This Bigotry Is Not Directed So Much
Against The Mohammedans, As Against Their Christian Brethren, Whose
Creed At All Differs From Their Own.
It need hardly be mentioned here, that many of those sects which tore
Europe to pieces in the earlier ages of Christianity, still exist in
these countries:
Greeks, Catholics, Maronites, Syriacs, Chaldeans, and
Jacobites, all have their respective parishes and churches. Unable to
effect any thing against the religion of their haughty rulers the Turks,
they turn the only weapons they possess, scandal and intrigue, with fury
against each other, and each sect is mad enough to believe that its
church would flourish on the ruins of those of their heretic brethren.
The principal hatred subsists between the Catholics and the Greeks; of
the latter, many thousands have been converted to Catholicism, so that
in the northern parts of Syria all Catholics, the Maronites excepted,
were formerly of the Greek church: this is the case in Aleppo, Damascus,
and in all the intermediate country; communities of original Latin
Christians being found only around Jerusalem and Nablous. The Greeks
HEUSN NIEHA.
[p.29] of course see with indignation the proselytism of their brethren,
which is daily gaining ground, and avenge themselves upon the apostates
with the most furious hatred. Nor are the Greek and original Latin
Christians backward in cherishing similar feelings; and scenes most
disgraceful to Christianity are frequently the consequence. In those
parts where no Greeks live, as in the mountains of Libanus, the
different sects of Catholics turn their hatred against each other, and
the Maronites fight with the converted Greek Catholics, or the Latins,
as they do at Aleppo with the followers of the Greek church.
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