Christians flee genocide as fear sweeps Iraq

[rainbow4321]

http://tinyurl.com/4ow5g

According to Church leaders, some 300,000 Christians - roughly a quarter of the population - have fled their homes since the US-led invasion.

It is too early to speak of a humanitarian crisis, with many from the community, one of Iraq's more affluent, able to leave the country in civilised fashion or find shelter in the Kurdish-controlled north. But in the minds of Church leaders there is little doubt as to the nature of the exodus.


They say a new breed of al-Qa'eda-inspired terrorists, rather than the former Ba'athists, are behind the attacks. Iraqi police are powerless to protect the community, say families, and US forces rarely intervene, not wanting to be seen to be siding with Christians and thereby exposing the troops to more violence.


Angkawr, a town of 35,000 people, is defended by guards and concrete barriers. Residents, along with the refugees, want to leave the country as fast as possible, with Syria, Jordan, Europe and America the popular destinations. Saed Alexis, a local business leader, said: "There is not a person who wouldn't leave Iraq if they could. In five years there will be no one left."

[clydefrand]

1. Well, when all the Christians flee, then Bush would have

the oil fields to himself after killing all of this Muslims.

[burrowowl]

4. Bu$h born-again

does not consider Iraki Christians as Christian since they are of the catholic persuasion. Christian to him means a rightwing fundie who goes by the old Testament and the wrong passages to boot, like Isaiah is not mentioned much.
May Bu$h get his just desserts.

[leftchick]

7. exactly!

As a Catholic is galls me that many Catholics in the US don't recognize the disdain the fundies and bush* have for them. Sickening.

[Cheswick2.0]

8. they are not all catholic

[bluestateguy]

2. I wonder how they'll be treated by the new Shiite government

Some people were better off under Saddam Hussein.

[Erika]

3. Yes they were

Saddam was secular. Christians were safe.

Bush only cares about controlling their industry and keeping the globalists profitable.

[BadGimp]

22. imagine..

Imagine trying to explain that to some of these flag waving BUsh lovin absolutists.

Their head start spinning. My favorite line is "SO you think Ie=raq woudl be better off with Saddam back in power?". To which I reply, well actually yes Iraq would be better off. And the loss of life due to our invasion would be, well zero.

My heart really goes out to the troops past, present and future involved in Iraq. There will come a day soon where they will come face to face with the fact that they fought a war that had the effect of installing a Fundamentalist Islamic Theocratic government in a major oil producing mid east nation where none existed prior to our illegal and imoral invasion. That will be a most bitter pill to swallow. Fortunately for them they will have the US compliant media to give them something to wash it down with, over and over and over..

I guess this is what Liberation looks like.

FGB

[FlemingsGhost]

5. Why bother... The Rapture is coming anyway, right?

First Come. First Served.

[Cheswick2.0]

9. that was a rotten thing to say

Obviously you know nothing about Christianity. These people are assyrian and syrian orthodox and Presbyterians. None of them believe in the rapture.

[CatholicEug]

13. IF ignorance were General Mills

some of the people on this board would be Corn Flakes. Take no heed of them, Cheswick.

[Clark2008]

19. The Chaldeans reunited with the Roman Catholic Church in the 1500s

So, yes, while some Iraqi Christians are Assyerian, many others are Chaldean (Roman Catholic). And Hussein, while a secular ruler, did destroy Assyerian churches en masse.

[JoFerret]

26. It doesn't matter what THEY believe

...but what Bushers believe

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. Please read the posts above

Iraqi Christians are NOT fundamentalists. They do NOT believe in the Rapture.

[VegasWolf]

23. Don't worry, some of us got it. n/t

[The Zanti Regent]

6. Wait, Where's Franky Graham?

I thought that Franky was in Iraq with his Samaritan's Purse gig. I guess he fled to Switzerland to count all the money he's stolen from the US Taxpayer...

[Cheswick2.0]

10. Nothing like the word Christian to bring out the worst in some DUers

I am amazed sometimes that people here claim to be liberals.

[Red State Rebel]

12. Nothing like kneejerk hatred from your own.

These people are innocent victims of a horrible situation. Because they are Christians it's ok to hate them? I don't recall any Iraqi Christians voting here in 11/04. Direct your frustration and disgust where it belongs - not scattershot against anyone that believes in Christianity.

Liberal Christian and Proud!

[Redstone]

14. More blood on Bush's hands...

just like the Marsh Arabs' blood on his daddy's hands in 1991.

Redstone

PS: I got the impression that FlemingGhost's message was meant to be sarcastic--that he was saying the the Bush-allied fundamentalist types didn't care about the Iraqi Christians because they (Bush and them) think the Rapture is coming soon so nothing matters.

Did I misread the message?

[FlaGranny]

15. I don't think you read it wrong -

I read it the same way. Bush and his special brand of fundamentalists don't care.

[JoFerret]

18. O tripe and bananas

Memo: Don't get knickers in twist over (misread) harmless sarcasm about Bushers and their religious perversions.

The dreadful ironies of the Bush War on Iraq just pile up. Didn't one of the first shock and awe bombs fired at Baghdad in March 2003 and designed to kill Saddam land on a Christian enclave?

