Islam and ChristianMuslim Relations

ISSN: 0959-6410 (Print) 1469-9311 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cicm20

Now My Life in Syria Is Finished: Case Studies on

Religious Identity and Sectarianism in Narratives
of Syrian Christian Refugees in Austria
Andreas Schmoller
To cite this article: Andreas Schmoller (2016): Now My Life in Syria Is Finished: Case Studies
on Religious Identity and Sectarianism in Narratives of Syrian Christian Refugees in Austria,
Islam and ChristianMuslim Relations, DOI: 10.1080/09596410.2016.1208956
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2016.1208956

Published online: 15 Aug 2016.

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Date: 19 August 2016, At: 04:55

ISLAM AND CHRISTIANMUSLIM RELATIONS, 2016

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2016.1208956

Now My Life in Syria Is Finished: Case Studies on Religious

Identity and Sectarianism in Narratives of Syrian Christian
Refugees in Austria
Andreas Schmoller
Centre for the Study of Eastern Christianity, Department of History, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria
ABSTRACT

ARTICLE HISTORY

Using semi-structured life story interviews with Syrian Christian

refugees in Austria, this article investigates the impact on identity
of the conict in Syria and the resulting act of seeking refuge
outside Syria. It suggests that the sectarian dynamics of the war
affect religious minorities in particular, and the method of using
biographical case studies allows an analysis of how the
sectarianization discourse is used by interviewees to construct
their autobiographical narratives of life as refugees. The results,
taken from four case studies, show that in each case, religion is a
strong marker, providing a framework for self-interpretation in a
period of change and/or disruption. In most cases, post-ight
identity as a matter of translocational positioning is constructed
within the framework of sectarianism. The argument of the article
is twofold: rst, sectarianism provides a setting for Syrian
Christians that is appropriated through diverse biographical
patterns. Second, sectarianism as a narrative strategy is modelled
by and responds to contexts in the host society. The results of this
study aim to offer important suggestions for understanding the
particular experience of Christian refugees settling in the
European diaspora.

Received 9 November 2015

Accepted 30 June 2016
KEYWORDS

Identity; narrative interviews;

refugees; Syrian Christians;
Syriac Orthodox Christians;
sectarianism

Introduction
The war in Syria has caused the biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War.
Millions of Syrians have ed Syrian territory, either in fear of the Assad regime and its
aerial bombardments of civilian areas or in fear of Islamist militias. Among the extremely
fractioned anti-Assad rebel groups, since 2013/2014 the so-called Islamic State (IS) has
become the most powerful and notorious. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR 2016), by May 2016, 4.8 million Syrian refugees were
living under harsh conditions in refugee camps in the neighbouring countries of
Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. Hundreds of thousands are seeking refuge in Europe,
taking great personal risks to reach one of the welcoming countries such as Sweden,
Germany and Austria.
Although we still have to wait for results from research on Syrian refugees, we can generally assume that the experiences of war and the ight from Syria per se are life-changing.
CONTACT Andreas Schmoller
2016 University of Birmingham

andreas.schmoller@sbg.ac.at

A. SCHMOLLER

The war in Syria is ongoing, and adaptation to a new life in different circumstances has not
yet been accomplished. Refugee identity has been described in terms of liminality, in that
refugees are caught in positions of transition from a more orderly and predictable past to a
new and as yet unpredictable future (Krulfeld and Camino 1994, IX). During this transition, life stories and memories may be restructured and adjusted to the new life, but refugees may also feel the need to maintain their identity and thus preserve narratives that are
considered consensual within their ethnic or religious in-group.
Religion often provides a central resource for refugees in a migration context. Holding
on to a religious identity that is indeed often important to people who have experienced
displacement does not mean that religious identity is static. The same practices and forms
of identication may be used for new ends, e.g., in response to new social challenges faced
in the migration context, such as experiences of marginalization or racialization (Anthias
2011, 205). This said, I consider identities to be relational. Following the concept of translocational positionality as developed by Anthias (2002, 2008), I describe refugee identity
as not merely associated with dislocation, even if that may appear to be the case.
To be dislocated at the level of the nation is not necessarily a dislocation in other terms if we
nd we still exist within the boundaries of our social class and our gender, but nonetheless it
will transform our social place and the way we experience it. (Anthias 2009, 243)

The term translocation allows us to think of identity expressed in narratives, rst, as one
that uses multiple locations such as religion, gender and class and, second, as relocations
that make connections between the past, present and future. Identity is thus always relational to our location both situationally and in terms of the ways in which the categorical
formations relating to the boundaries and hierarchies of gender, ethnicity and class
(amongst others) impact upon us within a time and space context (Anthias 2009, 243).
With regard to Middle Eastern Christians, who have settled in great numbers in European countries since the 1960s, previous research (see Atto 2011; Armbruster 2013) has
shown that, since a signicant role is played by ethnic markers, they are often mistaken
for Muslims in Europe because of their physical appearance. In addition, they feel marginalized because their Christian identity is not recognized either as being autochthonous to
the Middle East, or as being fundamentally endangered in those Muslim countries. They
react to this in various ways. One response is to emphasize that their religious tradition
belongs to the very origins of world Christianity. Another, found in many narratives, is
to warn of the general threat posed to Europe by Islam by drawing comparisons
between the current persecution of Christians in the Middle East and the future Islamization of Europe if Europeans do not start to defend their Christian identity. This warning
of Islamization narrative, which has recently been observed and studied in Middle Eastern
Christian diasporas (see McCallum and Hunter 2014), is likely to be even more emphatic
in the context of Middle Eastern Christian refugees resettling in Europe. In the rst
instance, this can be considered a reaction to the new levels of sectarianism witnessed
in the Syrian war, caused by IS and the atrocities committed against members of religious
minorities in Syria, Iraq and Libya. The main focus of this study is to further investigate
this view by deconstructing the sectarian discourse inscribed in many narratives in order
to comprehend its individual appropriation. I shall demonstrate that sectarianization is
relevant in Syrian Christian identity or translocational positionality (Anthias 2009) in
the context of both seeking refuge and integration in Europe. However, the way in

ISLAM AND CHRISTIANMUSLIM RELATIONS

which it is relevant is more complex than might be expected. The empirical data does
indeed show sectarianism to be a central experience for the Christian minority but,
even more interestingly, sectarianism is a discursive construct remodelled and readopted
in narratives about war, refuge, integration and belonging, and thus is part of a positioning
dictated by a given situation and a given location. This article will show that the sectarian
framing in autobiographical narratives owes as much to the situation in the host society
and the prospect of future integration as to the context of experienced sectarianization
in the country of origin. An evaluation of how these translocational lives negotiate the
new context of their new host society will thus hopefully also contribute to a better understanding of the general situation for the diaspora of Middle Eastern Christians who settled
in Europe recently, or two generations ago.
I shall rst map out an outline of the specic Christian experience and perception of the
Syrian war and then present Christian narratives about seeking refuge in Europe. Following on from this, I shall then present the methodological approach of my study, which
highlights the importance of biographical concepts for the analysis of narrative interviews.
The third part of this article offers four case study narratives, with the aim of demonstrating the functionality of these sectarian discourses in the framework of biography. This
article seeks to comprehend why and how refugees with Christian backgrounds correlate
their lives with sectarianism in the Middle East.

