Havana’, a lot of people working for war, otherwise you would have no war.

The Syria I know is a secular country, a country where you could find faith; Syrian people of all faiths are very devout. The impression I got was that their faith was genuine. And in the Syria I knew there was love and hope, so supporting their country was supporting love, supporting secularism. In the Syria I knew, it was taboo to ask people about their religion. If you did speak about religion, you spoke with sensitivity and respect. I believe this gave the people of Syria one of the most precious freedoms that anyone can have. That is the freedom to approach others in your society, no matter what their religious or ethnic background, with an open heart.

But that has been destroyed by those people who wish to destroy Syria.

I have a faith in secular Syria, the Syria I know, and there are good reasons for that faith. One is the position of women. In 1949, Syrian women were the first women in the Middle East to be granted the right to vote. They have the same basic rights as women in Australia in regards to the freedom to dress as they choose. On a visit to Syria in 2010, I heard from former students at the British Council that the talk among young educated people at that time concerned women having the same social and sexual freedoms as men.

Syrian women have the freedom to seek an education, to further their career. One of my students at the British Council, a single mother who drove a VW Beetle, worked for the Health Ministry. Her ambition was to become the Minister of Health, not a foolish dream for a highly intelligent Syrian woman as one of the most respected ministers in Syria today is a woman, Dr Kinda al-Shammat, the Minister for Social Affairs, a minister who works at the grass-roots level, with the people.

In secular Syria there was freedom of religion, which meant that Christmas, Easter and the Eid Festivals were all national holidays, so everybody stopped for each other’s holy days. I felt the magic of this on my first Christmas in Damascus. There was a huge Christmas tree in Bab Touma, the Christian quarter of the city, and the main street was closed for the festival – Christian and Muslim families mingled, and a man dressed up as Father Christmas played the saxophone. These days, you are more likely to see solemnity in Bab Touma.

Islam and Christianity, as they are practiced in Syria, are inclusive, so in recent years it is not uncommon to see imams in churches and priests in mosques for funeral services.

Humanity, Faith, Diversity – Who Describes it? Who Seeks the Truth?

Damascus is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. It is part of everyone’s history, of everyone’s humanity. Syria is basically a bridge between the different religious faiths. You can feel this in the air in Syria. The humanity of Damascus, as well as its beauty, has been extolled by many foreigners that have lived there.

For example, in 2010, British writer, Malika Browne, who once lived in the Old City of Damascus, celebrated Syria’s history, miracles and beauty. Two years later, Browne returned to the same theme in an article in The Guardian. A car bomb in the Christian quarter of Damascus prompted Browne to reflect on the Damascus she knew and loved – the Damascus I knew. However, Browne’s one sentence conclusion is partisan and glib: this harmony is precisely what one man, Bashar al-Assad and a handful of family members, is bent on trying to destroy. Few general readers would question such an unsubstantiated claim because hatred for ‘Assad’ has become a tacit truth, it has seeped into so much of our culture – political cartoons, travel writing, and movie reviews. But as someone who looks deeper for truths, I want to know what motivates Malika Browne to include flippant, but lethal propaganda in such a beautiful piece of writing about Damascus. What motivates her to ignore the points of view of Christians in Syria, many of them victims? Syrian Christian leaders have spoken out against ‘militants’ and proposed western military action. My conclusion: as Browne is married to a former Damascus-based diplomat, she has divided loyalties. Her spouse was someone’s ‘man in Damascus’. Malika Browne’s willingness to adhere to a western war narrative on Syria overrides her allegiance to the people of Syria.

Labels Quash Discussion

I believe there is good reason to support Syria, particularly the people of Syria. But if I try to get a gig on a radio station, I am told I am an ‘Assad supporter’. Labels are being used to quash discussion, to quash debate and peace activism, and they have been effective. Although Syria has a population of 23 million people, the crisis in Syria has been reduced to slogans; it’s ‘Assad versus the rebels’. This slogan has been very effective because it has intimidated people. People have been too afraid to stand up. To be told you are a supporter of Assad is almost like being told you are a supporter of Hitler. Few dare go there.

And those lined up against Syria are basically the whole world, except for some notable exceptions, which include Russia, China, Central America, Latin America, India, Oman, and South Africa. We rarely hear about the notable exceptions because the ‘international community’ is said to be against Assad, but actually the international community is basically just America and its allies.

