Another story on the ongoing persecution of Christians in Iraq, about which we have posted a great deal. From AP, with thanks to all who sent this in:
BAGHDAD — Despite the chaos and sectarian violence raging across Baghdad, Farouq Mansour felt relatively safe as a Christian living in a multiethnic neighborhood in the capital.Then, two months ago, Al Qaeda gunmen kidnapped him and demanded that his family convert to Islam or pay a $30,000 ransom. Two weeks later, he paid up, was released and immediately fled to Syria, joining a mass exodus of Iraq's increasingly threatened Christian minority.
"There is no future for us in Iraq," Mansour said.
Although Islamic extremists have targeted Iraqi Christians before, bombing churches and threatening religious leaders, the latest attacks have taken on a far more personal tone. Many Christians are being expelled from their homes and forced to leave their possessions behind, police, human rights groups and residents said.
The Christian community here, about 3 percent of the country's 26 million people, has little political or military clout to defend itself, and some Islamic insurgents call Christians "crusaders" whose real loyalty lies with U.S. troops.
Many churches are now nearly empty, with many of their faithful either gone or too scared to attend. Only about 30 people attended this Sunday's mass at St. Joseph's Catholic Church in the relatively safe Baghdad neighborhood of Karradah, and only two dozen took communion in the barren St. Mary's Church in the northern city of Kirkuk on Sunday.
As many as 50 percent of Iraq's Christians may already have left the country, according to a report issued Wednesday by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a federal monitoring and advisory group in Washington D.C.
"These groups face widespread violence from Sunni insurgents and foreign jihadis, and they also suffer pervasive discrimination and marginalization at the hands of the national government, regional governments, and para-state militias," said the report.
Islamic extremists have also targeted liquor stores, hair salons and other Christian-owned businesses, saying they violate Islam, the report said.
"This is not the culture of Iraqis or the nature of Iraqis. We have lived during centuries together in a respectful attitude and friendship," said Luwis Zarco, the Catholic archbishop of Kirkuk....
In the recent violence, residents of the Baghdad neighborhood of Dora said gunmen knocked on the doors of Christian families, demanding they either pay jizya — a special tax traditionally levied on non-Muslims — or leave. The jizya has not been imposed in Muslim nations in about 100 years.
One man, Arakan Admon, was wounded in a drive-by shooting last week when his family ignored the threats, relatives said.
In response to the threats, about 70 percent of Dora's Christians have fled, police said....
In the northern city of Mosul, men began knocking on doors last month, demanding that Christian families pay a $3,000 tax that would be used to fight the U.S.-led forces, local residents said. Some paid; others fled.
Mansour, a 63-year-old retiree, said that while many other Christians left, he chose to stay in his Amariyah neighborhood in western Baghdad. He was hoping that the Baghdad security plan, which U.S.-led forces launched on Feb. 14, would improve the situation.
"But the opposite happened," he said.
Not surprising...over 600,000 of them have fled...many are in Jordan & Turkey, many are in the US and other western countries (by the wau, relax folks, it was done legally and they're assyrian christians, and are assimilating well here-there's a HUGE number of them here in California)
(Yes, FYI, that's where the mysterious missing number, previously, and fraudulently, reported by the kook fringe activists masquerading as media as "killed" actually went...out of the country, not "innocent iraqis killed by US troops" as the lying liars have so tried to portray).
That's one group that has been long neglected in this entire scene.
"Many Christians are being expelled from their homes and forced to leave their possessions behind,"
...before leaving, I would burn all my possessions to the ground, leaving only a pile of ashes...
I don't think they give you the time for burning your possessions.
I hope these Islamophobes don't want to go to apply for refuge in Sweden or Finland.
Did any of these Christians say they were depressed by the idea of Muslims raping their women? If so, Sweden has a place for them along with Björn Björkkvist.
Western countries should open their arms and borders to these persecuted Christians, and at the same time deport all moslems back to the desert shitholes they came from.
Death threats, kidnapping, murders of religions minorities in muslim majority area sounds familiar. Oh yea this was done to kashmiri hindus in kashmir only thing is that the PC indian media prefers to call these expelled hindus, " migrants".
I hope that these people can escape Mesopotamia. There is no future for them in there now. Hope they are able to leave with their families in safety.
Islam prefers a vacuum. It cannot tolerant freedom of speech, rational inquiry or peaceful coexistence with any other ideology, religious or secular.