Syrian Christians in the context of sectarianized conict

It is impossible to determine the percentage of Christians among Syrian refugees. In
October 2015, the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II (2015), still resident
in Damascus, estimated that 40% of Syrias Christians had left the country since the
turmoil erupted in 2011. Even if this estimate is close to accurate, it is of little help as
the demography of Christians in Syria before 2011 is also open to dispute.1 Various
sources (Courbage 2008; Fargues 1998, 61; Rabo 2012, 91) indicate that, in 2011, 6
12% of Syrias population of about 22 million were Christians, belonging to one of the
Latin, Greek, Syriac or Armenian Christian denominations.
Before the uprising in 2011, Syrias Christians benetted from the ofcial state secularism of the Assad regime, which adopted a policy of religious tolerance that attracted minorities. According to Farha and Mousa (2015, 179), Christians in Syria faced almost no
discrimination, either by the state or by society, rendering Syria as one of the safest
places in the Middle East for religious minorities, especially for Iraqi Christians after
the fall of Saddam Hussains regime in 2003. Their reaction to the revolution ranged
from explicitly supporting Bashar al-Assad, remaining silent on the protests, or proposing
modest reforms towards political liberalization making sure not to become explicitly
afliated with the opposition movement (Farha and Mousa 2015, 179180). The rise of
jihadist movements and, consequently, increasing sectarianization of the conict fostered
the perception held by many Christians of a Sunni rebellion, supported by the Gulf States
and Turkey, against the Alawite regime backed by Shiite powers such as Iran and Hezbollah. Scepticism among Christians vis--vis the revolution was further fed by the observation that the opposition was, rst, mainly supported by the Muslim Brotherhood and,
second, favoured a concept of democracy in which the Sunni majority would dominate
the country. As soon as Christians encountered violence against their institutions and

A. SCHMOLLER

persons, in the form of the destruction and plundering of churches, hostage-taking and
assassinations in the so-called liberated areas of Syria, Christians felt threatened by the
revolution. Leonhardt (2014, 7) suggests that the abduction of the Greek Orthodox Archbishop Boulos Yazigi and the Syriac Orthodox Archbishop Youhana Ibrahim by rebel
groups in April 2013 was a turning point for Syrias Christians, who subsequently tightened their allegiance to the regime and emigrated in increased numbers or moved to
regime-held areas. Supporting the Alawite-dominated Assad regime would appear a
rational choice for Christians in view of the uncertainty that regime change in Syria
would entail for them. At the same time, this attitude fuels the sectarian dynamics in
this conict and might endanger the Christians even further. Moreover, it cannot be
denied that, in exchange for their allegiance to the regime, the best they received was
supercial protection (see Leonhardt 2014, 16).
So what is this sectarianism that has become so prominent in the Syrian war and affects
the way religious minorities such as the Christians interpret the events? Sectarianism is,
according to Robson (2011, 316), not a permanent, essential, natural aspect of politics,
but a historically specic process dictated by the particular conditions of modernity.
With regard to the establishment of the Baath regime, Nicholas van Dam (2011, 165)
calls it acting or causing action on the basis of membership of a specic religious community. It would be misleading, however, to suggest that sectarianism is all about religion and
religious violence. Acting or ghting along confessional lines may be theologized and legitimized ideologically, but the patterns of sectarianism result from historic processes that go
beyond religion as a system of beliefs and worship. Or, as French historian Elizabeth
Picard (1996, 9) has explained, a community is more than an allegiance to a shared
faith. It is a social, political, and even economic structure; [ ] Community membership
rst marks individuals in their deepest natures [] and it thus engineers particularly rm
solidarities. Numerous experts have observed that the Syrian population has sided or even
encapsulated alongside clan and community ties as the conict that started out as protests
turned into a multi-frontlined (proxy) war that bears strong resemblances to a warlord
conict (see, e.g., Bandak 2015; Farha and Mousa 2015; Leonhardt 2014). Although assessments differ as to how far this dynamic was generated consciously by the self-fullment of
Syrian regime propaganda (see, e.g., Balanche 2014), there is no doubt that, as well as the
Christians, other religious minorities such as the Alawites, Ismailis and Druze also generally aligned themselves with the regime in fear of sectarian violence. Whether these minorities acted out of sectarian views or in reaction against the threat of sectarianization is
not signicant in this context. The important thing with regard to collective identities
of Christians coming from the Middle East is that they share anxieties in the face of
the re-awakening of a militant Islamism; a deep awareness that in Islam the marker is
between Muslim and non-Muslim not between different types of Christian (OMahony
2013, 247).
The bonds of solidarity or boundary building as shown in the example of issuing
warnings about Islam in a migration and refugee context cannot be understood
without taking into consideration their reciprocal dependencies with those social groupings with which they nd or found themselves in a relationship of opposition, dependency,
interdependence, or cooperation in the homeland (Bogner and Rosenthal 2009, 12). This
study investigates how this is played out at the level of individuals who integrate these
existing and disrupted bonds into their narratives of their post-ight life stories.

