My Thoughts on the Situation in Syria and Egypt

Greetings, dear readers!

As promised from my last post, I will discuss in some detail the world affairs that have attracted my attention over the past month or so. But first a quick side step into some personal stuff worth sharing with everyone.

I have just started my final semester of the Postgraduate Diploma of the Master of Teaching (Secondary), and will be teaching at Vermont Secondary College. I will again be teaching German, as it is very difficult to obtain ESL places in most schools. Much as I would have loved to do a TESOL placement, I relish any chance to practice my German.

The other exciting bit of news is that Auntie Patsy will be arriving from Hong Kong next week and staying for a month helping Dad look after the grandparents. For those of you who don't already know, I'm very close to Auntie Patsy and look forward to catching up and spending time with her while she is here.

And so on to the main section now. I will begin with the situation in Syria. This has developed into a crisis which will have far-reaching implications for the world, not just the immediate Middle Eastern region. This will be the case regardless of who emerges "victorious".

In the best-case scenario, all parties would emerge out of this crisis as winners rather than losers. But until Jesus Christ returns to establish His kingdom, our fallen human nature dictates that we will never see fair rule, true equality or absolute justice in our lifetimes. That shouldn't stop us from striving for it though, as the Bible instructs Christians to pray in the Lord's Prayer:

Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10 ESV)

If the way the Lord Jesus Christ described things in Matthew is anything to go by, we are getting very close to the Last Days before Judgement:

And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains. (Matthew 24:6-8 ESV)

While famine has again struck Africa, this time in the western part, there was a minor tremor that shook Melbourne several weeks ago. I was in the city at a choir rehearsal during the time when it occurred (20:53 AEST) but did not sense the quaking. It was not until I came home and was asked by Mum whether I felt the earthquake. I then checked my Facebook feed to find that everyone who was in Melbourne had commented on the earthquake!

Anyway, back to the Syria crisis. I won't waste your time going into all the details of what has happened in Syria, as it will take up too much space. However, the Huffington Post has published every week a digest of the crisis, where you can get a summary of what has been going on.

It is a sad fact that innocent civilians have lost their lives as they get caught in the civil war crossfire between government forces and rebels, but my focus is on how the crisis has been reported in the Western media. They have framed the Al-Assad government as the guilty party, and they're probably right.

The St. Elias Maronite Church in Aleppo.
Taken from Wikimedia Commons 

However I have learned, at times the hard way, to NOT take for granted everything that the Western media say. Indeed, reports have surfaced that some conflicts have been over-exaggerated. What is clear is that the rebels and the government are blaming each other, when really both parties are responsible for the deteriorating situation. As I write this post, the conflict has now reached the major city of Aleppo.

Although Russia and China have outraged many in the West for vetoing proposed United Nations (UN) sanctions, it is important that we don't condemn without understanding their attitudes. Again, I don't have time or space to go into all this, but it is worth looking through in your own time. Just google something like "Russia stance on Syria" or "China stance on Syria".

Something worth noting about Aleppo is that it has a significant Christian minority. Wikipedia says the Christian population there is around 12 per cent, but a Syrian-American called Ehsani from the Syria Comment blog has calculated it to be less than 4 per cent! Regardless of the number, please remember them in your prayers!

Now to talk about Egypt. My primary concern with that country, in light of last year's Arab Spring, has been the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt is nominally a secular country; its official title is the Arab Republic of Egypt (as opposed to Islamic Republic) and official population figures put the Muslim population at approximately 90 per cent.

In case you didn't know, Egypt has not always been a Muslim country. From about the 4th century AD until the Islamic conquest of Egypt in 640, Egypt was actually a Christian country, at least in name. Today, Christians in Egypt make up 5 to 10 per cent of the population, and most of them belong to the Coptic Orthodox denomination. Over the centuries, and especially since Gamal Abdel Nasser's coup d'état in 1952, the Copts and other Christians in Egypt have faced increased persecution, mostly from militant Islamists.

However, most Muslims haven't had it easy either. During the regimes of Nasser and Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood were severely restricted in their activities until Mubarak's downfall last year. The recent election of Mohammad Morsi in Egypt's first democratic elections has concerned Christians and secularists alike, even though Morsi has said that he will be "a president for all Egyptians".

