The Decatur Daily, Tennessee
Oct 23 2004

Syrian Christian is glad to see opposition to war

By Melanie B. Smith
DAILY Religion Writer
msmith@decaturdaily.com · 340-2468

A Syrian woman speaking in Decatur described the encouragement she
felt to learn that people in the Presbyterian Church (USA) opposed
the war in Iraq.

Mary Khalaf, 25, is a Christian, one of 2 million in her country, and
she is also a Presbyterian.

She said that in the Middle East, Christians like her have been in a
difficult situation. Muslims and others tend to identify the United
States with Christianity and to link any Christian to support for the
war.

Khalaf said that two Muslim friends started treating her differently
after the war started.

Khalaf told listeners at Westminster Presbyterian Church that it was
helpful to hear news reports that many Americans do not back the war
in Iraq.

“It helped Muslims and Christians know that this is a political war,
not a religious one,” she said. “You don’t know how much you help.”

Everyday peace

The war was a topic Khalaf could not avoid since she was in town
through the work of the Presbyterian Peacemaking Committee
International.

She said she is no expert, joking that she didn’t want to cheat her
listeners.

But after the woman described her everyday life in Syria, one
listener, the Rev. John Bush, told her, “Your whole life is one of
peacemaking.”

A medical student at the University of Damascus, Khalaf grew up in a
Christian village. There are five churches in her town of 6,000.

Khalaf said there is freedom in her country. No one’s religion is
noted on their identity cards. She did not grow up knowing Muslims
because there were none in her village. When she went away to the
university, she learned that of her five roommates, one was an
Orthodox Christian and the rest were Muslim.

“I was afraid. I wondered, can we get along?” she said.

Khalaf said her father, a factory worker, taught her how to relate to
her Muslim roommates. She said she learned, for example, to respect
the times they bowed to Mecca to pray by not walking in front of
them. She said she and her Christian roommate went out to restaurants
during Ramadan to keep from eating in front of the other girls during
their fast.

They gave her copies of the Koran, and she gave them Bibles. She did
not try to make them Christians, and they didn’t try to make her
Muslim.

“I depended on my behavior, my life, to show what it means to be a
Christian,” Khalaf said.

They all became good friends, Khalaf said. Interfaith dialogue is
something a Syrian has to live every day, she said.

“My father told me that everyone in Syria belongs to Syria and their
religion belongs to God.”

Khalaf said that she wears a cross as part of her everyday attire,
and no one has discriminated against her. She said no professor has
her marked down in giving grades.

Refuge in Syria

Khalaf said that many Iraqi Christians are coming into Syria, which
shares a long border with Iraq. Their churches are being burned, and
they are afraid, she said.

Khalaf said she has seen them show up in churches, and the Middle
East Council of Churches has special programs to help them.

Syria also shelters many other refugees, 250,000 or more
Palestinians, plus Armenians, she said.

“I feel privileged to be from Syria,” she said.

She has often visited places in her country where the Apostle Paul
walked, including the Damascus wall where converts helped him escape
in a basket. She invited listeners to visit.

Khalaf plans to become a psychiatrist. She said she hopes to help
change the popular ideas in Syria that only crazy people need
counseling and that psychiatrists themselves might be mad.

Khalaf said she got involved in dialogue organizations through her
church.

“It is better to communicate than to be isolated and wondering about
how they think,” she said.

Bush, a retired minister, said afterward that he told Khalaf “many of
us do not like that war.”

Nancy Armistead of Westminster is a member of the Peacemaking
Committee of the North Alabama Presbytery, which sponsors a visit
from an International Peacemaker each fall.