The war crimes pile up.

[VegasWolf]

25. Bush was assuming that god would guide that bomb. n/t

[noamnety]

16. too early to speak of a humanitarian crisis?

Isn't the country as a whole already a humanitarian crisis? Surely it doesn't become a crisis only after the Christians are attacked.

I read lines like this: "The terrorists had shot at any car in the neighbourhood, knowing they would kill Christians." and the contrast between what's happening there and what we're doing in Fallujah is negligible.

Not that it shouldn't be reported, but the reporter seems to have glossed over the larger context.

[Clark2008]

20. Well, to look at my local paper, you'd think that all the

people killed and/or burdeoned by the tsunami were white, blonde-headed, blue-eyed Swedes. The American and European tourists have gotten many more front-page photos than the average citizens of the area.

It's a no-so-subtle racism that invades our media.

[msongs]

17. christ-ian Bush starts the illegal immoral war now christ-ians will

pay the price for the new crusade AND BLAME IT ON SOMEONE ELSE.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[goforit]

21. These Christians aren't gonna stay and fight for their "Bushgod"

My heavens.....what is Bush gonna do???

[VegasWolf]

24. Bush will reward them just the same as he rewards the fundies here.n/t

[rainbow4321]

27. They're fleeing to Syria, shrub hasn't gotten there (yet)...

http://counterpunch.org/leupp08092004.html



The recent spate of attacks on Christian churches in Iraq is symptomatic of the general insecurity that Christians (about three percent of the population, around 800,000 people) face in the occupied country. The interim constitution states that "Islam is the official religion of the State and is to be considered a source of legislation" and while recognizing religious freedom "respects the Islamic identity of the majority of the Iraqi people." For some, Islamic identity means the imposition of Muslim morality. In Sadr City, the Mahdi militia is shutting down Christian-owned liquor shops. Some shop owners have been killed, some Christian women attacked for appearing in public inappropriately attired. Others have been attacked because of a widespread belief that Christians are abetting the occupation.

The irony here, of course, is that Saddam's Iraq was a secular state, ruled by the Baath Party. The Iraqi regime, although suspicious of and sometimes brutal towards the Shiite majority, supported Shiite and Sunni mosques, Assyrian and Chaldean Christian churches, and even the sparsely attended Baghdad synagogue, while forbidding proselytization in general. Saddam appointed Tariq Aziz, a Christian, to top posts; in response, enraged Islamists tried to assassinate Aziz in 1980. Osama bin Laden hated Saddam's Iraq for its specifically non-Islamic character. Now with the fall of the Baath regime, Islamic fundamentalists (of various types) have been unleashed to redefine the role of religion in the country. The U.S. occupation officially dissolved the huge Baath Party, purged Baathists from their posts (including those in medicine and education) and officially approved the wording of the constitution, while creating the power vacuum in which numerous Islamic militias now thrive.

Here's a second irony. According to the New York Times (August 5) some 4,000 Iraqi Christian families have taken refuge in Syria. Others go to Jordan or Lebanon, but Syria is the favored destination. Ruled by a branch of the Baath Party at odds since the 1960s with its Iraqi counterpart, Syria remains a secular republic. Ten percent of the population (about 1.8 million) is Christian, and Iraqi Christians reportedly feel little discrimination in the country. There is no rigid dress code such as one finds in Saudi Arabia and some other Arab nations; the liquor stores are open.

"We are safe here, and so we feel free," says Abdulkhalek Sharif Nuamansaid, who has brought his family to Damascus from Baghdad. "The Syrians are brothers to us. There is no discrimination here. That is the truth, and not a compliment." According to a 2002 report by International Christian Concern, a group that monitors persecution of Christians globally, "No government acts of religious persecution have been witnessed" recently, and "There is no evidence that prisoners are being held for their Christian beliefs at this time."

[gorky]

28. "Christians flee genocide as fear sweeps Iraq"

The reason why this is happening is because some of the iraqi christians were openly welcoming of the US invasion. For example yesterday there was a program on NPR ( I think Dick Gordon's ) where he interviewed the curator of the Baghdad museum , who from his name ( George something ) was obviously a christian. He was without doubt a very learned and distinguished gentleman. However one of the callers asked him what he thought about the invasion. He basically said all iraqis were very happy that the US invaded and removed Saddam , maybe the US could have planned a little better and not disbanded the Army, but now everything is getting better and soon after the elections iraq will be alright.He did not even care to acknowledge the atrocities that are being committed there.
Also a lot of the interpreters employed by the US military are iraqi christians. In quite a few of the statements given by the Abu Ghraib detainees , there is mention of iraqi christian women being present as interpreters while they were being stripped and interrogated. These news do get to the other iraqis fairly quickly. These kind of betrayal by christian minorities have happened in many non-christian countries that were colonised by the west, Vietnam and Lebanon being two other recent examples. I am not justifying what is happening, but the point is that Arab moslems don't take kindly to treason and a lot of innocents suffer.

[SemperEadem]

29. So, my question becomes:

Why aren't Falwell and Robertson and the rest of their ilk over there strapped with firearms and body armour protecting them?

[JoFerret]

30. Why would they need armor?

...their "god" only smites the unrighteous.