Youseph hails US action in Syria

He said if your neighbour were throwing his children in a pot of boiling water, you would not passively watch, and likewise the world now has a duty to intervene in Syria. He said 500,000 to 600,000 people have died so far in the Syrian civil war. Youseph said the late ANR Robinson had helped create an International Criminal Court (ICC) so that dictators could not take advantage of their people, and wished the ICC would be used in the case of Syria’s leaders.

“Whatever intervention to bring an end to this war is welcome by me,” he said.

Youseph, who born in Syria, said war could happen anywhere.

Asked if the US bombing in fact helps ISIS, Youseph said ISIS came on the scene after the challenge to Assad in about 2012. “To deal with the problem in Syria you have to deal with Assad first. ISIS is a by product of Assad.” Youseph related a recent warning by US Senator Marco Rubio that when children are killed, even if their parents are not extremists they will be radicalised by such murders.

He said that to him the Syrian regime’s killings by use of gas was not an unexpected thing, as dictators usually start killing their opponents from day one. Yousef said his own father had once been a victim of Syria President Bashar Al-Assad. “He was a member of the Baath Party but was not in Assad’s corner. He was detained for two and a half years without trial.

He was a teacher and a village elder, but when they released him from jail he was fired from his teaching job and had to keep chickens to mind his children.” He viewed some Syrian Christians as misguided in thinking of Assad, of the Alawite denomination, as their protector against Sunni Muslim domination.

Asked what he’d wish for Syria, Youseph said he would like the seeds of democracy to be sown there by an international, collaborative effort.

Amid this, he hoped for a separation of the secular state from established religions. He lamented that in Syria, Christians are lesser citizens, as the law disallows a Christian from ever becoming president who must be a Muslim.

All this was despite Christianity having arrived in Syria before Islam as evidenced by Saul/St Paul’s conversion to Christianity on the biblical “road to Damascus”.

He said if Saul/ St Paul came back today (as a Jew), he’d be barred by Syrian law from converting to Christianity, but be allowed to convert to Islam.

Asked about any model country in the Middle East for Syrian democracy to be modelled on, he said Lebanon has a democracy of a kind, although based largely on religion, and has a free press. Newsday was unable to contact Syrian Arab Republic, honorary counsel, Marwan Yousef.