The trouble began, residents said, when two young men from the neighboring Muslim town of Qalaat al-Madiq tried to intimidate a local shop owner and were driven off. They went home, gathered a crowd, and came back after dark. Syrian state television described the episode as a "brawl among young people" in which a shop was attacked. Officials said arrests were made and calm was restored.
Christian sources tell a harder story. A Greek Orthodox-linked source alleges that government security forces let the armed men pass through checkpoints. That claim comes from one side and has not been established. Two local Christian men were reportedly detained afterward, and a rights group said its contacts in the town reported both were released on Oct. 5.
This was not the first time. Violence hit Suqaylabiyah in March, after two young Muslim men from the same neighboring town were confronted for harassing Christian women, and dozens of men on motorcycles stormed in. Now a political party representing Syriac Christians has called for a Christian police force, saying earlier agreements were not kept. On Oct. 13, a Greek member of the European Parliament urged the European Union to act to protect the town's Christians.
What a frightened town is asking for
Strip away the politics and the request is plain. These families want to sleep at night. They want a shopkeeper to be able to tell a rude young man to leave without a mob answering at midnight. That is not a large thing to ask of any government, and every government on earth is charged with it. Scripture says that rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil, and that they bear not the sword in vain.
Honor belongs to those who hold authority, and prayer is owed them. But authority exists to protect the quiet and the peaceable, and the Christians of Suqaylabiyah have been the quiet and the peaceable for centuries. They are among the oldest believers in the world, living in a land where the gospel was carried in the first generation after the cross. When their doors are kicked in twice in one year, it is right for free nations to say so plainly, and right for American leaders to keep religious liberty near the front of any dealings with Damascus.
The answer to a mob is not another mob
Yet I would not have you stop at the headline, my friend. The man who throws a stone at a church is a sinner, and so is the man who cheers from his armchair. The same Bible that tells us to protect the weak tells us the human heart is the source of the trouble. Pride takes offense. Anger gathers a crowd. A crowd turns a bruised ego into a burning shop.
Our Lord knew about mobs. He was met by one in Gethsemane, with swords and staves, and He did not call down fire. He healed the servant's ear. That is not weakness. That is a strength the world cannot manufacture, and it is the very strength Syria's believers are asked to carry tonight.
"Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you." (Luke 6:28)
Notice that He did not say to pretend nothing happened. He did not say the shopkeeper was wrong to want his shop. He said to answer hatred with something the hater has never seen. Many a hard heart has been broken, not by argument, but by a neighbor who would not hit back and would not hate.
The Scriptures also promise that the Lord sees. The Psalmist wrote that the Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble. Those who have lost windows and wares and sleep this month are not forgotten in heaven, whatever the officials in the capital decide.
And to those of us who live in safety, there is a word as well. Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them. A believer in Ohio or Indiana cannot stop a mob in Hama. But he can know their names, speak up for them, and refuse to let a brother's suffering become a footnote.
The gospel is bigger than any border, and it is meant for the young man who led that crowd as surely as for the woman who was hurt. Christ died for mobs. He rose for them too. The door is open to every soul in Qalaat al-Madiq and every soul in Suqaylabiyah, and the Lord who keeps the fearful is the same Lord who forgives the angry.