Christians still under fire in Iraq as jihadists identify them as unbelievers at war with Islam, and continue to impose Sharia upon the country. From the TimesOnline, with thanks to Twostellas:
IRAQIS gathered for Christmas behind Kalashnikovs yesterday. Midnight Mass was cancelled because of bombing fears and curfews, but the country’s rapidly dwindling Christian minority turned out in their thousands for early morning services.Protected under Saddam, Christians once numbered between 600,000 and 700,000 in Iraq, but church officials say that about half have now fled, especially from the south, where militias linked to Iraq’s ruling parties have waged a three-year campaign to Islamise the country at gunpoint.
The worst attacks were by insurgents in central and northern Iraq in August last year, when bomb attacks on four churches in Baghdad and one in Mosul killed a dozen Christians during Sunday services.
Priests have been threatened and killed, women abused in the street for not wearing veils and three months ago the entire lay leadership of Iraq’s main Anglican church were ambushed and killed.
Despite the fears of insurgent bombings and Islamist intolerance, congregations turned out in greater numbers yesterday than last year. “We are now back to the numbers of three years ago. People now want to go to church to keep challenging these people, we are defiant,” said Faadi Victor, a lay official at Our Lady of Salvation, a Catholic church that was hit by one of the August 2004 bombs.
More power to you, Faadi.
"Protected under Saddam, Christians once numbered between 600,000 and 700,000 in Iraq, but church officials say that about half have now fled, especially from the south, where militias linked to Iraq’s ruling parties have waged a three-year campaign to Islamise the country at gunpoint."
-- from the article above
A refuge for Christians might be established, for those who want it, withiin the confines of Kurdistan. For an independent, or even an autonomous Kurdistan, needs American and Infidel support more than any other group in the entire Middle East. Reports of atrocities against Christians come from everywhere in Iraq, including Kurdish-held territories, and those supporting that Kurdistan should not romanticize them. A deal: independent Kurdistan, and a free rein to appeal to local Kurds in Syria and Iran, in order to enlarge the bordres of the nascent state, and all sorts of help with getting oil out through Turkey (which, in turn, must be guaranteed that NO territorial demands will be made on Turkey, in contradistinction to Syria and Iran), but in turn, a sanctuary for Christians within that Kurdistan, to be protected, and to be watched carefully by big brothers in Washington who, at any point, could cut Kurdistan off at the knees.
And if the Kurds do not oblige, then another alternative would be the time-honored exchange of populations. In this case, Arab Muslims would be transferred -- for everyone's good - from the West Bank, and especially from islamized Bethlehem -- to any Sunni Arab part of Iraq (not a few "Palestinians" in the West Bank are the descendants of people who arrived from Iraq between, roughly, World War I and the late 1930s, just as many of the Gazan "Palestinians" are only one or two generations away from their parents or grandparents who came from Egypt seeking better opportunities in Mandatory, or pre-mandatory, "Palestine.") And their places could be taken by Christian Arabs, as long as those Christian Arabs, chastened by experience, do not continue to behave as islamochristians -- and religious rather than pseudo-ethnic ("Arabness'") ties derived from the false belief that using Arabic amounts to being an Arab. Like the Maronites, the Assyrians and Chaldeans have a keen sense that they were there before the Muslim Arabs arrived, a sense largely lacking from the islamochristian "Palestinians" who are descedants from those who converted to Christianity in the 19th and 20th centuries, and for whom, therefore, the ability to overcome ethnic solidarity (to the idea of Arabness, and hence to Islam which connects to it) comes less readily.
"Protected under Saddam, Christians once numbered between 600,000 and 700,000 in Iraq, but church officials say that about half have now fled, especially from the south, where militias linked to Iraq’s ruling parties have waged a three-year campaign to Islamise the country at gunpoint."
-- from the article above
A refuge for Christians might be established, for those who want it, withiin the confines of Kurdistan. For an independent, or even an autonomous Kurdistan, needs American and Infidel support more than any other group in the entire Middle East. Reports of atrocities against Christians come from everywhere in Iraq, including Kurdish-held territories, and those supporting that Kurdistan should not romanticize them. A deal: independent Kurdistan, and a free rein to appeal to local Kurds in Syria and Iran, in order to enlarge the bordres of the nascent state, and all sorts of help with getting oil out through Turkey (which, in turn, must be guaranteed that NO territorial demands will be made on Turkey, in contradistinction to Syria and Iran), but in turn, a sanctuary for Christians within that Kurdistan, to be protected, and to be watched carefully by big brothers in Washington who, at any point, could cut Kurdistan off at the knees.