ISLAM AND CHRISTIANMUSLIM RELATIONS

Theoretical and methodological approach: narratives and biography

In October and November 2014, I conducted ten narrative semi-structured autobiographical interviews with Syrian Christian refugees in Vienna. They all belong to the Syriac
Orthodox Church, which before 2011 had around 110,000 members in Syria (Hunter
2014, 547). Most of the interviewees had come to Austria as part of a humanitarian resettlement programme launched in 2013 to receive 500 refugees eeing the conict in Syria.
The programme was primarily aimed at Christians, which led to political controversy in
the build-up to elections about the legitimacy of privileging a religious minority in this way
(see Schmoller forthcoming). Left-wing parties and some NGOs strongly criticized this
decision, while the conservative Austrian Peoples Party (sterreichische Volkspartei; VP)
defended it, pointing to the particular threat faced by Christians and other minorities
in Syria. The Austrian far-right Liberal Party, the FP (Freiheitliche Partei sterreichs),
joined the debate in support of the initiative, arguing that Christians would integrate more
easily into Austrian society than Muslims.
Among these refugees were 150 Syriac Orthodox Christians from Aleppo and the
governorate of al-Hasakah in the Jezireh. These areas were historically home to large communities of Syriac Orthodox Christians, who settled there after eeing massacres in
Ottoman Turkey, the genocide referred to by Syriac Christians as the Sayfo, the
Aramaic word for sword, 1915 thus being the year of the sword (Hunter 2014, 547).
The resettlement of these Christians to Vienna in December 2013 was assisted by the
Syriac Orthodox Church in Austria and Matta Roham, Archbishop of al-Hasakah, who
were assigned responsibility for the logistics by the Austrian government. The refugee
Christians already had relatives in Austria, who worked actively through their church
leaders to get them out of Syria. Established as a diaspora church by migrant labourers
from Turkey and Syria in the 1960 and 1970s, the Syriac Orthodox community took
care of all relevant resettlement issues and supported the new arrivals. The church gave
me the opportunity to contact English-speaking Syrian refugees for personal interviews
for a research project about the Middle Eastern Christian diaspora in Austria conducted
at the Centre for the Study of Eastern Christianity in Salzburg. All of my interviewees had
relatives in Austria, but not all of them had come to Austria through the humanitarian
programme. Some had ed to Austria on their own after crossing the border into
Turkey or Lebanon. All interviewees mentioned the support they received from the
Syriac Orthodox Church on arrival and the help provided by Catholic lay associations
since then in the form of social activities, language courses and job searches. Intermittent
eldwork conrms that they have become integral members of the parish, whose leaders
state that quick integration of the newly arrived members into Austrian society is a priority. This context is important in two aspects. First, it conrms sociological research
(see, e.g., Nagel 2013; Nagel and Plessentin 2015) claims that religious migrant organizations such as churches function as bridges into the host society and help newcomers
settle in, with the possible effect that religious identity becomes socially even more relevant
than it was in their homeland. Second, the social role of churches (Syriac Orthodox as well
as the dominant Catholic Church) in the Austrian host society may have further encouraged the expression of religious belonging among the newcomers who unanimously
claim that religious identity was not part of self-identication in pre-war Syria which,
in consequence, potentially matches the use of sectarian discourse as a narrative strategy

A. SCHMOLLER

in explaining refuge and disruption in a life story. From that perspective, the sectarian narrative might be perceived less as a tool of political action (thus sectarianism) than as a
means of expressing the social importance of religion for integration and recovery from
ight from war.
The decision to conduct autobiographical narrative interviews (see, e.g., Ksters 2009)
instead of structured interviews was based on the assumption that it offers the interviewee
the possibility of using personal criteria of relevance and signicance about his or her own
life story, and the option of referring to certain concepts or narratives as elements of
location and belonging. Narrative (auto)biographical methods are certainly an important
means for researching translocational positionality. My interviews lasted between 40 and
70 minutes, and began with an open invitation to the interviewee to tell their own story.
Generally, interviewees expressed surprise at this approach and were not used to narrating
their life story in detail. Instead, they had expected questions about their war and refugee
experience. The initial life story account that emerged was in most cases sparse, but nonetheless allowed me to develop general questions that generated subsequent autobiographical narratives, with the purpose of covering the whole life span from childhood to the
present. At the end of the interview, I added questions about opinions of the rebellion
or other events if they had not been covered sufciently in the course of the narration.
I believe that, although the life story interview faces difculties in the context of refugees
who in some cases reportedly had some experiences with interviews by journalists or
school classes, the method produces valuable autobiographical narrative interview data.2
In the analysis of the transcripts of these interviews, the focus was on identifying biographical patterns that structure post-ight positionalities. For this purpose, I adapted a
model created by German sociologist Fritz Schtze (1984, 92), which distinguishes four
possible types of positions vis--vis life experiences within the framework of (auto)biographical narrations. These are the most fundamental principles of orientation and narrative representation for the individuals experience. In impromptu speech of all kind,
autobiographical experience is recaptured within one of these patterns. They reveal how
the narrator is reacting to the stream of life events and experiences at a particular stage
in life. Although it is far from clear whether this approach is transculturally applicable,
the case studies will conrm that these patterns exist in interviews of the type conducted
with these Syrian Christians. Exploring these structures in biographical accounts serves
two purposes. First, it allows us to consider refugee identity and its liminality through
the lens of a conventional (auto)biographical reconstruction of life with the result that
refugees do not or at least do not only become visible in terms of dislocation. We
come to see individuals who integrate their war and refugee experience into their life
story in line with more general patterns used in biographical recapitulation of life (such
as autobiography as story of success). Each of the four patterns affects the construct of narrative identity analysed here in the mode of translocational positionality. Second, this
approach enables us to deconstruct the discourses of sectarianism as it becomes clear
how they are interwoven with a life story. This is especially true when religious and confessional identity is emphasized, as is the case in all these interviews. I am less interested in
the fact that Syrian Christians use discourses of sectarianism than in their function within
the framework of their biography. As will be shown, they are at least as relevant for recapitulating the sectarianized past in Syria that resulted in seeking refuge as for the current
relocation to the unsectarian Western host society. Finally, this offers us an understanding

ISLAM AND CHRISTIANMUSLIM RELATIONS

of how the use of these discourses is related to translocational positioning in the particular
context of Syrian Christian refugees in Europe.
I chose four interviews, each representing one of the biographical patterns elaborated
by Schtze. The case studies are considered representative for the whole sample with
regard to the use of these patterns and the relevance of religion. The interviewees generally
appreciated the interest that was shown in them by my project. The methodology meant
that a minimum of information was given to the interviewees before the interview which
was always the rst meeting with them about my research and me as a person. The intention was to provide the greatest possible openness for the interviewees projections. Acts of
positioning that construct a generalized Other belonging to the host society to whom the
interviewee would tell his/her story can be an important key for interpretation.
To safeguard anonymity, the names of my interviewees have been replaced with
pseudonyms.

