Many people I respect, and many people I don't, are excited about the new Iraqi Constitution and the relative peace accompanying the referendum. I just hope that in all the excitement the legitimate concerns of religious minorities in Iraq are not ignored. From Zenit, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:
BAGHDAD, Iraq, OCT. 18, 2005 (Zenit.org).- In the wake of Saturday's referendum on Iraq's draft constitution, Church leaders remain fearful that the country is one step closer to becoming an Islamic state intolerant of non-Muslims.Early results indicate that a majority of voters supported the draft constitution.
Last month, Chaldean Patriarch Emmanuel III Delly of Baghdad met the president and prime minister of Iraq to spell out the bishops' opposition to key sections of the draft constitution, which they say "opens the door widely" to the possibility of new laws that are unjust toward non-Muslims.
In an interview Monday with the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need, Chaldean Auxiliary Bishop Andraos Abouna said Iraq's leaders had ignored their concerns and that as a result the bishops were likely to call on Benedict XVI to intervene on their behalf.
"The bishops will probably have a meeting with the Pope and will ask him to call for democracy in Iraq," said Bishop Abouna.
He said a papal intervention would step up the pressure after the Holy Father met Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari in August and requested that the draft constitution respect religious rights.
"We are looking for freedom -- the government must listen," said Bishop Abouna, 62. "Otherwise the country will be like a dictatorship."
"The bishops will probably have a meeting with the Pope and will ask him to call for democracy in Iraq"
-- from the article above
But they have "democracy" already. What the bishops mean is they want a Western-style "democracy" that is defined by more than mere head-counting. What they would like are guarantees that minorities will be treated as equals, and how can any Muslim state conceivably treat, either in law or custom, its non-Muslims as equals? It can't. Egypt doesn't, and hasn't ever treated the Copts as equals (though the Shari'a is not applied, it is a "model" and the court decisions show just how deeply the Muslim mistreatment of Copts is embedded in the legal system, and the mentality of Egyptian Muslims). In Syria the Christians are protected only accident -- the military Alawite that runs Syria with the ruthlessness of the minority it is, terrified of the "real" Muslims and what they would do to the Alawites if they ever came to power, look to the Christians as trustworthy, unthreatening, and essentially in the same boat as the Alawites, threatened by the same sharks. In Lebanon, the Christians who were a few decades ago 60% of the population are now about 35%, as the Muslims outbreed them, and as Christians steadily leave for Canada (where they are horrified to discover that the "francophone"-first policy of the Parti Quebecois has allowed in all sorts of Muslim maghrebins who may or may not speak French, but whose mental makeup otherwise is distinctly unhealthy for Maronites and other non-Muslim living things.
The "democracy" the Christian bishops are asking for is the real thing -- democracy with some kind of Bill of Rights, something like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Curiously, it is among the more advanced Sunnis that such secularism is more likely to be found, the same Sunnis who, for other reasons, need to be opposed.
The Pope can do very little with the likes of the DAWA and SCIRI parties. Will Al-Jaafari listen to Pope Benedict? Will Mubarak or the Muslim Brotherhood now besiegiing that play put on in a Coptic church listen to Pope Benedict? Will Hezbollah listen to Pope Benedict?
No, it is only Donald Rumsfeld -- and in the case of Lebanon, or even of Syria, the Israel Defense Forces -- that can help here. The Christians in Iraq have already been fleeing to Syria, where the Alawites (regarded as incomplete or false Muslims by the "real" Muslims -- the kind put down in Hama 20 years ago, and in early September there was a mini-suppression of them again in the same Hama, unreported in the American and Western press)need the Christians, and the Christians need, alas, the bullying Alawites, both frightened of the Muslims who make up the majority of those in Syria (I can't seriously use the phrase the "Syrian people").
Military and economic threats, pressure, and acts by the Americans and the E.U., and the continuing power of Israel to intervene, as a last resort, to rescue Christians (in Lebanon or, perhaps, even in Syria) by threatening to destroy enemy military installations, are the only hope.
