History of Maaloula (Malula) and how the New York Times and BBC reporters opted to believe the taqiyyah from the terrorists

Shame on  Anne Barnard of the New York Times and Lina Sinjab of the  BBC. Why are female reporters more dumb than their male counterparts?   Stupid females will believe anything they are told because they would rather exercise their bodies than their minds.  Ugh!

Below is a very good account of what really happened and you need to go to the link to access all other links to gauge the historical value of this heritage site.  Here are some extracts:

Timothy Heckenlively writing at LevantReport:
...Veneration of the two saints spread    rapidly through the region. Their tomb grew into a fortified basilica and the city became Sergiopolis, an important pilgrimage center. Its ruins still stand in the desert. It enjoyed the patronage not only of Justinian I and other Byzantine emperors, but also of Persian Sassanids and Ommyad caliphs. One of the more important churches in Constantinople was dedicated to their memory as was a later church in Rome.

One of the earliest and most important churches dedicated to their memory lies in the village of Maaloula. The locals call it Deir Mar Sarkis (St. Sarkis Monastery). Its very name suggests its age, for it uses the ancient Aramaic word mar instead of qadees, the Arabic word for “saint”. The church itself was built over the remains of a temple to Apollo that had fallen into disuse when the village became Christian, sometime in the mid-late 1st century. It was almost certainly built within a few years of the death of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus, between the legalization of Christianity in AD 313 and the Council of Nicea in AD 325. A bishop Eutychius, from St. Sergius in Maaloula, is listed among the roll of bishops who participated in the council. Its marble altar was semi-circular with a raised lip around the outside. The design came from pagan practice, where it was necessary to drain the blood of sacrificial animals. It was clear, however, that this altar had always been Christian. It had a plain border instead of one with sacrificial processions and reliquary instead of a drainage hole. Such altars were banned at the Council of Nicea, a further indicator of the church’s early date. .........

.........Soon the propaganda war began. The FSA posted videos to YouTube claiming that the Assad regime was shelling churches in Maaloula and started promoting them on Twitter using various aliases. This was soon followed by a video in which a wahabi-bearded “liberator” gave a tour of the supposed damage. Their efforts soon met with the desired reward. On September 10, the New York Times ran an article by Anne Barnard giving credibility to such videos and portraying public outcry about Maaloula as potential misperception. Eight days later, Lina Sinjab of the BBC used such materials to portray the whole event as an unfortunate scuffle with few deaths and no particular damage to local churches..........

........The next video showed a tour of Mar Sarkis, but something was out of place. I could not recognize any element of the sanctuary. Then I realized that we were not examining the sanctuary at all. We were in the former gift shop, all of its merchandise now looted or destroyed, supposedly by troops who, to judge from RT and the BBC, had not yet even advanced to the lower village square.

The subsequent articles by Barnard and Sinjab emphasized one more bit of evidence. They rest on video of Mother Pelagia of St. Thekla’s Monastery as evidence that no harm was done to people or nuns. The man to the left is clearly tapping something as she speaks and it gives an audible metallic noise. Another man hides his face just out of camera view behind the nun on the right. As the “Assad shelling” video shows, one could practically walk to the edge of the cliff and drop bombs on St. Thekla’s convent by hand from the position held by al-Nusra. There is every reason to think her assurances were coerced by threat of violence.

Subsequent events proved these suspicions correct. Maria Finoshina of RT was of the few English speaking journalists daring enough to report from the actual combat zone. Her videos show the black jihadist flag (not the Syrian opposition flag) flying over the buildings they had occupied. The parties responsible for the chaos also posted celebratory videos (note again the the black flag in the upper right corner). Finally, this past week, a reporter for ITAR-TASS news agency was able to survey the actual damage to Mar Sarkis: http://www.itar-tass.com/en/c32/895365.html. Granted, this is a Russian news agency and therefore pro-Assad in slant. That said, the nature of the damage – targeted destruction of the altar and of Christian religious art – justifies the sensational headline. This is behavior characteristic of Islamic extremists. One might recall the Buddhas of Bamiyan as an instructive example..........