Four biographical patterns by which to construct life experiences

1. Life experiences as inner process: God gave me this opportunity
One way of narrating life experience is to dene it as a process that takes place in the inner
life of the narrator (Schtze 1984, 92). This seems more evident within the framework of
conventional life stories, which reect the evolution of personality located subjectively at
particular points in life. Once this process has taken place, perspectives of life seem to
change systematically with regard to life choices and/or worldview (see Schtze 1984,
92). In the context here, it seems less natural to focus on inner life while talking of war
and refuge. However, Sara, a teenage girl from Qamishli, in narrating her life experience
event of eeing Syria, focuses on inner states of mind by evoking emotions and her soul,
which contrast with the intimidating outer reality. She ed Syria with her parents, brothers
and sisters, rst to Turkey, and then moving to Austria through the humanitarian programme referred to above. She was able to complete her high school diploma before
leaving Syria, but was not able to attend university there. Retrospectively, this experience
is seen in Schtzes (1984, 92) concept as a systematic shift in the possibilities for life
experience and actions. However, Saras case goes beyond this, as she frames this experience religiously:
Im nineteen years old, we came here ten months ago, were so [pause], well, Im Orthodox,
okay? [unclear words] I nd myself so lucky to be here because when I came out of Syria me
and my family we were so lucky to get out so safe, because you know about the war and what
happened and thats what frightened me. At the same time in my soul I was just calm because
my God is with me. There was a time I didnt believe many things about being Christian but
now because God gave me the opportunity of my life I was dreaming of. I was dreaming
always to have a good opportunity when I would be 19 years old and this is going to be
for myself.

The experience of change is located on two different levels. Sara starts by talking about
physical displacement from Syria and the aspect of having a safe refuge. Then change
becomes a process that does not involve external events, but occurs in the inner world
of oneself. In this process, fear is overcome by inner calm and an experience of faith.
The self-interpretation she offers at the beginning of the interview comes closest to a

A. SCHMOLLER

concept of migration as an experience of liberation and individuation in biographies

(Breckner 2009, 49). Sara sees herself set down in a new world of possibilities at a
certain point in her life, which corresponds to her plans and hopes that at that age she
would be given the opportunity to succeed in life. This is formulated as a subjective
plan, although her wish is framed by cultural and institutionalized concepts of starting
a successful life. Opportunity can be interpreted as a shorthand description of access
to good education, attractive job prospects and a life of economic prosperity. Sara, who
is very religious, interprets her refuge in Austria as Gods grace. In another sequence,
she concretizes her theology about grace, which is not a unilateral gift but one that is
bound with responsibilities by the receiver of this grace, because he/she has to make the
best of it. The inner perspective on this life-changing event is further stressed by the
vague statement about religious doubts, which are positioned as a chapter in the course
of life that is closed by this experience. Generally, this kind of theory about the self in
the context of an interview can reveal a pattern of personal resilience. Sara positions
herself in the role of a Syriac Orthodox Christian who does not establish the identity of
a refugee seeking help from a host society, but rather associates her strong religious identity with her eagerness to give her best in a Western society and be successful.
As a Christian, you can always be a Christian, in any place in the world, says Sara
adopting a rucksack view of religion, while at the same time signalling the local particularities of her Christian life thus far. Sara and other interviewees who grew up in Qamishli
unanimously draw a very harmonious picture of life in this small town on the border with
Turkey. Here, the narrative of Qamishli is not primarily set up to stress peaceful co-existence of religions and ethnic groups destroyed by the war, but to identify with an unspoiled
form of community life that Qamishli offered. Sara recounts how a walk up the street to a
nearby place could take a long time because on the way she would meet numerous people
she knew and have a short conversation with each one. Highlighting the simple life of
Qamishli is the opposite of what she has experienced so far in the Syriac Orthodox community of Vienna:
Its going to take a lot of time to know all of them. The way you should speak to them. Here
they are mixed, with Turkish roots and Syrians, and Austrians, just mixed. [] Its going to
take a lot of time. Really when we came here ten months ago and I cant say anything about
anyone. I dont know them. Its going to take years. Because, they are maybe such different
people because they lived in Europe and when you live in Europe your life is changed. They
are not such simple people like in my city. We were so, so simple, so simple. Like not dumb
but simple.

This example reects the words of Rabo (2012, 83), who argues that place of origin is
crucial for how identities are formed and locally played out, regardless of the egalitarian
secular ideology of the Baath regime that many Christians proudly share. For Syrians generally, ideas about origin and a good family background are still exceedingly important
(Rabo 2012, 83).
The translocational aspect of Saras positioning is evident with regard to her Christian
religious identity, which she takes with her through space and time, yet her local identity as
a young Christian from unspoiled Qamishli is seen in a new light as she encounters difculties in adapting to fellow Syriac Orthodox Christians from different origins in her new
parish in Vienna. Relocation from Qamishli to Vienna is framed theologically by interpreting refuge in Austria as Gods grace, which transforms the faith of the narrator.

ISLAM AND CHRISTIANMUSLIM RELATIONS

Refuge is remembered in association with an inner process of religious doubts that are
lifted and, consequently, transform into strong beliefs and commitments. In consequence,
religious identity is essentially connected to very secular issues that concern post-refuge
life and thus integration into the host society. The narrator has to live up to the opportunities provided by the new location by succeeding in socio-economic terms and fullling
plans that were forged in the past. The concept of translocational positionality helps us
understand this narration as one about refugee identity that is characterized by maintaining past ties through a form of religious identity that stimulates involvement in the challenges of integrating into a new location. Even more importantly, it enables us to
comprehend Sara as someone who denes her religious belonging translocationally
through universalistic terms of spirituality, values and morals within the spaceless
realm of Christianity on the one hand and at the level of local identity as a member of
multi-ethnic and multi-religious Qamishli on the other.
In Saras case, religious identity is emphasized; it is, however, the only case in which
discourse of sectarianism is completely absent. Religion is not highlighted here as a cultural or socio-political identity in opposition to other religious groups such as Muslims.
This might correlate with the type of biography that describes change as an inner
process that might prevent the narrator from using the concrete experience of war and
its social context as core elements of biographical narration.

