Daily Telegraph<\/em>, Mr Johnson joined other prominent spokespeople, including the Archbishop of York, in warning the British Government not to meddle in the Syrian crisis.<\/p>\n“Odious, twisted, hate-filled thugs; arrogant and inadequate creeps, intoxicated by the pathetic illusion of power that comes with guns; poisoned by a perversion of religion into a contempt for all norms of civilised behaviour,” the London Mayor wrote.<\/p>\n
He continued “They are fighting not for freedom but for a terrifying Islamic state in which they would have the whip hand – and yet there is no dodging or fudging the matter: these are among the Syrian rebels who are hoping now to benefit from the flow of Western arms.<\/p>\n
“How is it supposed to work? How are we meant to furnish machine guns and anti-tank weapons to one set of opposition forces, without them ending up in the hands of men like the al Qaida-affiliated thugs who executed a child for telling a joke?<\/p>\n
“This is not the moment to send more arms. This is the moment for a total ceasefire, an end to the madness.<\/p>\n
“We can’t use Syria as an arena for geopolitical point-scoring or muscle-flexing, and we won’t get a ceasefire by pressing weapons into the hands of maniacs.”<\/p>\n
Boris Johnson is not alone. Tory backbencher Julian Lewis said that Britain’s involvement could be “suicidal” leading to extremist elements among the rebels gaining control of the regime’s arsenal of chemical weapons.<\/p>\n
The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, has also warned that arming the rebels is “very, very na\u00efve.”<\/p>\n
Supporting the Wrong Side<\/h2>\n
A problem with American and Britain involving itself in Syria’s conflict, apart from the fact that it is none of their business, is the simple fact the Western powers have chosen to support the wrong side. No one is claiming that al-Assad’s authoritarian government has been godly; however, the prospect of what might emerge if his government is overthrown is almost unthinkable. Yonadam Kanna, a member of the Iraqi National Assembly and Secretary General for the Assyrian Democratic Movement warned that the collapse of the Syrian state would be a jihadist triumph and endanger Christians throughout the entire Middle East. We must pray that this does not happen and that the Lord would grant special protection to Christians living in Syria. We must also pray for those Syrian Christians who have had to flee to refugee camps in Turkey and Lebanon.<\/p>\n
Even those Syrian Christians who have not had to flee are suffering acutely from the conditions of the civil war. There is a shortage of basic supplies, including gas, electricity, food and many basic supermarket products. Moreover, dangerous criminals are always too ready to take advantage of the chaos and plunder the houses and shops of innocent people.<\/p>\n
This article originally appeared in the monthly magazine of Christian Voice, a UK ministry whose website is http:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/. The article is published here with permission of Christian Voice.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Source: Alfred the Great Society | Robin Phillips Syrian Christianity goes back to the earliest days of the Christian faith, with language, traditions and practices that have remained largely unchanged since the time of Christ. Despite popular misconceptions, the nation of Syria is not an Islamic state. The Christian population living in Syria has enjoyed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12993,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1784],"tags":[1602],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12992"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12992"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12997,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12992\/revisions\/12997"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}