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Russian Orthodox Church Says Protecting Syria's Christians Means Supporting Assad
(New York Times) Ellen Barry - The Russian Orthodox Church fears that Christian minorities in the Middle East, many of them Orthodox, will be swept away by a wave of Islamic fundamentalism unleashed by the Arab Spring. Syria's minority population of Christians, about 10%, has been reluctant to join the Sunni Muslim opposition against Assad, fearing persecution at those same hands if he were to fall. Three months ago in a meeting with Vladimir Putin, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the patriarchate's department of external church relations, asked Putin to promise to protect Christian minorities in the Middle East. "So it will be," Putin said. "There is no doubt at all." However, Andrew J. Tabler, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said: "If the Christian population and those that support it want a long-term future in the region, they're going to have to accept that hitching their wagon to this brutal killing machine doesn't have a long-term future."