2. Life experiences as disruptive trajectories: Im there, not here

The egalitarian narrative can also be seen as background in the narration of Saras sister
Miriam, who, from a biographical standpoint, displays a completely different attitude
towards the course her life has taken. Her narration represents the Syrian conict and
refuge as an external set of events that fundamentally impact on her life. According to
Schtze (1984, 92), life story events can be structured biographically in such a way that
they overwhelm the autobiographer because they are too powerful and initially he is
only capable of limited reaction in order to regain painstakingly a frail state of balance
for everyday life activities. Indeed, Miriam only mentions the lack of equilibrium she
has experienced since these life-changing events took place. On several occasion, she interprets herself as lost in transition. Remarks such as basically, Im there, not here, or my
body is here, but my soul is still there are ways of establishing and legitimizing an identity
of disruption. These self-explanations may reect current difculties faced in the host
country that prevent the individual from developing personal perspectives. Certain
details in the interview suggest that Miriam has not managed to develop daily routines,
except for going to church and Syriac youth meetings, which she highlights. Miriam
keeps up ties to Syria via Facebook and the Internet on a daily basis, which underlines,
rst, that her life is attached to different places due to her ight from Syria and, second,
her response strategies to the disruption that has occurred in her life.
In contrast to Sara, Miriam has not yet been able to integrate her war and refugee
experiences into her life story and connect them to future prospects. This corresponds
to a biographical pattern in this narration that presents refuge as a negative trajectory.
As Schtze (1984, 94) explains, such trajectories are initially always perceived as
menace to development in terms of personal identity; it may take time for an individual

10

A. SCHMOLLER

to choose to integrate them in functional terms into their life story by focusing on the possibilities and options that result from such trajectories.
From a practical perspective, it was noticeable in the interview that Miriams life story
accounts were very disjointed and often ended up returning to the war in Syria. Although
her autobiographic narrations are in some respects minimal in comparison to more
general narrations about Syria before and during the war, these data are no less relevant
or interesting in analysis. This is especially the case in view of how her perception of the
lasting suffering inicted by the assault on her ordinary life course is framed by disbelief
about the developments in Syria and, later, her experience of sectarianization. Pre-war
Syria is idealized in her narration with regard to politics, economic prosperity and
inter-religious tolerance.
It was so safe, especially for Christians; even if it was a Muslim country. [] Until now we are
crying about what happened in Syria because it was an unbelievable country in different
ways. The nature, the people, you know, in everything it was so perfect for us. Actually, I
really, really love my country. Until now I dont believe, I left. It is so hard for us, but we had.

Her national identity as a Syrian is central to Miriam, and she hints that the egalitarian
model of the Baath regime, which was based on sectarian composition of the regime
(Rabo 2012, 82), and won the support of minorities, was appreciated by the Christians.
To locate her state of disruption within her biographical framework, she associates her
state of mind with the loss of the Syria that she and other Syrian Christians dreamed
about. Thus, she adopts a collective perspective when she indicates that this idyllic
image of Syria has been shattered: Everything in our mind has changed, we are ten
years older. After all, this biographical pattern of a disruptive trajectory in Miriams narrative correlates with the view of the sectarian nature of the conict in Syria, which at some
point is considered the reason that the worldview offered by the ofcial egalitarian narrative was shattered. The effect of this is similar to an accelerated aging process. Miriam supports this interpretation when asked to comment on the Arab Spring, which resulted
actually in a self-theory: It was a stupid idea because we as a Christian girl [sic] we
didnt have the experience in political life. Her narrative does not include any reection
on the relationship or tensions between Christians and Muslims in Syria, but she resorts to
sectarian discourse when explaining the beginning of the uprising in Syria in 2011.
In Syria it is not for, they are saying it is for freedom or changing the President, it is not that.
It is a ght between Shia and Sunna. They knew how to play on that. When you see Sunna
people, you know that they hate the Shia or the Alawi. So you go to them and tell them, you
are Sunna, you have to ght, you are more than them.

This alternative explanation for the beginning of the Syrian uprising not only challenges
the Western view that it began peacefully in the city of Deraa and was violently supressed
by the regime (see, e.g., Lister 2015, 1117), but also suggests a relevant role played by a
broader sectarian conict between Sunni and Shia Islam that was not visible to the West or
young Syrian Christians such as Miriam, who believed in the egalitarian model of Syria.
The relevance of this particular biographical pattern of disruptive trajectories caused by
overwhelming external events can thus be explained by the personal experience of an
extremely violent sectarian conict to which the Christians fell victim. This suggests
that people like Miriam did not witness sectarianism in pre-war Syria.

ISLAM AND CHRISTIANMUSLIM RELATIONS

11

However, at the same time we have to be aware that such recourse to a sectarian
framing might also evolve from the context in the host society, including the prevailing
discourse among locally established Syriac Orthodox Christians in Vienna. My recent
eldwork, as well as that of Armbruster (2013), conrms that there is a strong tendency
to perceive the Syrian conict through a lens of sectarianism in the community, a view
strongly represented by Chorepiskopos Emmanuel Aydin, whose commitment is considered by Miriam and parts of the community as playing a substantial role in the reception of her family in Austria.
The need to comprehend and make sense of events is a fundamental principle in
impromptu biographical narrations, and demonstrates how interviews are socially
embedded. From a psychological perspective, we have to acknowledge that disruption
in identity caused by war and refuge may involve completely different individual
aspects, which cannot be expressed or reected in an interview situation. To ll this
void of partly inexplicable disruption, referring to substitute explanations drawn from a
socially and medially shared context is a way of self-positioning in the context of an
interview.

3. Interruptions of institutionalized biographies of success: No future for

Christians in Syria
I am pharmacist. I studied in Jordan. Not in Syria. And I worked in Syria for eight years. After
graduation. As a pharmacist, one year in pharmacy, and two years in [], its a British
Company. And then I made military service, as all Syrians [laughs]. For two years and
after that I worked for [], French company also. I had a very very good position in my
last job. My salary was very good. I had a very good quality of life. I can do everything. I
can make vacation. I can I can do everything. I was very happy in my life. But because
the war we lose everything. Our life was dangerous. And also I was afraid because some
people were going to the military again, and also because in my city Aleppo life for Christians
was very dangerous. There is, not all, but many many Islamic terrorists. And, no good life and
no good future also. I was thinking about the future more. Because. How can I stay, living
with these people, with this mentality. Thats what made me take this step to go outside.
And I had the chance to come to Austria. Really I thank Austria to give me that chance. I
am starting a new life here. Now, I am studying Deutsch [German]. And I want to work
as pharmacist in Austria. I have problem now because it is the rst time I dont work.
Always I have a work. [laughs.]

