It’s a wonderful privilege to share the celebration of the great feast of Nayrouz – marking the beginning of Coptic New Year
On this day, Coptic Orthodox Christians honour those who have bravely stood and confessed their faith in God and whose lives have been taken.
Copts celebrate the New Year by eating red dates. The red symbolizes the martyrs’ blood and the white heart of the date heart symbolizes the martyrs’ purity.
Tragically, all over the world, there continues to be no shortage of men and women whose blood continues to be spilt because of their faith.
I have seen recent analysis which found that there are currently 61 countries, with combined populations of over 4.9 billion people, in which severe violations of religious freedom – of Article 18 of the UDHR – take place,
Yet the UK’s 10-year strategy for international development, published in 2022, sets out four priorities for UK aid but nowhere in these priorities –or indeed in the strategy itself – are religious minorities mentioned.
We turn a blind eye to the religious communities who suffer all manner of human rights violations, including the ending of their lives; sexual violence; abduction; forced marriage and conversion, displacement, destruction of property, discrimination in schools and the workplace, physical and mental torture. We ignore the findings of economists that the most prosperous and happy societies are those that promote religious liberty and respectful coexistence.
Too often we ignore persecution- especially of the ancient churches of the Middle East which have been on the front line of persecution.
How quickly we forget the horrific slaughter, by Islamic State, of 21 Coptic Christians, on February 12th, 2015, who died on a beach in Libya, professing their faith.
I quickly went forget how whole families of Christians have been murdered, terrorized, victimized, intimidated, deprived of their homes or belongings – and often in places where Christians have lived for 2000 years.
But this didn’t come out of nowhere.
In 1996 I met His Holiness Pope Shenouda III at St.Mark’s Cathedral in Cairo.
During our discussion we recalled that the failure to respond to the genocide of the Armenians and other Christians had created a climate of impunity in which persecutors believed that they could get away with murder.
Recall that between 1915 and 1917, 1.5 million Armenians and hundreds of thousands of Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Greeks had died.
And note that since that conversation in 1996 we have failed to prevent genocidal slaughter and horrific persecution in many places – from Nigeria to North Korea, from Iraq to Eritrea.
We remain asleep at our posts and need an appropriate sense of humility at our failure to act.
It is a moral outrage that vast swathes of humanity have been subjected to genocide and crimes against humanity, while we wring our hands.
So this Nayrouz I hope we will make a new year’s resolution to
listen far more carefully to communities like the Copts, the Chaldeans, the Armenians, the Assyrians and others who have paid such a high price for things we take for granted – and who have so much to teach us.
We must listen, but we must also speak and act in solidarity