President Morsi (centre) with Field Marshal General Tantawi
(left) at a medal ceremony at a military base
(AP Photo/Mohammed Abd El Moaty, Egyptian Presidency) 

However, Egypt's military elite retain much political influence, and from what I last heard about the situation in Egypt, Morsi and his comrades are locked in a struggle to reconvene parliament after it was dissolved by the Supreme Constitutional Court in June.

One of the keys to resolve the conflict will be the establishment of a new constitution which both parties can hopefully negotiate sooner rather than later. Then they need to attend to more important matters, such as providing jobs for Egypt's millions of young people.

I have already mentioned that we need to remember the Christians of Aleppo in your prayers. In the same way we need to remember to pray for our Christian brothers and sister in Egypt, and indeed throughout the Middle East. I thank God that He has preserved His people in Egypt for the last 1400-odd years, and can preserve them for another 1400 years, if He wants to.

I don't think I have room left to talk about Greece or Spain. I guess that will have to be for another post.

Cheers, and enjoy the Olympics!

July 2012 update

Greetings, dear readers!

Hope you are all well. I have a fair bit to get through, so let's get straight into it.

Last week I was able to sort out my timetable, and thankfully I got the times I wanted. It looks something like this:

Monday 10:00-12:00--Core subject: Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Secondary Education
Tuesday 9:00-12:00--Learning Area Workshop: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)
Wednesday 10:00-12:00--Elective subject: Global Perspectives in Education

It doesn't look like a lot, but on top of that is my Second Round of School Placement on Thursdays and Fridays (plus a three-week block) at a school that has yet to be confirmed.
Hopefully I get placed at a school where I get to practice teaching TESOL, as I haven't done enough in that learning area.
Add to the placement uni assignments, and preparation for job applications and a Practicum Exhibition (more about that in another post!), and this upcoming semester isn't exactly going to be easy. But I'm sure nonetheless that it will be fun.

As most of you I'm sure are aware, the London Olympics is coming up in a matter of weeks, and I'll be excited to see how the Australian athletes fare in their key events. A few weekends ago, I was invited by Andrew Wailes, my conductor at MUCS who is also in charge of the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic (RMP), to join the RMP to participate in the Prime Minister's Olympic Dinner at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, an A-list fundraising event for the Australian Olympic Team.
Performing in conjunction with Orchestra Victoria conducted by Richard Mills AM, we served as back-up singers for some of Australia's biggest music industry names. These included Todd McKenney, Delta Goodrem (by whom I got starstruck!) and Silvie Paladino. All in all, it was a great night, and we got good feedback from the event organizers.

As a sports follower I have certainly enjoyed my fair share of frustration and joy over the last few weeks. On Saturday June 16, I went with some friends to see my first-ever live international rugby test match between Australia and Wales at Etihad Stadium. Like most of my friends, I was supporting Wales. Call me unpatriotic if you like, but it is still an "Australian" trait to support the underdog, i.e. the team that is not favoured to win.

It was a very close match and at one stage it looked like the Welsh had the match won. They were one point in front with only two minutes to go, and they had possession of the ball in the Australian half. All they had to do was wind down the clock and then kick the ball out.
But for some inexplicable reason, they kicked the ball forward and gave possession to the Australians, who managed to get the ball down to the other end and win a penalty goal attempt, which was converted after the hooter for full-time had sounded. Australia won 25 - 23, and I was gutted.

On Monday I woke up at 4:30 a.m. to watch the final of the 2012 European Football Championship between Spain and Italy. Although Spain were the favourites going into the match, there was no way I was going for Italy as the underdogs this time.
Spain, alongside Germany and Brazil, are one of my favourite football teams, and for me, Italy in football is like England in rugby union or Collingwood in Australian football; You either love them or you hate them. If you hate them, you want them to lose ALL the time, even if they're the underdog!

Well, thankfully, I didn't have much to worry about: Spain won 4 - 0, and in doing so recorded their third consecutive major championship after winning Euro 2008 and the World Cup in 2010.
At this moment, Spain deserve to be the favourites heading to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

OK, that's enough of the sport. In my next post I will turn attention to world affairs that have caught my attention, namely the ongoing violence in Syria, and election results in Egypt and Greece, and what the future could hold for those countries.

Cheers and God bless