As reported on Dec. 23 by the Associated Press via MSNBC, Syrian Christians are fearing for their lives in the midst of their nation’s bloody civil war.
To make a bad situation worse, a Muslim version of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen (Special Police) is actively roaming the countryside hunting down both Christians and any Muslim who doesn’t fit their brand of Islam.
Reminiscent of the Nazi Germany’s SS mobile killing units of World War II, the rebel special police force has been deployed in the area surrounding the once sizable Christian enclave of Aleppo, reports Lebanon’s al-Akhbar news service.
The website for Getty Images recently published a photo of two Syrian rebels atop a building with a freshly painted sign declaring it’s the headquarters of the Committee for Promotion of Virtues and Prevention of Vice (click here).
The rebel Revolutionary Military Council controlling sections of Aleppo issued an edict banning women from driving. Reportedly, the group also released several video clips showing men of various Arab nationalities, including a member of the Saudi “virtue police,” Abdallah al-Hattel, patrolling the streets and forcing people to pray.
In the Christian neighborhoods in and around Aleppo, Christians are afraid even to decorate their homeswith Christmas trees for fear it would make them an easy target for the rebel gangs. Claiming Christians are harboring forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, the commander of the rebel Ansar Brigade threatened to storm two predominantly Christian towns of Mahrada and Sqailbiyeh in central Syria.
Rebel leader Rashid Abul-Fidaa demanded the towns’ residents “evict Assad’s gangs” or be attacked.” Christians have generally supported Assad’s regime in the past due to his support of a secular ideology that has seen as giving minorities a certain degree of protection.
Prior to the civil war, Aleppo was home to 100,000 Christians, but now there are fewer than 1,000 still remaining in the besieged city.