Partisan Stand of NGOs

What can deter people from standing up for Syria is that you have NGOs, such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International as well as the U.N., taking very partisan stands against Syria and making use of emotive language rather than objective and sober analysis. These bodies are viewed as trustworthy, dependable, and their blessed aura and global presence are being exploited in today’s modern so-called information and humanitarian wars.

This year, two Nobel Peace Laureates, a former UN Assistant Secretary General, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories and over 100 scholars wrote a letter to Human Rights Watch, critical of its close ties with the U.S. government. They questioned HRW’s independence.

In regards to Amnesty International, there are many people working for it who have integrity and good intentions, but it is not the Amnesty of 40 years ago, when it was a grass-roots organization. Today, it is a corporation, with security doors, executive salaries, gate-keepers and merchandize. It has a HQ. No doubt there is dedication, but Amnesty International also provides a career path.

At the end of 2011, I accompanied members of the Syrian community to the Amnesty office in Melbourne to report on the killings of innocent civilians by armed men early on in the crisis in Syria.

One young Syrian Australian reported to Amnesty that armed men had killed his uncle, a farmer, and two of his friends when they were on the highway to Damascus. And I reported the deaths of three young teenage boys. They were killed in Homs on 17 April 2011, Independence Day, so a public holiday in Syria. They had been in a car with army numberplates because the father of two of them was an army officer. (There is reference to their deaths in an article titled Questioning the Syrian “Casualty List” by Sharmine Narwani, an analyst based in Beirut.)

The Amnesty officials in Melbourne and Sydney who took official note of these reports were very respectful and receptive. However, the reports were sent to Amnesty’s head office in London (or perhaps New York), and stories of these killings were never reported by Amnesty.

Amnesty International, like Human Rights Watch, has close and inappropriate ties with the US Administration. For example, its US director in 2012 was Suzanne Nossel, author of the 2004 paper ‘Smart Power’ which explores ways America can remain the number one global power without being overly militaristic and unpopular. Nossel has worked with top US State Department officials, and since leaving Amnesty, she has moved on smartly to become executive director of PEN American Centre, which belongs to “International PEN, the worldwide association of writers that defends those who are harassed, imprisoned, and killed for their views,” Wikipedia.

In recent years, America’s top man in Syria has been former Ambassador Robert Ford, someone who has been accused by an American investigative journalist of recruiting death squads for Syria, yet he was the keynote speaker at a 2012 Amnesty US annual general meeting.

But for an outsider, a non-Syrian, to comprehend the scale of the deception and intrigue needed to prosecute a war against Syria requires a great deal of scepticism and many dedicated hours of research. The mainstream narrative, together with the support it gets from NGOs, can overwhelm and bewilder us. To challenge people in authority - men and women in grey suits – and a distorted narrative that has slipped subliminally into our culture is a truly daunting task.

What requires support?

• The Syrian people and their secular society and state
• Diplomacy
• The non-violent struggle for political reforms

Lobbyists for War vs Lobbyists for Peace

There have been many lobbyists for a war in Syria and few lobbyists for peace. People who lobby for war are more often than not employed directly or indirectly to do so. Generally, you don’t get paid to lobby for peace.

For some years now, my peace activism has led me to email politicians and people in the media. One prominent politician on my email list was Senator Bob Brown, the Greens leader who was highly regarded for his anti-war stand in the past. However, I had reason to be disturbed by the Greens’ position on Syria. Senator Brown was vocal in his support for sanctions against Syria, for the closure of the Syrian embassy, and for the Australian Senate to call on President Assad to resign. Such a political stand in a country very distant from Syria ignored the views and circumstances of 23 million people in Syria. They were a response to the lobbyists for war.

In March 2012, Bob Brown’s office responded to me directly, giving me an opportunity to lobby for peace. In an email reply to Senator Brown’s office, I made several points. They included the following:

• A well-meaning Victorian Greens politician, Ms Collen Hartland, had been befriended by two or three Syrian Australians. Seeing them as trusted sources, Ms Hartland felt qualified to inform others on events in Syria. (The claims of two or three men in Australia helped determine Greens’ policies on a conflict impacting the lives of 23 million people in Syria.)

• One media outlet Senator Brown may have trusted for information on Syria was Al-Jazeera. But this media outlet is owned by members of the Qatari ruling royal family and in recent years has been expressing the foreign policy stand of Qatar, a country which hosts a major US base. Until recently at least, Qatar has also been a base for the Muslim Brotherhood, a force that has been at the forefront of the militarized opposition to the Syrian government. Al-Jazeera reporters, including senior staff, have resigned reportedly over the biased reporting of Al-Jazeera on Syria and the ‘Arab Spring’ in general.