Islam thrives in fear....without the gun, Islam disappears...
"Western countries should open their arms and borders to these persecuted Christians, and at the same time deport all moslems back to the desert shitholes they came from"
Posted by ImNoDhimmi
Yes, but there's another alternative that should be developed and encouraged as well, which I do not take credit for thinking of. I had a long debate with the commenter "Remote_Control" on another thread several months back about this, but he sold me on the idea and I've been ruminating about it ever since then.
The Christians (as well as other non-Muslim minorities) of Iraq, and elsewhere in the Middle East, should be given the choice of remaining in the Middle East by being evacuated to Israel instead (the idea its author had in mind was for Coalition forces in Iraq to conduct a series of evacuation missions of all those wanting to leave and then quarantine the Islamic nations).
Israel might balk at this at first but as I see it, this could be done with some planning that allows for the preservation of the Jewish character of the Israeli state. Since the Arabs lost the occupied territories fair and square in the 1967 war, far from giving them back in exchange for a peace that the Muslim Arabs will never grant the Israelis, Israel could expel the Arabs from these territories and settle these lands instead with Assyrians, Copts, Manaens, Zoroastrians, Bahais, etc who could be organized politically either as part of a Greater Israel, or be granted an independent state (or states) of their own with strong economic, political and military ties to Israel and a pro-Israeli, pro-Western, anti-Arab foreign policy.
Such a project could serve as a nucleus for challenging the Middle Eastern Ummah by rehabilitating the non-Arab nations that have been strangled to death by Islam. If it succeeds and thrives it could help roll back the leaden weight of the last 1400 years of Islamic repression and eventually bring peace to the region, with enourmous benefit to the entire world.
I would say that Israel's dependence on its ties to the West for its survival should be used to leverage its cooperation in this plan and the Israeli people and government should be won over to it not only with considerable moral suasion but with generous terms for Western economic and military cooperation, as well as the prospects for the development of powerful allies that could buffer them from their Arab enemies.
The jizya has not been imposed in Muslim nations in about 100 years.
from the story
Is this true? Or is it some of the MSM taco-butter?
The Jizyah has "not been imposed" since European pressure and power has been borught to bear. But non-Muslims have been subject to a disguised Jizyah. Despite the supposed reforms that were to bring complete legal equality to non-Muslims in Turkey, in World War II the Varlik Vergesi was a large tax imposed by the government on non-Muslim citizens, who despite Kemalism, or perhaps because of it, have never been considered "Turks" equal to Muslim "Turks."
In Malaysia the non-Muslims have been subject to the disguised Jizyah of the Bumiputra system, which favors economically the Muslims, and essentially involves a transfer of wealth from the more industrious and entrepreneurial non-Muslims (Chinese and Hindus) to Muslims (Malays, but not the members of the indigenous tribes, which were christianized, or remained pagan -- and only now are being islamized through intense pressure and Da'wa campaigns).
Elsewhere, as in Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Hindus and Christians live in a state of permanet physical danger, and that danger also is one of losing their property to Muslim looters and marauders who cannot be sued or brought to justice on the say-so of a non-Muslim. The Jews of the Arab world fled -- nearly one million of them -- leaving their property, which was the last transfer of wealth. In Egypt, under Nasser, the property of most Jews and the Levantine Christains -- Greeks, Italians, and others -- were "nationalized" as Nasser put it. But this was nothing more than the seizure of Infidel property by Muslim governments. Copts in Egypt do not pay a direct Jizyah. But there are other ways to force local Christians, constantly fearful for their own well-being, to have them pay off, or take as local partners, Muslims who may protect them. There is no security for the property of non-Muslims in Muslim lands, and there are various ways in which the "protection money" that is the Jizyah is paid, often in indirect, informal, and disguised ways, when the more direct imposition would attract too much unwanted Western attention and, presumably, outrage.
"But there are other ways to force local Christians, constantly fearful for their own well-being, to have them pay off, or take as local partners, Muslims who may protect them."
Posted by: Hugh
..Extortion comes to mind: extortion, as by blackmail or threats of violence..
(actually a Muslim threat of violence is more like a promise of violence...a promise they will ultimately keep..one way or another)
"Mesopotamia belongs to us Assyrians ..."
Posted by: EliasAlucard
...that is true...