NOVANEWS
By: Ali Baghdadi
(Arab Journal, Chicago)
Jesus is back home. He couldn’t wait to be among his people, Muslims and Christians, who truly love what he stood for. He is happy and smiling. Despite the tragic war that caused the death of over one hundred and ten thousand people, mostly unarmed men, women and children, and turned the country into ruins by NATO mercenaries, Syrians are happy too.
Jesus was chased out of Syria by Salafi/Wahhabi “muslims” hired by the “Christian” West to kill, maim, rape and destroy. The Westerners don’t want Jesus to “survive” among his fellow Muslims in the land where, as the Bible and the Koran says, he was born, walked, taught and ascended to heaven.
Jesus now stands on top of Cherubim Syrian Mountain, with his outstretched arms, overlooking the ancient pilgrimage route to the Holy City of Jerusalem. In addition to the base, Jesus’ giant bronze sculpture is 105 feet high. This makes this Syrian statue taller than the huge “Christ the Redeemer Statue in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Two smaller statues are erected in the vicinity, the statue of Adam to the right and the statue of Eve to the left.
The Russian Eastern Orthodox Church was a driving force behind the project, which is titled. “I Have Come to Save the World.” The statue was constructed in Armenia. The main cost, however, came from private donors. The project gained the backing of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who wishes to strengthen spiritual ties between his country and the Arab World, and who also supports the continued presence of Christianity in the region.
The principle backers and financiers weighed canceling the project due to the barbaric murderous attacks against Christians and the destruction of their churches in different parts of the country by the ruthless rebels. However, Syria’s Greek Orthodox Patriarch John Yaziji insisted that “Jesus would have done it.”
Whether one actually believes in Jesus or doesn’t believe, it shouldn’t really matter. We should all be celebrating. Jesus is a symbol of peace, mercy, love, compassion and hope.
I am a Muslim, and I do celebrate and rejoice. I have a special affinity and attachment to Jesus, the son of Mary. Jesus and I are Jerusalemites. We may have both sat in the shadow of the same olive tree. We may have both rested on the same rock while climbing the Mount of Olive. My school yard was the site of the court that sentenced Jesus to die on the “cross”. I lived only a couple blocks away from the Via Delarosa, the road that I took daily, and where Jesus was forced to carry the cross while being tormented. My home was a half a mile from the Holy Sepulcher, from which Jesus ascended to heaven.
What is most important is the fact that Jesus and I are among the indigenous natives of Palestine. Jesus was tortured, nailed to the cross and left to “die” by the Jews. His fellow countrymen, women and children, the original inhabitants of Palestine, have also been “crucified” and subjected to genocide by the same people. The masses of Palestinians were uprooted from their towns and villages and thrown into the desert.
Those people who claim to be “chosen” and have a “god’ of their own, describe Jesus to be a bastard and his mother to be a whore. However, they describe the Palestinians to be poisonous snakes from which the land should be cleansed.