And if the Kurds do not oblige, then another alternative would be the time-honored exchange of populations. In this case, Arab Muslims would be transferred -- for everyone's good - from the West Bank, and especially from islamized Bethlehem -- to any Sunni Arab part of Iraq (not a few "Palestinians" in the West Bank are the descendants of people who arrived from Iraq between, roughly, World War I and the late 1930s, just as many of the Gazan "Palestinians" are only one or two generations away from their parents or grandparents who came from Egypt seeking better opportunities in Mandatory, or pre-mandatory, "Palestine.") And their places could be taken by Christian Arabs, as long as those Christian Arabs, chastened by experience, do not continue to behave as islamochristians -- and religious rather than pseudo-ethnic ("Arabness'") ties derived from the false belief that using Arabic amounts to being an Arab. Like the Maronites, the Assyrians and Chaldeans have a keen sense that they were there before the Muslim Arabs arrived, a sense largely lacking from the islamochristian "Palestinians" who are descedants from those who converted to Christianity in the 19th and 20th centuries, and for whom, therefore, the ability to overcome ethnic solidarity (to the idea of Arabness, and hence to Islam which connects to it) comes less readily.
In the twenty first century isn't it sad that fools still have to create mayhem in the name of some god or other.
" women abused in the streets for not wearing veils"
You would think that some moslems somewhere would have more pride anyway, than to want to accede to 7th. century arab culture.
All religion is debatable in its use to society but the vicious cult that is islam has to be fought in every way possible.
More power to the poor beleaguered Christians any where in the moslem world because at least (for the most part) Christianity preaches love instead of hate.
It's very difficult, however, to break through the apathy that inflicts vast numbers of Australians who are also so sunk in P.C. that they wouldn't recognize the wolf at the door if it bit them.
It is not that Saddam was good by protecting Christians. He was merely interested in holding on to power, and as long as Christians didn't interfere with him, he let them alone.
But when Saddam was removed, Iraquis unavoidably behaved like people who had never tasted freedom. All they had known was tyranny, so in the new unfamiliar situation they looked for the comfort of the tyranny of Islam. Their pathetic 'democratic' system could only agree on the fact that they wanted an 'Islamic republic'.
This reminds me of the BC hart cartoon where the guy who had been languishing chained in his medieval jail, one day escapes, enters the empty kitchen of the castle and, bypassing the tables filled with appetizing food, heads straight for the garbage can licking his lips.
The Province of Ninewa (Ninevah) in northern Iraq, next to Kurdistan is the historic Christian nation of Assyria. Within Ninewa Province, the districts of Sumel, Sinjar, Telefar, Rizgary (Zakho), Tilkaif, Shikhan, and Hamdaniya are majority Christian. This area should be given full autonomy immediately, if not outright independence.
Of course, the US Occupation authorities, the Neo-Cons in the Bush Administration and their newly created Islamic theocracy (oh excuse me... "new democracy") want no Christian power base in the region. The US will not even allow the Assyrians to come to the US, falsely labeling them as Saddamists. So many of them have fled to Syria, which is becoming the last refuge for Christians in the region. And it is Syria that is the Neo-Cons next target for Democratic Islamization. God help us all.
I agree with Hugh's proposal for a West Bank population exchange. Almost all the Christians there can trace their ancestry back generations while many Muslims arrived within the last two hundred years. My proposal would be that all of the West Bank be open as a refuge to all Arabic, Aramaic, and Syriac Christians and Jews while Muslims would have to prove three generations of residence in order to stay.
This may sound harsh but it is far less than the forced population exchanges that the allies imposed on large parts of Europe at the end of WWII. If Muslims complain about their expulsion from the West Bank, then make a deal with them... they can stay if the descendants of Greeks expelled from Smyrna, Constantinople and Northern Cyprus are allowed to return to their former homes.
A population transfer in such places as Bethlehem, where Muslims are out and the Assyrians and Chaldeans in, was also meant to establish a sliding scale. Those Arab Christians who have so completely internalized dhimmitude as to become what we now know as "islamochristians," and who exhibit as malevolent an attitude toward the Infidel Jews as do garden-variety Muslims, and have eagerly lent their services to the Lesser Jihad (some of the best known are Hilarion Cappucci, Naim Ateek, Hanan Ashrawi, but of course Michel Sabbag also now comes swimmingly to mind), should perhaps also be encouraged to leave to be replaced by Christians, Arabic-speaking as are the Chaldeans and Assyrians and the Maronites and the Copts, but aware that their existence and identity long precede the imposition of "arabness" that came with islamization and the linguistic and at times cultural imperialism the effects of which were felt in all the lands that Arab Muslims conquered, even by those who remained non-Muslims, or those who were not Arabs and refused to dissolve or jettison their non-Arab identity (exactly how many of the so-called "Arabs" in Algeria and Morocco are really Berbers, and how many of the so-called "Arabs" in Kirkuk and Mosul were Kurds arabized within recent memory, is a fascinating question for some).
But a preserve for Christians, either in the West Bank, or in Israel proper (where Muslim Arabs are a permanent security threat both to israel and to Christian interests in the Holy Land), is necessary. And the West, when it abandoned the Maronites in Lebanon, allowed the Muslim population and its power both to grow inexorably, but if Israel (and real Middle Eastern Christians instead of islamochristian Arabs) can remain strong, the Maronites have a chance. Especially if Hezbollah can be lured into a little Sunni-Shi'a fight that may start, but need not end, in Iraq.
Hugh your point is quite logical, but do you think it would be or could be done. by whom would the moving around of all these people? the UN?