THE
P RTAL
March 2016
Page 7
The Right Reverend
Michael Nazir-Ali
In the second part of our interview, Bishop Nazir-Ali
talked to Jackie Ottaway and Ronald Crane
about the terrible persecution in many areas of the world
Bishop Michael
began the second part of our interview with praise for Aid to the Church in
Need. “Aid to the Church in Need is an amazing organisation and I was with them in Iraq last year and
saw their work.” We asked about the role of Christianity in the Middle East.
He said, “Well just take Syria as an example. It was
a patchwork of cultures, languages and religions
including many different Christian churches, some of
them going back to the very origins of the Christian
faith. There was a trade off in Syria to be honest, quite
a lot of personal and religious freedom in exchange for
some restrictions of political freedom. We now know
why those restrictions existed: to prevent extremists
from doing what they are doing now! Most people in
my experience in Syria, particularly the Christians,
bought the deal.
“Now that deal has been comprehensively destroyed
along with the country and so Christians as well as
Yazidis, Druze, the Jews and other minorities such
as the Alawites, themselves find themselves in a very
precarious and dangerous situation. In my view, as
opposed to Iraq, the West’s involvement in Syria was
quite unnecessary and on the wrong side. I mean there
are no angels in this game; you have to choose between
different types of monsters, not so bad monsters with
very terrible monsters and I think we made the wrong
choice.
“One wonders…I mean with Saddam particularly it
wasn’t just that he was a tyrant but he was engaged in
the genocide of his own people. I’ve been to the House
of Love run by the Sisters of Charity in Baghdad and
they have this home run by them for children who were
born after the chemical and biological attacks on the
Kurdish people. Lovely children, terrible deformities
and nobody wants them, so the nuns are bringing
them up. Great work, great missionary work. The
nuns are mainly from India and Bangladesh. They
are there for ten years without leave. They have leave
every ten years. It’s wonderful. I asked a sister whether
they were worried about security because in Baghdad
everyone is, and they said, “Oh, no. We are the only
good thing happening in this locality!”
relations between Christians and Islam in Britain, with
Isis or Daesh. Bishop Michael explained, “Daesh, by
the way, just means Islamic State in Arabic. There’s no
difference. Generally, in the world first of all, I think
relations between Muslims and Christians have been
affected by the circumstances.
“There has been a very widespread resurgence of
Islam which has been affected by radicalisation. I
mean, not everyone is an extremist but people now
watch what they say and they watch what they do. The
We wondered how these events impact upon teaching of hate in text books for instance, has wound
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