Tuma escaped from besieged Aleppo and ed to Lebanon for fear of being conscripted for
military service. He introduces himself with a curriculum vitae that corresponds to the
institutionalised pattern of a life story (Schtze 1984, 92).3 He unfolds a story of educational and professional success, working for international pharmaceutical companies,
resulting in wealth, happiness and benets such as holidays abroad. Into this narrative
is imbedded a portrait of the city of Aleppo and its economic importance and wealth,
thus expressing pride in his homeland. Tumas story of success is disrupted because of
the war. Tumas story can be taken as indicative of the phenomena that Syrian Christians,
whose socio-economic situation was generally above average in Syria before the conict,
have suffered disproportionately (Leonhardt 2014). Within this biographical pattern of
institutionalized life story, refuge is narrated as an interruption of success, which needs
to be redressed as quickly as possible in the host society in order to allow the narrator

12

A. SCHMOLLER

to return to their previous path. As Schtze (1984, 94) points out, cases displaying this
pattern are characterized by institutional and social expectations that the narrator is
trying to meet. In a sense, this is a response to fears about dependent unskilled migrants
that are widespread in Western societies, as it constructs an image of a pre-war way of life
that perfectly matches institutionalized Western images.
Translocational positionality in this case study is subsequently expressed through continuity within the boundaries of both professional identity as a pharmacist, and religious
identity as a Christian. The aspect of change is predominantly narrated to this point as
economic. Tuma echoes the experience of being dislocated from a social place of
wealth. In the subsequent passages, however, loss appears as a twofold event: not only a
loss of his resources but also a loss of his homeland, Syria, including separation from
his family. Now my life is nished in Syria, Tuma states repeatedly. His perspective on
the life of Christians in Syria correlates with Miriams account, and can be interpreted
as an example of Christians succeeding and contributing to the prosperity of the
nation. What distinguishes Tuma is his pronounced focus on his new life in Austria, in
every practical detail. Everything is about small successes as a refugee and catching up
on a life story of success. Tuma provides details about his nancial situation, e.g., the
meanstested minimum benets (social assistance) he receives from the state, and his
need to make a living in a city like Vienna. Like Sara, he interprets his resilience in
terms of his religious beliefs: I make my effort and then I pray, not only stay at home
and pray. Through this religious reection, hardship and ambition to succeed in life
are in a way encoded as Christian religious identity.
This emphasis on post-refuge life in Austria contrasts with the aspect of disruption
present in the previous case (that of Miriam). Nonetheless, it ts well into the framework
that Tuma gives it, by assuming that the loss of his homeland is irreversible. He presents
the refuge as a clear-cut event in his life, similar to other events that might occur along the
course of a biography of institutionalized success, but it is reected as an experience of
strong emotions:
That time is very very [] bad. Because I lost everything; now I will start a new life. Its very
bad. Its very emotional moment. Im crying. I left everything. Really, really, I will speak about
myself but I was very successful and I had very high quality of life. I worked hard for many
years to reach to this point. And after these years I throw everything, memories. I left my
family. That is very bad for me.

The break is so absolute that the narrator engages in detailing the explanation for his
assessment. This autobiographical closure of the Syria chapter is repeatedly interwoven
into the larger context of the Syrian conict, in which sectarianism is seen as the
central factor. For him, the Syrian uprising was, from the very onset, not a peaceful revolution, but a religious revolution, pitting Sunni against Shiite Muslims; this is encapsulated in his comment concerning the 2011 rebellion, where he says, Thats why I wasnt
surprised afterwards, referring to the violence that followed the rst demonstrations. The
sectarian cleavages are intensied and the Christians have become a target. I think in the
future, no future for Christians in Syria. I think that, says Tuma. He illustrates his pessimism by showing two different perspectives that reect personal experience of the sectarian dynamic. The rst is the way in which the Sunni neighbourhood kept silent during
attacks on Christians, instead displaying an attitude of wait-and-see.

ISLAM AND CHRISTIANMUSLIM RELATIONS

13

Our neighbours, they dont say something about that. They should defend us. We are living
for these years together. They wait and are looking and neutral. Not with ISIS group and not
with us. They stay away. That is not good.

This is contrasted with the second, a reection about his fellow Christians: Now, many,
many, many Christians in Syria start to hate Muslim people. According to Tuma, the
war may one day be over, but sectarianism has done irreversible damage to the social
fabric of religious coexistence. Therefore, Christian life in Syria is over, and success in
life must be achieved elsewhere.
From a storytelling point of view, Tumas narrative is paradigmatic for balancing the
two spheres of governance in our life as Michael Jackson (2002, 112) characterizes the
reality of all human beings, namely, living on the one hand in an immediate sphere of
family, friends and local community in which we matter, and on the other in the wider
world in which our success and our lives are insignicant. Stories help us to negotiate
this balance (Jackson 2002, 112), meaning that for refugees, storytelling is a means of
letting go and recovering. Tuma speaks of turning the page on Syria; in so doing, he
regains control over his own destiny. While dissociating himself from sectarian views
to the extent that he mainly expresses them through the voices of others, he is nonetheless
grounding his loss of control and trust in the sectarian-driven dynamic of the conict. This
allows him to dene a balance between his personal life sphere, namely being a refugee in
Austria, and the sphere of the wider world, namely proclaiming that there is no future for
Christians in Syria. This illustrates how storytelling is also a social act (Jackson 2002, 112)
that negotiates identication and dis-identication with groups. In biographical terms,
Tumas concept of turning a page can be attributed to the particular pattern of success
stories, a structure that places relevance on contextualizing refuge, rst as interrupting
one form of success and, second as the starting point for new success.

