Pictured above is a Sharia court established in Kansabba, Syria. The building reads (from left to right): "Judge people according to the word of Allah", "Sharia Court", "There is no god but Allah"
A few days after she fled from Syria to Turkey, a colleague sent me a message. "Dear Nuri, this is a court that the extremists have set up in my city, Latakia, in the village of Kansabba. The Islamic court issues new laws according to the extremists' religion. It started today. They are forcing everyone to adopt their fundamentalist Islamic laws. See the picture."
Now she's waiting to be smuggled to Sweden
The same day she sent me the message, fighting intensified between rival Syrian resistance groups and 12 Islamist groups that have left the Free Syrian Army. It terrified all non-Muslims. And it was justified. I logged onto Facebook and saw that a friend of mine, Nicholas Al-Jeloo, had posted news of the murder of a 26-year-old Assyrian man named Ninar Osdisho in Tabqa in Syria's al-Raqqah province on September 21.
I picked up my phone and called Al-Jeloo. He is an Australian-born Assyrian with a PhD in Modern Assyrian Studies. He has been traveling in the Middle East since 2002 doing fieldwork and research among the indigenous Assyrians. He has been to Syria many times to visit family members in Jazirah, an island between two rivers in northern Syria, and in al-Raqqah province.
I wanted to know more about the murder. Why was the death of one person so important? There is a war and many people are dying every day in Syria. "It's about the future of Christians which, right now, looks very dark if nothing is done to protect the vulnerable minorities in the country," he told me in Assyrian. "That's why killings that are religiously or ethnically motivated are important to report. "At the beginning of the civil war in Syria, there were more than 200 Christian Assyrian families, more than 1000 individuals, living in Tabqa. Almost all of them have left the country and now live in Lebanon. Some have gone to Germany. Others are stranded around the world, left behind by smugglers who failed to get them to Europe. Three families have stayed behind in Tabqa. The rebels told them they would not harm them. They had nowhere else to go and were too scared to leave because of all the dangers on the roads. They were poor and tried to protect what little they had.
Ninar Odisho, 26, was killed because of his faith
One of those people was Ninar Odisho. Ninar was killed by the rebels because he was a Christian. They even burned a cross into his face. Apparently, the rebels don't want to openly show that they are against non-Muslims, because then they risk that their supporters will stop equipping them with weapons and sending them aid. Therefore, they let some Christians stay in the areas they occupy, and then kill them one by one so the rest choose to flee. That way, it doesn't look like they are carrying out a massacre.
The last three families in Tabqa have since fled, heavily traumatized. Al-Jeloo has spoken to some of them. My journalist friend, who is waiting in Turkey to come to Sweden, confirms what Al-Jeloo has told me. She says that in places where the fundamentalists have set up Sharia courts, there is no future for Christians - or anyone else who does not want to live their lives according to Sharia law. She says that you can even find Swedish jihadists on YouTube preaching Sharia in Syria in Swedish. It only took me two minutes to find several. With the help of a Palestinian living in Sweden, whose asylum case I followed 10 years ago, I get in touch with one of the Swedish jihadists. "Anyone who wants to live in Syria and who obeys the commandment to live according to Sharia law and the Holy Quran is welcome to live in the country," he tells me. "Everyone else must go to sinful places. It is our duty to preach the words of the Prophet Muhammad. If we don't do that and don't force people to follow his words, we will be punished ourselves." I ask the jihadist if he will tell me his name. "I can't," he says. He doesn't want to hurt his family in Sweden by revealing his identity. The next day, as I'm checking Facebook, I see that my friend, the journalist from Syria, is also online. I send her a message about the interview I did with the jihadist. "I've met hundreds of bearded young men like him from all over the world on the streets of my hometown," she writes back. "That's why I left."
Source: World Watch Monitor