• Robert Fisk’s reports on Syria may have determined many Australians’ views, but Fisk doesn’t represent the views of millions of peace-loving Syrians. He writes for western readers. If his often cryptic reports on Syria represent anyone’s views in the Middle East, they might be those of Lebanese political figure and former Druze ‘warlord’, Walid Jumblatt, a close friend of Fisk and someone who is often ridiculed for his fickle political alliances. (NB: Some truth can be found in Fisk’s reports, but he should be read with a critical eye.)

About three weeks after I sent my email to Senator Brown’s office, the senator resigned from politics. Bob Brown may have realized he had been wrong on Syria and it was all too dreadful and complicated, so he resigned. However, reasons for his resignation were probably much more prosaic than that, of course. However, what would have happened if Bob Brown had stood up and declared that he had been wrong about Syria and he now supported diplomacy and would work hard to expose war propaganda? Would he have taken the Greens’ Party with him? Would the wider community and the media have reassessed their stands on Syria? I think not. At that time, before we became aware of IS and the depth of the brutality of armed groups, few Australians were in a position to see beyond the slogans for war. Few were prepared to run the risk of being labelled an “Assad apologist”. (Labour politician Anthony Albanese was one exception.)

It should be noted that there are two prominent U.S. politicians who have taken consistently strong stands against the propaganda that feeds the war in Syria, both have stood for presidential nominations. One is former Republican Congressman Ron Paul, and the other is former Democratic Congressman Denis Kucinich, who visited Syria in 2013 to interview President Assad for Fox News. A US senator who has also defied the mainstream narrative has been Republican Senator Richard Black, who famously sent a letter to President Assad to thank him for the Syrian army’s protection of Syrian Christians. This predictably led to the headline, “Assad-loving Va. Pol defends views”.

The Syrian Perspective – An Historic One

While the Australian perspective of Syria is being shaped largely by our media, that of people in Syria is shaped by local events and an understanding of Syria’s history and its place in the world.

There are over 300 graves of Australian soldiers in a well-tended cemetery in Damascus, but the Syrian view of the contributions of ANZACs to their history may differ considerably to ours. For us, the role of Australian soldiers looms large in the lands they have fought in, and the locals are almost inconsequential extras.

My grandfather was in the 3rd Light Horse Brigade that entered Damascus on 1 October 1918, some hours before Lawrence of Arabia’s more ‘epic’ entry. After the expulsion of the generally oppressive Turkish forces in Greater Syria, Britain and France divided up Syria between them. France sent troops into Damascus in 1920, and in 1925, in response to the local opposition to their rule, bombed and destroyed a section of the historic old city of Damascus.

Australian soldiers were again in Syria in World War 2, this time to join the fight against the Vichy French, who they feared were collaborating with the Nazis in the region. The win against these French forces allowed De Galle’s Free French forces to control Syria. France after the war was reluctant to give up its strategic hold in Syria. In 1945, it attacked the Syrian parliament building in Damascus to crush any fight for independence. Finally, Syria achieved independence with the exit of the last French troops on 17 April 1946.

The French departure enabled American interference in Syrian affairs.

In 1949, CIA agents coordinated the first successful military coup in Syria. The democratically elected government had not approved a Trans-Arabian Pipeline; however, the new coup leaders did. (In that 1949 election, Syrian women were the first women in the Arabic world to have the right to vote.)

A CIA agent behind the coup, Miles Copeland Jr, was someone with a respectable, even glamorous, background, being the son of a doctor, the husband of an archaeologist, and having been a trumpet player with the Glen Millar Orchestra before the war. From the perspective of many westerners, Copeland was a guy to respect. From the perspective of a Syrian, he was a man to distrust: he was employed to destabilize their country.

Because of concern over Syria’s links with Moscow, there were further US attempts in 1956 and 1957 to overthrow the Syrian government with support from Britain and Turkey. The plan was to trigger a military coup by various violent activities on the country’s borders.