4. Change as a form of biographical decisions

The overwhelming feeling that there is no possibility of a future for Christians in Syria may
have implications for how Syrian Christian refugees formulate identity and belonging once
they are living in the diaspora. This is reected in the nal case study, which reects a
fourth type of biographical construction of life changes, which at rst glance seems to
reject the idea that refuge and war in the case of Syria challenges identity and provokes
disruption. Philipp, a Syrian in his 20s from Qamishli, came to Austria after deserting
during his two-year period of military service in the Syrian army. His general view of
change through migration or refuge is very pragmatic, believing that it is easy for
people to adapt after migration. The fact that, after barely a year in Austria, Philipp is relatively uent in German appears to conrm this claim.
In his narration of his refuge, according to Schtze (1984, 92), he is setting up his life
story as a series of actions that are part of a biographical plot that is destined either to fail
or to succeed. His descriptions of desertion from the Syrian army during a Christmas visit
to Qamishli, and eeing to Austria with the help of a smuggler, follow this pattern of subsequent actions within the plan of refuge, as if it were a relatively smooth occurrence. From
this perspective, it is difcult to identify how these events impacted on the narrator. This is
exacerbated by the fact that in the interview, Philipp presents his life in Qamishli as very

14

A. SCHMOLLER

harmonious, and looks back on it without any expression of strong feelings. An unspoiled
life and inter-religious friendships in his childhood are covered very broadly in this autobiographical account.
Our neighbours were mostly Muslims, except for one family, all were Muslims. And we really
had a good relation with them. [pause] You have an idea about Syrian lifestyle, how people
stick together? Qamishli has a simple lifestyle, my city, is not like Damascus. [] Everybody
knows each other and has good relation, no matter if Muslims or Christians, that was not
important, really. Yes, as I said, I live in this quarter and I have many Muslim friends and
I have one, he [pause] he was not my brother. [pause] We have a tradition, I dont know
if it does exist in Austria, if a mother has a child and she cant breastfeed it, another
mother does breastfeed it. So this friend is truly like a brother to me, he is my brother, his
name is Muhammed. He is Muslim but we never had problems with it. [] Until now we
are always in contact.

This narration resembles Saras account and refers to the locally formed identities in Syria
that dene how people classify others. This example shows peoples ability to live and
think differently from the sectarian model of a social life based predominantly on religious
afliation. Ties between Christians and Muslims are presented as an integral part of personal biography, and Philipps identication with these ties is expressed through his symbolic brotherhood with a Muslim. At the same time, this self-positioning is formulated
against the background of the sectarian nature of the wars in Syria and Iraq. Within
this framework, it has to be made explicit that living together with Muslims was not a
problem.
At the very end of the interview, however, it becomes evident that something really had
changed for Philipp. He intertextually relates this episode about the Muslim neighbourhood in Qamishli:
People have to open their eyes, really, its time now to open their eyes, they have to see the
reality of [pause], I will say, the Islam, okay. Im not so racist, but because of this concept and
these principles in Islam we get the war. People get killed in the name of religion. We [Christians and Muslims] lived together peacefully, as I said you, really, but now I cant, I, really, I
cant, because. Did you see what happened in Mosul, ISIS? I am Christian and my neighbour
is Muslim. When ISIS get the control on the city, in that moment that changed to [] I dont
know, he [the Muslim] killed his Christian neighbour or he just forced him to leave. I dont
know how people can change so fast.

In this case study, the central change effected through the experience of war relates to a
loss of trust in ChristianMuslim coexistence, and therefore to the discourse of sectarianization. Three places, Qamishli, Mosul and Vienna, are superimposed in this interview
passage. The reference to Mosul serves as an example to legitimize this loss of trust.
Mosuls Christians belonged to the oldest Christian communities in the world, and
their expulsion by IS in June and July 2014 has been reported widely in Western media.
On 18 July, the Christians in the city were warned via loudspeakers to leave the city or
to die by the sword. A week earlier, they had been told to convert to Islam or pay the
jizya, a per capita tax traditionally levied in Islam on Christians and Jews, based on
their protected status as dhimmis, which was given to the so-called People of the Book
(Fattal 1995, 264291). Their houses were marked with N for nasr, the term used in
the Quran to refer to Christians, and were declared the property of IS. Ofcial Iraqi
sources estimate that 120,000 Christians were expelled from Mosul and the surrounding

ISLAM AND CHRISTIANMUSLIM RELATIONS

15

Nineveh plain in 2014 (see Mamoun 2015). There have been isolated reports of killings of
Christians in connection with the expulsion by IS, but so far, no reliable source has been
identied to provide estimates and report whether Iraqi civilians in Mosul participated in
the actions against Christians, as is suggested by Philipp and other interviewees. What has
been conrmed through videos, however, is the continued destruction of churches and
Christian heritage in the region of Mosul since 2014.
Philipp uses Mosul as a symbol of discrimination against Christians by Muslims
because persecutions took place there, due rst to their religious afliation as Christians,
and second, in the name of Islam. He blends Mosul with his personal experience of a
MuslimChristian neighbourhood in Qamishli and calls this autobiographical past into
question as the model of living for his present life in Vienna. Belonging and boundaries
are no longer played out through local distinctions, but through a new denition of
boundaries. The interweaving of places reects a form of translocational positioning
where Christian identity is relocated as Western identity in opposition to an Islamic identity, which presents a threat to the West. As Anthias (2011, 213) writes, we take up positionings in relation to our locations depending on context and meaning as well as
interest, and in terms of values, goals and projects. Coexistence with Muslims is a sensitive issue in Western societies, and is largely dominated by a securitization approach by
policy-makers (see, e.g., Cesari 2013). The narrators message of opening eyes basically
relies on a theme that may be noted in many interviews, namely the concept of the misleading silence or inconspicuousness of Muslims, which is understood in the West as
social and cultural integration, but will at some point turn into militant Islamism. In
this example, othering results from the superimposing of Qamishli, Mosul and
Vienna. Philipp translocationally positions the Muslim other when he says: I dont
know how people can change so fast.
A vast contrast can be determined in this fourth case study: an undramatic autobiographical account of the experience of war and refuge as a set of successive actions on the one
hand, but with a strong echo of sectarianization of views and values on the other. This contrast dissolves if we look at both phenomena through the lens of the interviewees ambition
to integrate as a central focus of his biographical account. Considering that integration is
central to the narrator in this situational context, it is less essential to use the narration of
refuge for self-positioning. Refugee identity focuses peoples intermediary status. However,
Philipp signals that he has accomplished his adaptation to his new life (e.g., by his German
language skills). Here, the experience of sectarianized conict is reconstructed for a different purpose of identication. Expressing views of Islam as a danger to Europe is one way of
alignment to a certain concept of integration in Europe as it serves to disassociate Syrian
Christians from Muslim refugees from the Middle East, who are often suspected of integrating less into Western society. Furthermore, it generates a situation in which Syrian
Christians and Europeans, who are culturally identied as Christians, are assembled in
one eld. The concept of Europe as the Christian Occident is, of course, highly contested
in Western society, which leads to problematic interpretations and abuses of these narratives in a political context.
At the same time, however, we should acknowledge that this narrative is long established in the Middle Eastern Christian diaspora. This also holds true for the Syriac Orthodox diaspora in Vienna that the interviewees joined (see Armbruster 2013). It is thus not a
specic result of a particular war experience but is surfacing in a context in which Middle