Friends, the biggest hurricane they've ever seen in the Atlantic Ocean is headed for St. Pete, Florida... me and Mrs. Kj and the two little Kj girls will be hauling ass soon. Pretty-much all of peninsular Florida is in Wilma's path, so we've no choice but to head north toward Valdosta, GA... or Macon... or Atlanta... or Chattanooga... or Nashville... or Clarksburg...etc.
Wilma's wind speed is 175 MPH... when they made today's Tampa Tribune at 3:00 A.M. it was only 115. Without the drag effect of passing over Cuba or Yucatan, it will only get worse, and forecasts show it missing both.
So if I'm out of touch, don't worry; I'll be high and dry... or at least dry.
Your friend,
KJ
PS...King, Gaiour, Nariz, somebody--take over gadfly duties while I'm gone. Please remember (especially you King) no trying to equivocate Christianity with Islam, and NO BASHING ISRAEL.
PSS... Remind me to tell you what I read about David Horowitz.
KJ
Inspite of your usual tone & our obvious disagreements on several counts, I wish you & your family all the best & safe travels in the coming days.
Best regards
Albion
Poor kj's taken quite a beating lately. Could this be a ruse for him to sneak away to the spa for a week and recoup?
My theory on the Iraq project is this: Give the animals a chance to civilize themselves and see what happens. If this Moslem country can truly adopt and practice democracy, then that's great and freedom will spread throughout benighted dar al Islam.
If it doesn't, then we've done our due dilligence and will be positioned to respond with utmost force thereafter.
That's as kind as I can be to George W and his crew.
But, alas, I'm in Mr. Fitgerald's corner in my belief that they cannot be civilized, and must be contained like a spreading cancer before metastasis occurs.
We'll see within the next few years, hopefully. It would be good to have clarity among all infidels about what makes up a Moslem.
I pray that George W doesn't botch the clarity like he's botching the SCOTUS right now.
This is my cross respect Iraq, my catholic brothers are suffering a lot, and what I can do, only praying. It´s very sad
Kj, I hope you would be well and your family, God bless you.
KJ
Hope you and the family keep safe.
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Two years, hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives later, we have enshrined a sharia guided constitution, and legitimised it. Just terriffic.
Now they (the US admin) seems to be realising that the whole venture was doomed from the start. We at JW/DW could have told them so three years ago, and I did so on LGF well before the start of the war.
Now I realise that no one gives a hoot what I write. However, if poor-old-me could see the holes in the Iraq/Afghanistan policy, one would have thought that the advisors whose job it is to be expert on such matters, would have seen it as well.
Well lets us hope and pray for the sake of Syrian Christians and the many Iraqi Christians who fled the jihad against them in Iraq, that the US does not invade Syria and impose a "democracy" there. If that happens, the last sanctuary for Christians in the Arab world will vanish.
KJ: "Please remember (especially you King) no trying to equivocate Christianity with Islam, and NO BASHING ISRAEL."
King: Stay safe and take care of yourself and family. I'll handle myself as I see fit in here, that is, with intellectual honesty and pointing out gross "pan-religious" hypocrisy.
Kingie, there you go again using the term "intellectual honesty". You shall never be accused of either.
KingIntolerance - you'll handle yourself with intellectual honesty?
Wow. I look forward to seeing that.
KJ best of luck mate. Head down and arse in the air is the way most people live through a shitstorm, in my experience.
Prophet Geoff
BBUH
Geoff: "Kingtolerance - you'll handle yourself with intellectual honesty?"
King: Yep! Sorry my perspectives don't jive with yours.
Geoff: "Kingtolerance - you'll handle yourself with intellectual honesty? I look forward to seeing that."
King: "Yep! Sorry my perspectives don't jive with yours."
You have perspectives? Really? But how can you tell with your head buried in the sand like that? (And, is it evil sand polluted by the Israelis?)
But I agree that your perspective(s) don't jive.
For I am
Prophet Geoff
BBUH
Later Muller.