From that first successful US-backed military coup in 1949, there is a succession of coups and counter-coups up until 1970. There were 14 different presidents in just over 20 years.
But US plans for the overthrow of an independent Syrian government may have got nastier in recent years than they were in the 1950s. In 2001, after 9/11, American General Wesley Clark was told by a general in the Pentagon that the Secretary of Defence’s office had plans to ‘take out’ seven countries, these included Syria, Iran, Iraq and Libya. Clark explained that the United States underwent a ‘policy coup’ after 9/11.

America’s man in Syria to help implement the ‘taking out’ of Syria was Ambassador Robert Ford, whom in 2011 was accused of organizing Arab/Muslim death squads in Syria.

Syria’s neighbours involved in supporting unrest and violence

The last time Syria experienced terror anything like it is experiencing now was in the late 70s and early 80s. The then president, Hafiz al-Asad, publicly accused the CIA of “encouraging ‘sabotage and subversion’ in Syria so as to bring ‘the entire Arab world under joint US-Israeli domination’” (“Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East”, by Patrick Seale, page335)
Ironically perhaps, this subversion involved support from Arab leaders as in a 1982 speech, President Assad said this about Saddam Hussien,

The hangman of Iraq was not content to kill tens of thousands of his own people. He came to Syria to carry out his favourite hobbies of killing, assassination and sabotage. That man has been sending arms to the criminals in Syria ever since he took power.
(Quoted from, “Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East”, by Patrick Seale, page 336)

Israel and Syria

Books could be written about tensions and conflict between Israel and Syria. The Israeli state is situated on land that used to be part of Greater Syria under the Ottoman Empire, and it has occupied the Golan Heights, Syrian territory, since 1967.
‘Greater Israel’, or what is known as the Yinon Plan formulated in 1982, calls for the balkanization of Arab states; Israel could dominate while Muslims killed each other in endless sectarian wars.
With the wars brought about by the establishment of the State of Israel, come espionage, intrigue, tightening security, and death. Every country suffers. In 1965, Eli Cohen, an Israeli spy in Syria who ingratiated himself among top officials in Syria to become an advisor to the Syria Minister of Defence, was hanged. Two years later, in 1967, 34 American sailors on the USS Liberty, which was an intelligence gathering ship, were killed when Israeli air and naval forces attacked the Liberty.

In the conflict between the Syrian army and militants, #ixzz3DtBLvQy1”">Israel has provided practical support to militants, and Prime Minister Netanyahu has visited wounded insurgents in an Israeli army hospital.

From a Syrian perspective, Israel’s support for the insurgency is a continuation of Israel’s efforts to dominate the Middle East by weakening, even destroying, its neighbours.

From an Israeli perspective, tiny warring Sunni, Shi’a, Alawi, Kurdish, and Druze states in the region might be seen as the best option for Israel - a Jewish state in everything but name. A strong united pluralist Syrian republic which challenges Israel’s divisive and aggressive policies on the world stage would not be welcome.

Chants heard at the first violent anti-government protests in Syria in March 2011 and repeated over the coming years were “Christians to Beirut; Alawites to their graves” and “No to Hezbollah. No to Iran. Syria for Muslims.” They are chants that signal the sectarian violence that has taken place in Syria as enemies of Syria attempt to break up the nation.
Renown Middle East expert, Patrick Seale wrote in the conclusion of his book "Asad: the Struggle for the Middle East" (the book is on the father of the current president),

”Asad’s Syria represents the rejection of an Israeli-dominated Middle East order, offering instead one based on the supremacy of neither Arabs nor Israelis but on a balance of power between an Arab Levant centred on Damascus and an Israel within its 1948-9 boundaries. …”

Seale pointed out that Israel would have to give up its ambition to dominate and substitute it for a will to co-exist.

The Second Part of the text to the video will be transcribed as soon as possible.

Susan Dirgham describes herself as a peace activist. Her peace activism dates back to her involvement in the anti-Vietnam war movement when she became aware that lies were being told to promote the War, when even apparently well-intentioned people could believe these lies and spread them. She writes, "And at that time, in the US especially, it required informed, courageous individuals in the media, in churches and academia to challenge those lies in order for there to be peace. And in the countries of Indo-China, an extraordinary level of courage and resilience was needed to survive war. To sow sectarian hatred, to damn a person or a group of people or even another nation only takes a few stories, repeated over a period of time by people in positions of influence and then accepted as a truth." Susan identifies a formula for writing [propaganda] on the conflict in Syria. It is to invoke the use of chemical weapons by the Assad government as if this were established fact and to "Damn Assad and the Alawites and your article has a good chance of getting published even if you know virtually nothing." She gives the example of a Waleed Aly article doing just this, ironically just a week after the presidential election in Syria when there was a truly exceptional voter turnout and the president received overwhelming endorsement by Syrians. At the end of her speech, Susan warns that if Syria falls the danger of World War Three will be acute. Susan's highly informative and moving speech was delivered at a Social Policy Connections Public Forum at The Study Centre, Yarra Theological Union, on 6 November. The speech was filmed and we hope to be able to link to the film soon.

