Whether they are religious or secular in nature, ideological movements are always characterized by a very rigidly defined world view and a utopian longing to build that one, ideal society. The problem they all face, however, is how to implement their ideals once they are in power. The tactics initially employed come down to efforts to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the population they have conquered, but in practice these exercises soon deteriorate into suppression and violence because most people’s ideas on how things should be organized tend to differ from those of the ones in power.
In the Reports from the Islamic State (IS) series, the split between ideology and practice is the central theme. ThePostOnline has come into contact with bloggers from the Syrian city of Raqqa, the would be capital of the Islamic State since January 2014. These bloggers include 23-year-old medical student Ibrahim al Raqawi, who was forced to flee from Raqqa and who is now living in another place, and with Abou Mohammed who still resides in Raqqa. They are two of the people behind the website Raqqa is being slaughtered in silence. Based on the interviews with Abou Ibrahim and Abou Mohammed, this series paints a picture of daily life in IS-conquered territory, each time focusing on a different theme or issue.
The editor of the series is Jan Jaap de Ruiter. ThePostOnline has copies of all the chat sessions, which were conducted in English and in Arabic. Today we are presenting Episode 3: ‘Christians in the Islamic State”. Click here for part 1 (Education) and here for part 2 (Women).
For what it’s worth: it is a historical fact that Christians had settled in Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State, long before there ever were any Muslims there. Now, there are no Christians left in Raqqa. A case of First in, First Out. Or, in the words of Abu Ibrahim:
“When IS conquered Raqqa, the Christians immediately fled the city. None remained.”
“But”, so I argued, “I thought IS accepted Christians? I thought that if they refused to convert, they could choose to pay a special tax (Jizya), and they’d be allowed to stay.”
“Not so”, Abu Ibrahim explains:
“In the media IS has indeed claimed they offered this tax to the Christians, but they never did. It was just propaganda. The Christians cleared out straight away.”
IS justifies levying this special tax, Jizya, on Christians (and also on other non-Muslim groups) by referring to practices current in the early days of Islam, a time they glorify. At the time it was a tax expressed in gold coins, dinars, which was understandable in the context of the period. However, the exact same tax is levied by IS today. Not that Christians are asked to literally pay in gold ingots, but they do have to pay the modern-day monetary equivalent of the dinars specified, the IS dinar having a weight of 4.25 grams of gold. Every adult man has to pay the Jizya. The wealthy or well-off pay 4 dinars (17 grams of gold), the less well-off pay 2, and the poor 1 dinar. One dinar comes down to almost 1,700 dollars, a great deal of money to pay in an economy that is as good as dead. Taking the offer seriously and paying the tax effectively means going broke or bankrupt. Besides, it is not a once-only tax either; it is to be levied twice a year, as was specified in the IS announcement of the Jizya.
The Christians in Raqqa were well aware they had nothing good to expect from IS. The city numbers around 250,000 to 400,000 inhabitants (the numbers vary depending on the Website consulted, compare Wikipedia and other sites). Some five percent of these were Christians, or so at least Abu Ibrahim tells me (Wikipedia mentions percentages of some 10 percent). In any case, we are talking about at least 10,000 people. And they all left the city. “For Turkey and Europe,” Abu Ibrahim tells me.
So what happened to their houses? Were the Christians part of a specific socio-economic class? Christians in Raqqa, Abu Ibrahim explains, came in all shapes and sizes, and together with the Muslims there they constituted a representative cross-section of the population. But their houses have all been confiscated by IS and there are foreign fighters living in them now. Without the slightest compensation being offered to the people who lived there. The Christians that Abu Ibrahim is still in contact with refuse to talk about any of this. “Most likely because they have lost everything they had.”
This does not mean that Christians being driven out of the city and their possessions being confiscated just passed without a response from the local population. This video shows indignant inhabitants of Raqqa chanting in unison “The Syrian people are one”, and how, according to Abu Ibrahim, the Muslims are trying to put a cross back on top of the Armenian Catholic Church of the Martyrs. Unsuccessfully it turned out, as can be seen in this photograph where the cross has been replaced definitively by the IS flag. [photo: church1 before and after conquest of Raqqa]]. Not only has an IS flag been planted on top of it, the church now serves a different function altogether: it has been turned into an IS Da’wah bureau (concerned with propaganda, the IS mission). The St. Mary of the Annunciation church has undergone a similar fate – it has also been robbed of its cross and likewise been turned into an IS bureau.
Church of Holy Mary before and after takeover of Islamic State
Abu Ibrahim has nothing good to say about dictator Assad’s murderous regime, but in Raqqa harmony between Muslims and Christians was celebrated, as becomes apparent from his description of how the communities interacted:
“Christians and Muslims in Raqqa lived in an atmosphere of peace and brotherhood. As for me personally, I had a lot of Christian friends. I even went to a Christian elementary school for six years. And never in my life did I feel that there was any kind of racial discrimination or sectarian animosity or anything like that. Christians would join in the Sugar Festival celebrations and Muslims in a spirit of solidarity would celebrate the Christian festivals together with their Christian neighbors. Life was good and unspoiled by feuds or hostilities.”
“The city was first liberated from dictator Assad by the Free Syrian Army (FSA). After initial fears, the old harmony fortunately returned fairly quickly.”, Abu Ibrahim continues.
“After the liberation by the FSA, about half of the Christian brothers and sisters fled the city out of fear, but it turned out the FSA constituted no threat at all. On the contrary, they protected their churches and considered them simply as fellow-Syrians, and the atmosphere of solidarity and community between Muslims and Christians remained. (…) There were even demonstrations that started at mosques and ended at churches.”
But then disaster struck:
“That was until the black crows of IS took over the city and confiscated the houses of the Christians.”
In part 1 we saw how the black crows of the Islamic State reduced education to a stripped-to-the-bone and strictly Sharia-based curriculum. In part 2 we saw how the crows chased the women out of the streets, and in this part we have seen how they effectively ‘rooted out’ religious diversity in the city. Such is the fate of a society once a totalitarian system gets hold of it.
Translation by Hans Verhulst
