Sadly, a known Christian fantasist and propagandist is misusing the Syrian civil war to promote discord between the Muslim and Christian communities worldwide. Recently, Raymond Ibrahim and various anti-Muslim, pro-Christian sympathy fishing websites have been touting the possibility of a massacre committed by ‘Jihadists’ against an ancient Christian town. The article that is being spread is located here.

However, upon closer examination, the evidences simply do not add up to a coherent whole, but seem to be a collection of erratic videos with no consistent narrative or apparent association. To begin with, one of the videos is provided by Syrian State TV, the problem with this video is that all that we can actually extract from it, is that bodies are being retrieved from a well. We can take any video, post-battle and attribute to it any narrative we want. The fact that Syrian State TV is endorsing the footage and their associated context with it, is enough to cast doubt on the veracity of the video itself.

Another purported video shows rebels shouting Allaahu Akbar, or God is Great after fighting and winning a battle. In the video, the context provided is that these were innocent Christians who were massacred in cold blood. To the contrary, the video itself demonstrates that the rebels were insistently referring to the deceased as Shabiha, a term used to specifically refer to Shi’a Assad Thugs. Why didn’t they once refer to the deceased as Christians? If they were proud of killing Christians, surely they’d atleast mention the deceased to be Christians in some way? Since this isn’t the case, and they’re referred to as Shabiha repeatedly, we must ask Christians, what evidence is there that the deceased were unarmed Christians? The truth is, there is no such evidence to substantiate that claim.

Syrian Christian Fighter

Let’s for the sake of argument, accept that Christians were killed and intentionally so. Rationally speaking, Christians from inside Syria and outside of Syria have joined the civil war on both sides. Since Assad’s army, which now includes Christians, have been bombing Masjids and towns indiscriminately. In fact, Christian brigades have also publicly joined the rebels against Assad, see here and here. Christians are known to use sympathy for preaching and faith empowerment, claiming victimhood is nothing new to the Christian religion. Let’s however, for a moment forego emotion and think logically.

Christians will die in the Syrian civil war. Muslims will die in the Syrian civil war. Why? It’s because Christians and Muslims are both joining the Assad army and the Rebel armies. If Assad’s armies which are publicly known to be comprised of Christians and Shi’a Muslims are bombing Masjids and massacring the rebels, shouldn’t the Christians who joined Assad’s army not expect reprisals against them for their role in aiding the government’s draconian and barbaric attack on civilians? I don’t see a single Christian website condemning the Christians in Syria for supporting Assad, whose army is known to have committed numerous atrocities, yet these same Western Christians are using the deaths of Christians fighting on behalf of Assad’s army to claim victimization from ‘Muslim Jihadists‘.

One does have to ask, how lowly and desperate can Christians be to sink to such moral lows, for the sake of defaming a religion and forsaking their own dying brothers and sisters, simply to promote an anti-Islamic view? Is hating Muslims and fearing Islam (see Argumentum ad Baculum), so important to the Ministries of some Western Christians, that they must shelve any sense of moral responsibility, to use the dead and dying in this game of emotional puppeteering?