Susan expressed gratitude for the opportunity to speak about ‘secular’ Syria, as she discovered it, as an English teacher who lived there for several years. She said, "It’s a chance to bring attention to the people of Syria, the peace-loving people of Syria, who have been largely ignored by our media."

Pictures of Syrian women .

Secular Syria

Syria is a secular country. But secularism is expressed differently in different countries, so what does this mean in Syria’s case?

Like Australia, in Syria, there is freedom of religion. It is fair to say all religions co-exist side by side harmoniously.

And the state does not favour any particular religion, even though one religion (Islam) is predominant.
This means that the holy days of both Islam and Christianity are national holidays. (On one of my visits to Damascus, Christmas and an Eid festival almost coincided, so the colourful decorations hanging in the souqs that year were for both Muslims and Christians.)

There are no religious schools in the Syria I knew. There is religious instruction in schools, and one national text book for Muslim students and another for Christian students. (We are not speaking about areas controlled by IS or other insurgents.)

Syria is the Syrian Arab Republic. It is not an Islamic state, so there are no religious police, for example.
If pressure is put on people to practise a particular religion, for example for people to attend a church or mosque regularly, or for women to wear a hijab, this pressure comes from the family or the communities they live in rather than the government (or clerics with political power at a national level. )

However, the constitution does stipulate that the president must be Muslim.

Women and dress

The position of women can tell you a lot about a society. At least half of my students at the British Council were women, many of them career women: lawyers, doctors, teachers, scientists, businesswomen or public servants.

One of my students worked for the Ministry of Health. She was a single mother and got around in an old VW Beetle. Her ambition was to be the Minister for Health, not an impossible dream as there are quite a few women in the Syrian parliament. As she didn’t wear a hijab, I had no idea what her religion was.

Unless there was pressure from family or community, as noted, women were free to dress as they chose.
In my classes there were very stylishly dressed women who gave no indication of their faith from their dress. One young doctor explained to me that her mother didn’t wear a hijab, but she chose to when she was 17 as it helped her feel closer to God and also it made her life easier when she walked past the lads on her way to the bus.

Women in Syria are free to wear the hijab to work, to university and to school, if they choose. I understand television presenters and journalists were not allowed to show any sign of their religion, so they couldn’t wear a hijab or a crucifix.

In regards to the niqab (the veil covering the face), there were restrictions on teachers wearing it. Some of the early demonstrations in 2011 were in protest against these restrictions.

A good friend in Syria was an unmarried high school teacher. In public, she wore the traditional white hijab and long coat that many Damascus women wear. Whenever I went out with her, I was always impressed by the way she approached waiters, shopkeepers or policemen, for example. It was always with confidence, directness, and with a smile. There was dignity in the way she spoke to them and in their response. This was the normal accepted way of communicating in Damascus, that I witnessed.
As a woman I knew not to be friendly to a stranger on the street, but I could have a pleasant conversation with the man in the corner shop when I went to buy tissues or beer. (I rarely bought beer, but alcohol was available at some corner shops.)

Religious conservatism

It could be said women in Syria have equal rights and basically the same opportunities as men, so it is a very progressive Middle Eastern society. However, there is religious conservatism in Syria, but I didn’t view this negatively; I didn’t judge it. I certainly didn’t think it was time conservatives woke up and took on so-called modern attitudes. Syria is a diverse society and this is one of the great delights of it. Its diversity enriches it.

One of my friends, a single woman, a highly competent career woman who wore western style clothes, rented a house in a conservative part of Damascus, in an old quarter, so there were narrow lanes, and neighbours would know neighbours. Friends visited her, including male colleagues. There may have been neighbours who condemned her, but generally she felt welcomed and embraced within that community. When I visited her, I didn’t feel there were prying, judgemental eyes watching us.

