Only America can save Iraq's last Christians
By Nina Shea
Published July 29, 2014
FoxNews.com
The Arabic “nun” symbol, or N,
which stands for Nazarene and refers to Christians, ominously began appearing,
stamped in red, on Christian homes in Mosul, Iraq, two weeks ago.
By mid-July, it was accompanied
by another statement, painted in black, “Property of the Islamic State.” And
with that, the Christians found their worst fears confirmed.
On July 19, ISIS, the Sunni
Muslim insurgent group declaring itself the Islamic State, carried out unabated
and unabashed religious cleansing against Christians and the non-Sunni Muslim
communities. Today, in this place of Nineveh of the Bible, the ancient heart of
Iraqi Christianity, there’s not a single Christian left. All have been stripped
of their possessions and deported.
In recent years, Iraq’s
Christians have experienced relentless persecution by various extremist groups,
and, along with a civil conflict in which the Christians remain neutral, it has
taken a hard toll on their numbers. In 2003, Iraq’s Christians, at 1.4 million,
were among the region’s most robust Christian communities. Since then, more
than a million of them have fled. Their banishment from Mosul is irreversible.
Whether these newly displaced
people, among the last Christians to speak Aramaic, Jesus’ own language, will
be able to remain in the region at all is likely to depend on America’s
response.
Remarkably, after their mass
deportation, the Iraqi government did nothing to help Mosul’s Catholics,
Orthodox and Protestants, even while the Iraqi Army failed to protect them,
allowing ISIS to handily capture Iraq’s second largest city on June 10.
Baghdad, however, did manage to send planes and bus convoys to evacuate the
Shiites among the exiled minorities. Iraq’s government facilitated the
resettlement of Mosul’s Turkmen and Shabak Shiite communities in Najaf and
elsewhere in the south, reported Archdeacon Emanuel Youkhana with the Christian
Aid Program. (ISIS did not target Turkmen and Shabak Sunnis.)
Left to fend for themselves were
the Christians and a few remaining Yezidis (a dozen Yezidis recently in their
home province of Sinjar had their eyes gouged out and were then killed by ISIS
for refusing to convert to Islam).
ISIS has set out to erase every
Christian trace.
Following these events, Chaldean
Catholic Patriarch Sako registered the “shock and pain” of all Iraq’s church
leaders, emphasizing their sense of raw “injustice.”
“How much the Christians have
shared here in our East specifically from the beginnings of Islam. They shared
every sweet and bitter circumstance of life … .Together they built a
civilization, cities and a heritage. It is truly unjust now to treat Christians
by rejecting them and throwing them away, considering them as nothing,” the
patriarch effectively eulogized.
The eradication of the
2,000-year-old Christian presence from Mosul is indeed shocking. The recent
release of several kidnapped Orthodox nuns and orphans had given some hope
that, influenced by local Sunnis, ISIS would eschew the barbarism that is its
stock and trade in Syria.
One Mosul Muslim, law professor
Mahmoud al Asali, did speak up for moderation, but was then murdered. A Baghdad
gathering of Muslims wearing “I am a Christian” signs in solidarity was
ignored. No such mercy was to be had.
Unless they converted to Islam or
paid protection money, the Christians were told, they would get “nothing but
the sword.” It was now clear, the 30,000 to 50,000 Christians who fled Mosul
over the last decade wouldn’t be able to return, and the several hundred still
remaining there this month needed to get out fast. (Iraqi Christian
parliamentarian Younadam Kannan said at least five Christian families too sick
to leave renounced their faith for Islam “to stay alive,” though one of their
daughters did flee.)
Before casting out the
Christians, Shiites and Yezidis, Caliph Ibrahim, as ISIS leader Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi now is called, made certain to take all the possessions of the
“unbelievers.”
Cars, cellphones, money, wedding
rings, even one man’s chicken sandwich, were all solemnly declared “property of
the Islamic State” and confiscated. A woman who gave over tens of thousands of
dollars was also stripped of bus fare to Erbil.
With temperatures in the area
reaching 120 degrees, the last of the exiles left on foot, carrying only the
small children and pushing the grandparents in wheelchairs. Those who glanced
back could see armed groups looting their homes and loading the booty onto
trucks.
ISIS has set out to erase every
Christian trace. All 30 churches were seized and their crosses stripped away.
Some have been permanently turned into mosques. One is the Mar (Saint) Ephraim
Syriac Orthodox Cathedral, newly outfitted with loudspeakers that now call
Muslims to prayer. The 4th century Mar Behnam, a Syriac Catholic monastery
outside Mosul, was captured and its monks expelled, leaving behind a library of
early Christian manuscripts and wall inscriptions by 13th-century Mongol
pilgrims.
Christian and Shiite gravesites,
deemed idolatrous by ISIS, are being deliberately blown up and destroyed,
including on July 24, the tomb of the 8th-century B.C. Old Testament Prophet
Jonah, and the Muslim shrine that enclosed it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHHIMY7Wgg8
Before fleeing, the Vatican
reports, the Orthodox Christian community did successfully spirit away the
relics of Thomas the Apostle who, it is said, introduced Christianity to
Nineveh.
The last of Mosul’s Christians,
those some 5,000 professors, doctors, lawyers, mechanics and their families
that left between June 10 and July 19, find themselves suddenly destitute and
homeless because of their faith. Some went to the nearest Nineveh Christian
villages, temporarily sheltering in schools and churches. These villages would
be vulnerable to ISIS attacks, too, but for their protection by the Kurds, who
are, themselves, Sunni Muslim. Water and electricity have been cut off for some
by ISIS, who told one Christian town official, “You don’t deserve to drink
water,” reported Archdeacon Youkhana. The residents are desperately digging
wells.
Many more have fled to Kurdistan,
where there are ancestral Christian villages and big cities.
On July 19, the Kurdish Regional
Government issued a statement welcoming the Christian exiles. It pledged the
KRG to continue its “efforts and abilities to help those displaced” and called
on the Kurdish people “to give all they can to aid the displaced Christian
families.” It notes the Iraqi government “did not assume its responsibilities
toward the displaced persons living in Kurdistan.”
ISIS control over Iraq’s
territory presents an enormous threat to the region.
The religious cleansing of
Mosul’s minorities is only part of the problem, but it is a grave crime against
humanity, as well as a humanitarian catastrophe, that should no longer go
overlooked in U.S. policy.
Nina Shea is director of Hudson
Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.
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