The violence that is consuming Syria at the present time is both tragic and distressing. This is all the more so since Syria is made up of so many diverse communities, who have lived together in peace for centuries. The venerable Christian community of Damascus, for example, which has been present since the first century, has for the most part lived peacefully alongside the Muslim community for the last fourteen hundred years. When the Muslim Caliph Al-Walid took possession of the Christian Basilica of Saint John the Baptist, containing the shrine of the one known to Muslims as Prophet Yehya (peace be upon him), he compensated the Christians with four other permanent sites in the city. Indeed, for many years both Christians and Muslims worshipped in the same building where the Great Umayyad Mosque now stands. It was to reverence that shared tradition of faith that Pope John Paul II visited the Umayyad Mosque. One of the churches granted to the Christian community in perpetuity by Caliph Al-Walid was the Church of the Holy Cross, which sat at the far eastern corner of the Christian quarter of the Old City. Over the years this, too, was a religious site venerated by the people of both faiths, and a mihrab and minaret existed on the spot. During the years when the Ottomans had custody of the building, it is reported that oil lamps burned there night and day. The minaret collapsed in the early seventeenth century and the church itself fell into disrepair until the Franciscan Friars, traditionally entrusted as guardians of the Christian Holy Places in the Middle East, restored it in 1867 and then rebuilt it in 1893 and 1873. The place is now visited today as the Chapel of Ananias. The Christian community of Damascus believes that this is the very place where the Apostle Paul was met by Ananias, a leading member of the early Christian community, who cured him of his blindness and baptised him. You will remember that Saint Paul had been a very zealous Jew, known as Saul, entrusted by the Pharisees in Jerusalem with the destruction of the small group of followers of Jesus of Nazareth (peace be upon him). It was on the road to Damascus from Jerusalem; allegedly at a place now called Darayya, that something happened to Saul which was to change his life forever. Christians believe, according to the account written by Saint Luke in the Acts of the Apostles, that he received a vision, causing him to go blind, and he had to be led by the hand into Damascus, where Ananias was similarly told in a vision to go and meet him. After that Road to Damascus experience and the subsequent events involving Ananias, Paul became one of the greatest preachers of the early Christian Church, taking the message of Christianity to many cities and ultimately to Rome itself. Whatever happened to Paul on the road to Damascus, Christians reverence the place now known as the Chapel of Ananias. Over two thousand years the street level has risen, which now makes the chapel a crypt. It is a prayerful place and, out of respect for what Christians hold dear, Muslims and all people of faith now descend the twenty three stone steps into the tiny chapel and pause for a moment in praise of the Creator. Neither faith compromises itself by such encounters, but in doing so tells the world that it is possible to embrace those whose beliefs are different. On turning right after leaving Bab As-Sharqi, the second century eastern gate of the old city, and following the walls for a few hundred metres to another city gate, Bab Kissan, there is another place associated with Paul. Saint Paul's Chapel, built in the twentieth century, remembers the occasion when Paul was lowered in a basket from the city walls by his supporters to escape the wrath of the Jewish community. Saint Paul was never one to mince his words and his preaching had angered the Jews of the city, who saw him as a traitor. In his own words he writes, "And through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall, and escaped." This small chapel, too, is a quiet and prayerful place, visited by tourists and people of faith alike. The donations of visitors contribute to the upkeep of the adjacent orphanage. Muslims, of course, do not believe that Jesus was divine, the Son of God. As such, they disagree with greatly with Paul, who did so much in the early years of the Christian Church, to promote this idea. Many, indeed, see him as the real founder of Christianity. Such differences, though, do not prevent Christians and Muslims from working and living together, as they have done in Damascus for so many years. In fact, in a world beset by religious strife, the more people of faith can appreciate what they have in common, whilst giving up nothing of what they hold to be true, the more they can convince others that there is a place in our world for the spiritual, which man would do well never to neglect. Too often, those who reject faith try to present religion and people of faith as somehow irrelevant to the world in which we live, and out of touch with its needs. These secular people try to show that religion and belief are private things that have no place in a modern society. Those with belief, however, need all the more to celebrate together what they have in common. This does not mean pretending that they do not differ on essential things, but it does mean being honest and respecting one another's belief. In the year 36 AD., Paul walked out through Bab es-Sharqi, the eastern gate of the city, to take the message of Christianity to the rest of the world. Six hundred years later, Khaled Ibn Al-Waleed walked through the same gate to deliver the message of Islam. Events like this and places like those two small chapels associated with the Apostle Paul can be places where faith meets to embrace, rather than to argue and to point fingers. In Syria's present hour of darkness, people of faith have much to contribute in building a future for their country where each person, whether it is a man or a woman, is respected and valued, regardless of his religion or ethnicity, and where freedom, dignity and social justice are available to all. In doing so, those same people of faith can speak to a world that has lost its way and is thirsting for God that there are things more important in this life than the day to day affairs which consume us all. More important than any of them, they proclaim, is the Creator of life Himself.
British Muslim writer, Idris Tawfiq, is a lecturer at Al-Azhar University. The author of eight books about Islam, he divides his time between Egypt and the UK as a speaker, writer and broadcaster. You can visit his website at www.idristawfiq.com.