When I went to live in Syria, I took some prints to have framed for the walls of the flat I rented. One of them was a painting of a nude woman by Matisse. I went to get it framed, but the shopkeeper seemed genuinely shy when he saw the print. He immediately turned it over so he didn’t have to look at it. He measured it, then gave it back to my husband and me. He made the frame, but we had to put the picture in it. There was nothing aggressive about his response; again he wasn’t judgemental. There was warmth and friendliness in our interaction, as there almost invariably was in shops. This is an example of the conservatism, which was just another accepted way of looking at life, at religion.

I arrived in Damascus towards the end of 2003 when it was rare to see married couples holding hands. However, in 2010 on a visit, there were groups of young couples, joyfully holding hands. It was wonderful to see. Social freedoms which brought joy in people’s lives were increasing.

Religion is taboo

(I am speaking now about the Syria I knew before the crisis) Questioning someone about their religion was generally frowned upon. It was a subject you dealt with sensitively and with respect, if you dealt with it at all.

I believe that this gave the people one of the most precious freedoms anyone can have, namely the freedom to approach others in your society – no matter what their religious or ethnic background – with an open heart.

It reflects a basic Australian democratic belief: respect for every person. It is an easy belief to put on paper, but it is not something that automatically manifests in a society.

One day, I was in a taxi in heavy traffic near the old city of Damascus. The taxi driver gave room for a man on a bicycle, and the bicycle rider, a middle-aged man, smiled and blew him a kiss. Random acts of kindness between strangers were an accepted part of life in Syria. I felt that to be kind was being Syrian, and being true to your faith, whatever it was. Love was in the air in the Syria I knew.

Islam and the Grand Mufti [1]

From living in Syria, I learnt that Islam doesn’t just have two main sects, namely Sunni and Shi’a. It also has many shades and expressions. There are different religious legal schools, for example, which present different interpretations of sharia law. Also, Islam in Syria has its roots in Sufi Islam that goes back many centuries, while Islam in Saudi Arabia, for example, mostly references the Wahhabi school of Islam, which is much younger and much more exclusive. It developed close links with the Saudi royal family, now at the centre of power in Saudi Arabia, so it is deeply involved in politics.

In Syria, you can find a range of responses to Islam, from the women who chose not to wear a hijab to the Syrians who came back from working in Gulf countries with a harsher version of Islam than that of their family and friends. But Ramadan and the Eid festivals brought Syrian Muslims together. It was unusual for a Syrian Muslim not to fast or celebrate Eid.

I would like to draw attention to the Grand Mufti of Syria, Sheik Hassoun. In reports these days, he is probably simply described as an Assad supporter. No indication is given of his complexity. But to understand him can help us understand secular Syria.

Sheik Hassoun is a rather charismatic religious leader, who expressed what have been called ‘controversial statements’ on a visit to Germany in 2007.

He apparently said he follows all sects of Islam. He said, “I am Sunni in practise, Shiite in allegiance. My roots are Salafi, and my purity is Sufi”. He said there is no contradiction in being both Sunni and Shite.

He also stated that most so-called ‘holy wars’ were waged for political, or non-religious, purposes.

For Sheik Hassoun, praying in a church or a synagogue is like praying in a mosque because, he pointed out, “they are all houses of God”. He also expressed respect for the Former Supreme Guide of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, whose sermons he heard in Damascus as a child at the Umayyad Mosque.

In 2011, the Grand Mufti’s son, a university student, was assassinated by rebels, and the Grand Mufti gave a moving speech at his son’s funeral in the Umayyad Mosque. Not long after, the Grand Mufti also attended a service in a church for his son and for Sari Saoud, a young Christian boy who had been shot and killed in Homs by so-called rebels.

I’d like to say a few things about the Umayyad Mosque - the main mosque in Damascus. Firstly, it is open to everyone, tourists and worshippers, believers and non-believers, though it is still used as a house of worship. Children feel very much at home in it. The mosque is on the site of what was once a temple to a pagan god, and then it became a temple to the Roman God, Jupiter. Later a Byzantine cathedral was established on the site, and for some years, the site held both the cathedral and a mosque. It is a reminder that Damascus is an ancient city; in fact, it is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. One of the mosque’s three minarets is called the Jesus Minaret – it’s believed Jesus will descend from it at the end of the world. In 2002, Pope John Paul visited the Umayyad Mosque - the first time a pope had ever walked into a mosque. The elderly imam of the Mosque, Sheik Buti, a highly regarded Islamic scholar who used to speak on Syrian TV every Friday, was killed in a suicide bomb attack early last year - 48 of his students died with him.

