Syria and the Christocide

Syria was Christian under the Byzantines.  Well into the Musulman occupation almost half of its population was Christian.  Over time that was reduced to about 10% by 2010.  Now less than 5% of the population is Christian.  ISIS, Jihad Groups and Muslim 'militants' have targeted Christianity for eradication.  Assad and his family-tribal empire has fallen.  Now what?  More death and persecution of Christians will be one reality.  

Targeting Christians

Jihadist groups that are dominant in the Syrian opposition have been specifically targeting Christians nationwide — beginning with the abduction of Bishop Yohanna Ibrahim, head of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Aleppo, and Bishop Boulos Yaziji, head of the Greek Orthodox Church in Syria, who were kidnapped during a humanitarian trip in April 2013.

“No one knows who abducted them, but suspicion fell on the Jabhat al-Nusra Front — who are now HTS — the group [that] just seized large parts of Aleppo,” Parsons, a former aid worker to Afghanistan and an expert on Islamic theology, noted.

“Both Islamic State and other jihadist groups massacred and abducted large numbers of Christians. Churches were systematically destroyed in an attempt to religiously cleanse whole areas of Syria of its non-Muslim population,” he told The Stream.

“Islamic State also reimplemented aspects of shari’a allowing the enslavement of non-Muslims — and produced a slave prince list with different values for different age Yazidi and Christian women.”

Tenth Anniversary of ISIS Genocide

In August, the U.S. State Department released a statement marking the “10th Anniversary of ISIS’s Genocide Against Yezidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims.”

While the U.S. government estimates that 10% of the Syrian population is Christian, of the 2.2 million Christians who lived in the country prior to the civil war, Open Doors USA estimates that only approximately 579,000 remain (2.8 % of the population).

Most Christians belong to Orthodox churches, like the Syriac Orthodox Church, Eastern Catholic churches such as the Maronite Church, or the Assyrian Church of the East and other Nestorian churches.

There is an ongoing Christocide in Aleppo, one of Christianity's oldest communities. 

“Many of the Christians in Aleppo are descendants of the victims of the Armenian and Assyrian genocides (1915-23) when up to three million Christians are estimated to have been killed,” the Lindisfarne Centre explained.

“During that time the Ottoman government forced Christians living in what is now Turkey on a ‘death march’ into the Syrian desert during which vast numbers died of starvation, murder, or rape at the hands of Kurdish militias,” it added.