16

A. SCHMOLLER

Eastern Christians express feelings of marginalization and minoritization in the host

society. According to Sparre and Galal (2015), narratives of Islam as a threat to Europe
are replacements of their post-migration experience and can be seen as a mode of resistance against a specic form of domestication in the secular context of the host country.
From that perspective, the issue of how Middle Eastern Christians dene their relationship
to Islam and Muslim co-citizens in Europe in fact reects not only their past and present
homeland experiences but also the challenges they face in pluralistic and secular host
societies.

Concluding remarks
In face of the refugee crisis that reached Europe in summer 2015, it has become evident,
and not only to experts, that for Syrians, it is not religion that is a decisive factor when it
comes to refuge, but rather lack of security and any prospect of change. This should not
prevent us from acknowledging that religion can matter when it comes to refugee experiences and identity in a migration and resettlement context, not in the sense of relevance to
politicians in the host societies, but rather for the refugees themselves. This article has
explored how Syrian Christians deal with refuge, and has shown that religion appears
as a central marker in all the case studies, be it as the identied resource of resilience
and/or as a category for characterizing the conict (sectarianism). Interpreting events as
a religious war serves to describe the nality of loss and reveals the impact of war experience on personal beliefs (such as inter-religious coexistence with Muslims). Furthermore,
understanding the act of seeking refuge in Austria through the lens of religious beliefs is
associated with secular issues such as autobiographical prospects, challenges and opportunities for success.
The biographical approach shows that the life experience of war and refuge can be
characterized by four diverse patterns of positioning. The interviewees reect on their
existence as war refugees and integrate this experience into their life stories. An individual
story which might be characterized, as in the second case, by the experience of disruption
to life-balance through refuge, or, as in the third case, by the experience of the loss or interruption of a career is counterbalanced by interlinking it with a general story of the Syrian
war. In case one, refuge as life experience is ascribed to a process taking place in a persons
inner world. By negotiating religious identity within the sphere of spirituality, beliefs and
values, any reference to sectarianism is absent. Narratives of sectarianism that focus either
on the threat to Christians presented by militant Islamists, or on the conict between
Sunnis and Shiites, as a major cause of the turmoil in Syria (as in cases three and four)
function on a biographical level of storytelling as strategies of coping. They locate the individual as part of a well-dened group (Christians) that is a victim in this conict. The topic
of sectarianization in Syria and the Middle East provides the essential credentials for considering refuge in the social context of storytelling as an irreversible and denite act and
thus the closure of a life episode. To frame a personal decision to ee within the greater,
century-old story of Christian minorities, leaving a homeland dominated by Islam, reafrms the collective bonds that exist among settled and newly arriving Middle Eastern
Christians in the diaspora.
This article has demonstrated furthermore that Syrian Christian refugees combine narratives of sectarianization for the purpose of positioning in the post-ight context of the

ISLAM AND CHRISTIANMUSLIM RELATIONS

17

host society and diaspora church community. The effects of this extend to self-positioning
and the negotiation of group boundaries in the host society, with the result that identication with the European host society is constructed through dis-identication with the
Muslim other in a dichotomy that positions Islam as a future threat to the West. This corresponds well with racist local and European views and narratives about incompatibility
between the religion and culture of refugees and migrants and the host countries.
Describing and analysing these post-refuge narrations of Syrian Christians using the
concept of translocational positionality helps to conceptualize lives as being located and
identities as being relational to our locations. Although the experience of refuge has
been recaptured in very diverse ways from an autobiographical perspective in these case
studies (such as an inner process, disruption, interruption of institutionalized biography,
planned and successive actions), religion remained the key category, as compared to other
categories such as social class, national belonging, local identity or age, that the interviewees
used to locate themselves at the various stages of their life: pre-war Syria, refuge, post-refuge
situation in the West. The interaction of locations and dislocations with respect to these categories is given form and structure by the religious factor. All the case studies depict religious
belonging that is based on an awareness of the relevance of religion in secular issues, and in
personal, social and political life. In this sense, the real question the interviewees are asking
themselves is what they are capable of doing on the basis of religion for good or for bad
against the backdrop of sectarianized war and the prospects of a new, as yet undened life.

Notes
1. One might argue that the patriarch will tend not to set the estimations of Christian emigrants
too high because he is one of the remaining representatives in Syria who retains his political
leadership, which is symbolically dependent on the number of the group he represents.
2. Because I do not have language skills in Arabic and Aramaic, the interviews were conducted
in English and in one case partly in German. The decision not to use a translator was based
on the methodological approach of having open autobiographical interviews where most of
my questions were not prepared but generated in the process. Understanding the interviewee
was thus essential to me. The interviewees were aged between 19 and 35 years. Refugees older
than that were often open to be interviewed but did not have sufcient prociency in English,
French or German. Being fully aware that autobiographical interviews would benet from
being conducted in ones mother tongue, conducting the interviews in a Western language
is compatible with the chosen approach of translocational positionality.
3. All quotations from Schtze in this article have been translated into English by myself.

Acknowledgements
A rst draft of this paper was presented at the Annual Conference of the British Society for Middle
Eastern Studies (BRISMES) held at the London School of Economics and Political Science, 2326
June 2015. My thanks are due to Lise Paulsen Galal for important comments on a rst version of
this article, the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, to my interviewees and
numerous other anonymous people from the Syriac Orthodox Church in Vienna for helping me
with my eldwork.

Disclosure statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by the author.

18

A. SCHMOLLER

Funding
This work was accomplished within the funded project Narratives of Diaspora: Oriental Christians
from the Middle East in Austria, which was supported by the Oesterreichische Nationalbank,
Anniversary Fund [grant number 15.825].

ORCiD
Andreas Schmoller

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6830-2246

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