This is the Syria I lived in and visited. If love is a muscle, it got plenty of exercise in Syria.

What unites Syrians

Many things drew people together to make them Syrian. Syrians grow up to be very proud of their country – its landscape, its music, its poets and orators, its monuments and ruins, its independence, its principled stands on the international stage, its heroes and its history. And the various faiths were an integral part of the whole.

Syrians are very patriotic, but not at all aggressively so.

I do not mean to romanticize Syria, though I found it a romantic place to live. Like any country, it has its ugly side. There is certainly corruption. It has prisons, there is torture, there are humiliations, there is sexual harassment, there is child abuse, family violence, some honor killings etc. There are human struggles greater than most Australians face. But it is not Australia, which is well away from the troubles of the world. Syria exists at the heart of the Middle East. Even when I lived there it was a country in a war zone, in a very volatile region. And its neighbours’ responses to the enormous challenges they faced were at least as limited, if not more so. (For example, Turkey, a key ally of the United States in the Middle East, has more journalists in prison than any other country.)

But the Syria I knew was a society brought together by the respect and helpfulness people generally offered to others. The heart-to-heart connections they established, even if it was just during a simple transaction in a shop.

It is a secular country, but in essence a very devout country. The call to prayer was always a part of your day, and on Sundays the church bells would ring.

The essence of religion - love - is in the air you breathe in Syria.

Only once in one uncomfortable conversation with a taxi driver did I hear a Syrian linking political and religious views in an aggressive way, and he wasn’t happy with Australia because of our role in the Iraq war.
Ed Husain, one of my colleagues at the British Council, had been an Islamist in Britain before going to study and teach in Syria. He wrote that in Syria,

”...There was no sense of religious zealotry or grandstanding in the name of God.....Syrians… did not wear their Islam on their sleeves. They did not need to. In a Muslim country they did not have to show they were Muslims... the Christian community did not need to illustrate their faith in public either. (p225 The Islamist)”

Just as Australia would be, Syria is a country worthy of defending.

Peace activist

I describe myself as a peace activist. My peace activism dates back to my involvement in the anti-Vietnam war movement when I became aware that lies were being told to promote the War, when even apparently well-intentioned people could believe these lies and spread them.

And at that time, in the US especially, it required informed, courageous individuals in the media, in churches and academia to challenge those lies in order for there to be peace. And in the countries of Indo-China, an extraordinary level of courage and resilience was needed to survive war.

Sectarianism

So I developed some understanding of peace activism, propaganda and war. But also, I grew up in the 1950s and 60s, so I was aware of ugly sectarian tension in Australia. Protestant kids and Catholic kids used to throw stones at each other. One of my uncles walked out of a job interview when he was questioned about his religion.

I understand how easy it is to sow the seeds of hate and distrust in even easy-going Australians.
And the story of Lindy Chamberlain is a reminder of how easy it is for falsehoods to be spread and generally accepted as fact. Based on rumours and media reports and a botched investigation, people were sure Lindy had killed her baby.

To sow sectarian hatred, to damn a person or a group of people or even another nation only takes a few stories, repeated over a period of time by people in positions of influence and then accepted as a truth. Social media, images and videos online have made it easier than ever before to spread false and misleading information.

Time constraints, circumstances and media bias don’t allow the rigorous investigation needed to establish the truth.

Repetition creates ‘truths’

Consequently, most Australians believe that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against its own people in a Damascus suburb on 21 August 2013. They have seen the shocking images showing victims of the alleged chemical attack, and they have heard the US Secretary of State and other politicians declare Assad guilty. They have read articles by respected commentators agreeing with the politicians. For example, radio and TV presenter Waleed Aly wrote in the AGE on June 12 2014 that in Syria,

“a ruler every bit as brutal as Saddam Hussein, is presently in the process of enacting mass violence against his own people. This is a ruler who has merrily danced across what Barack Obama declared to be his “red line” by using chemical weapons against them, proving that this red line didn’t signify much.”

In the West, this claim has been repeated so often that it is accepted as fact. And it would be possible for someone who is unfamiliar with Syria to present it in an article. In writing on the conflict in Syria, there is a formula. Damn Assad and the Alawites and your article has a good chance of getting published even if you know virtually nothing.

