Knox Thames, the U.S. Department of State’s Special Advisor for Religious Minorities in the Near East and South and Central Asia.
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cruxnow.com
By
Ines San Martin, Vatican correspondent May 26, 2016
ROME—
A U.S. government official visiting Rome on Monday said that as a result of
Islamic terrorist groups such as ISIS, the “door for Christians in Iraq is
closing” and the window of time to prevent their eradication is narrowing.
“I
feel a sense of urgency, because Christians are leaving [the Middle East], and
at some point it could become demographically unable for this community to
sustain itself,” said Knox Thames, the U.S. Department of State’s Special
Advisor for Religious Minorities in the Near East and South and Central Asia.
Pushing
the door back open, Thames said, “will be hard, it’s a long [and] complicated
answer to a complicated situation.”
Thames
said guaranteeing religious diversity and the survival of churches such as the
Assyrian Church of the East, which after having its patriarchal see in Chicago
for over 70 years is now moving back to Erbil, Iraq, is a priority of the Obama
administration.
Speaking
to journalists on Monday in Rome, Thames highlighted Secretary of State John Kerry’s declaration of genocide of
Christians and other minorities in Iraq and Syria as a sign of that commitment.
Recognizing
that ISIS is systematically trying to eliminate ethnic and religious minorities
was an attempt to “give the [persecuted] hope that the world has noticed,” he
said, adding that in the past, recognizing a genocide has led to a concrete
international reaction.
Thames
also acknowledged that as things stand, Christians and other minorities from
Iraq and Syria have “lost faith” in their countries, and that the international
community will have to assist in reconstruction efforts to guarantee not only
the safety of these communities, but also some basic development, such as
electricity, sewage and sanitation.
Without
these infrastructure investments, he lamented, “no one will want to stay,
Christian or other.”
“What
can we do so they have faith in their country?” he wondered. “I’m not sure
what’s the right approach, but we need to make sure we find what works in each
context.”
Thames
gave three models of coexistence: Qatar, Lebanon, and the recently signed
“Marrakesh declaration.”
Qatar,
he said, is “a fascinating example where cultures are intermixing.” As result
of heavy immigration, mostly from the Philippines and India, religious
minorities are growing rapidly.
For
the first time, a non-Abrahamic religion, Hinduism, is entering the Gulf, and
the strong Filipino presence represents a second wave of Christianity. Thames
said that the United States and other countries are monitoring Qatar because
they want to see an interaction between Qataris and immigrants that fosters
“mutual understanding.”
Lebanon
was the first country Thames visited after assuming his position in the
Secretary of State, back in 2015. He applauded the “heroic” response to the
migrant crisis- one fourth of the total population is immigrant-, and the
“sectarian balance” the country has achieved.
Often
criticized by other countries in the region, Lebanon has been able to create a
stability other Middle Eastern nations lack. This country too is being
monitored closely to ensure that the plurality of voices envisioned in its
Constitution is being guaranteed in the government through, for instance,
diversity in the parliament.
The
third model of coexistence is that proposed by the Marrakesh Declaration,
signed in January by religious leaders based in Muslim-majority countries. The
document is based on the Charter of Medina, a document allegedly written by
Muhammad which talks about the treatment of non-Muslims and calls for accepting
a plural religious state.
The
Morocco-sponsored summit called on predominantly Muslim-majority communities to
apply Muhammad’s Charter of Medina and grant non-Muslim minorities “freedom of
movement, property ownership, mutual solidarity and defense.”
Retired
Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, D.C., recently spoke about this declaration, urging journalists
“not to let this document die,” defining it as a “living challenge to the
Islamic people and to non-Islamic people around the world.”
The
official was in Italy to visit several Vatican offices to see how the United
States and the Catholic Church can work together in the common goal of
providing safety to historic religious minorities in the Middle East.
“The
Vatican gets us intrinsically,” Thames said, adding that Catholic teaching on
protection of conscience actually helps the U.S. government to deepen its
arguments.
Talking
specifically about what the United States is doing to help persecuted
minorities, Thames listed financial aid for economic development, prosecution
for mass atrocities, protection of historic religious sites with the help of
UNESCO, and documentation of things such as mass graves and cases of gender
violence.
He
also said that his work is basically divided in three axes: “protection,” what
can the United States and its allies do to defend minorities that are either
still in the region or those who have fled; “equipping,” meaning how to help
local governments in their responsibility for protecting minorities; and
“reform,” what can the US do to encourage countries that are either persecuting
or refusing to aid those persecuted.
The
key, Thames said, is education: “When extremists take over a government, the
first thing they do is take over the education ministry.” This, he said, is
because they know that with 15 years of indoctrination, they can change the
structure of society.
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