But well-regarded impartial experts have challenged the mainstream telling of the story of the chemical attack. For example, Ted Postol, a physicist at MIT has written a lengthy report which concludes that the Assad government most likely wasn’t responsible for the chemical attack. The veteran American journalist Seymour Hersh has written articles coming to much the same conclusion, based on interviews with people in the US intelligence community.

The chemical attack and other alleged massacres that are yet to be seriously investigated remain as reference points for politicians and commentators and the general public in the west. They effectively silence dissenting voices because to challenge them risks being labelled an “Assad apologist”. And so the campaign to destroy secular Syria can continue.

Ironically, Waleed Aly’s comment about Assad being as brutal as Saddam Hussein was written just a week after the presidential election in Syria when there was reportedly a large voter turnout and the president received overwhelming support.

Would a majority of Syrian people participate in an election and vote for a president who was allegedly killing them?

Sectarianism and genocide

From the beginning of the crisis, the sectarian lines of the ‘revolution’ were drawn. One of the chants heard in anti-government demonstrations was “Christians to Beirut; Alawites to their graves”.

When even such a chilling call for genocide was noted in the western press, it was generally almost legitimized by sectarian descriptions of the conflict; the most often repeated one being ‘an Alawite regime is oppressing the Sunni majority’.

In fact, the Syrian government is dominated by Sunnis – the vice-presidents and the PM are Sunnis. Most key ministers are Sunni, for example, the ministers for defence, for foreign affairs, for the interior, for justice. Ali Mamlouk, a key intelligence advisor to the president, is Sunni. (He is the brother of a former landlady of mine.)

Sectarian hatred presented as political commentary has been sanctioned. We should realize by now that we can all eventually be victims of this.

I do not pretend to be an expert on Syria. The real experts are the people of Syria, those living the nightmare of war. Syria has about the same population as Australia, so we would understand that you need to hear many different voices before you have a fair understanding of the views of 23 million people. And you would definitely want to hear the voices of people who do not speak in sectarian terms. We must assume they are the majority in Syria. We must assume the majority of Syrians want peace and reconciliation and normality for themselves, their children and their children’s children, as we would.

The Revolution vs the ‘Regime’

However, a small but very vocal percentage of Syrians (in Syria and in the Syrian diaspora) want the war in Syria to continue. The lines are clear for them. It is the ‘revolution’ or the ‘regime’, and Assad has to go. (If ‘the regime’ is the secular state, millions of Syrians support it, depend on its institutions, and support the army that defends it.)

Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi, someone who has been described as the spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood, said on Al-Jazeera toward the end of 2011, “If it is necessary to kill one third of the Syrian population to get rid of the heretical regime, it is OK”. Sheik Qaradawi was effectively condoning the killing of 7 million people.

It has been reported recently that 40,400 Syrian soldiers have been killed defending what Qaradawi describes as a heretical regime. It is mainly a conscript army so it would reflect the make-up of the Syrian society and most would be Sunni Muslims - the Minister for Defence is a Sunni Muslim. (No doubt Sunni Syrian soldiers defending their secular country have been beheaded by Sunni jihadists from secular countries.)

If Assad were to go, I don’t believe the Syrian army will drop its weapons and welcome insurgents, both local and foreign. They would be capitulating to the game plan of countries that want to destroy their state through the creation of sectarian hatred and divisions.

Conclusion

There is fear of a world war in the coming years. Because of our alliance with the US, Australia is involved in any preparations for such a war.

I grew up in a world in which the most powerful were Protestant white Anglo-Saxons, and their power was expressed through their language, English. We will have no world to live in if this situation continues.

To survive the 21st century, we must be loyal to the very best in us, the very best in our faith, whatever it might be, in our values and in our belief system. We must question narrow national and sectarian agendas and the lies and hypocrisy needed to support them. Our acceptance of lies can lead in the short term to the deaths of hundreds of thousands in other countries and in the long term jeopardise security and peace in Australia and throughout the world.

I believe, to a large extent, Syria holds the world in its hands. Our survival depends on its survival and its survival depends on people writing and speaking about Syria honestly, without slogans or labels.
Those who have a war agenda must be challenged. And the so-called revolution which aims to destroy secular Syria must be challenged.

The love, connectedness, and the diversity I felt and witnessed in Syria should be cherished not destroyed. Syrians say, “God will save Syria”. But God needs help.

6th November 2014

Susan Dirgham,
National Coordinator of “Australians for Mussalah (Reconciliation) in Syria”.