The Christians in Iraq, although they have lived there longer than the Muslims have and have nothing to do with the United States, are considered, because they share the religion of the American "Crusaders," to be kuffar harbi -- infidels at war with Islam -- and thus by the terms of Islamic law their lives are forfeit. Persecution of Christians in Iraq Update: "'We are killed because we are Christians,'" by Deborah Haynes in the Times, October 27 (thanks to James):
One grey-haired woman understands more than most the fear that has gripped Iraq's beleaguered Christian community over the past month.Her brother, Bashar al-Hazim, was among the first to be murdered in a wave of targeted killings that has forced more than 2,000 Christian families to flee the northern city of Mosul.
Masked gunmen walked up to Mr Hashim as he stood with his two children outside their house in the east-side of Mosul in late September.
They demanded to see his identity card, confirmed he was Christian and executed the 41-year-old on the spot.
"I could have died when I found out. He was a dear brother and was killed in a very despicable way," said the woman, 60, who was too afraid to give her name.
She, like thousands of other Christians who have left the city since the start of October, claims to have no idea who carried out the attack. Fear of potential repercussions appears to prevent many in the region from speaking their mind.
"We're peaceful people. When my brother was executed he had no enemies. Why was he killed? He was not a member of a party. There was no reason except for being Christian," the woman, dressed in a black gown, said....
Read it all.
now this is where i want our government to say "i will take as refugees your christian iraqis."
but no! they take jihadis instead.
"We are killed because we are Christians"
That's the so-often-heralded by leftards, and defenders of Islam in general, Muslim "religious tolerance" in action.
Why are we the only ones that seem to be able to see that in this world?
Just goes to show what the real battle is behind it all.
“If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.”
John 15:18-20
The "Tribulation" is now for Assyrians.
Pray for them.
http://www.aina.org/news.html
An Ancient People's Last Stand:
http://www.aina.org/guesteds/20040614193356.htm
The West Cannot Forge an Alliance with Islam
http://www.aina.org/guesteds/20051206143602.htm
When you met the infidel, smite at their necks.
Am I "misunderstanding" Islam again?
A three-year-old posting:
"'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, within 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.
[Posted by: Hugh at December 26, 2005]
Some of these Iraqi Christians will reach this country. Some of them, possibly, will be unintimidated in their analysis of Islam, which --far from the Middle East -- they need no longer pull any punches, and can see even see the problem of Islam more clearly. And if some of them enter academic life, they might, like some Copts and Maronites, help set students straight about Islam, and show those innocents that the ernsts and safis and the bahranis and abu-lughods, are leaving a lot out. And since they clearly come from that world, and cannot be so easily painted or tainted in the way that Jewish scholars of Islam have so cruelly, and crudely, been, they could help, if so inclined, help educate the West on the nature of Islam. But that means cleansing their own minds and hearts of the attitudes, the internalized dhimmitude, even the nostalgia for Saddam Hussein and the dreamy notion that "everything was fine until the Americans came and let the 'turbans' take over" that some of those Iraqi Christians may be tempted to hold onto as consolation, and justification, for the years of nonsense and lies they endured, or even in places allowed themselves to support (in Iraq, what choice did they have?), because Ba'athism and Saddam Hussein were their only protection against those who took the attitudes inculcated by Islam to deeper heart.
Maybe Election Night Will Be Interesting
If our governments wants immigration why not throw the muslims out and let the christians come and live here?
"We're peaceful people. When my brother was executed he had no enemies...
Yes he did, 1.5 billion of them...
"They demanded to see his identity card, confirmed he was Christian and executed the 41-year-old on the spot."
Sounds like the work of a devout Muslim to me. Savages. You would have to be suffering from severe brainwashing not to see how evil Islam is.
This sort of thing happens all over the Islamosphere wherever Muslims have power over non-Muslims. Not all of the Muslims take advantage of the endless pretexts for murder that the Muslim ideology provides - but many do.
Murder in the name of allah. Some - indeed, quite a large percentage - of the followers of Mohammed kill their own - daughters, sisters, wives, nieces - on often-entirely-imaginary trumped-up charges of 'immorality', and get away with it. They kill their own - fellow Muslims deemed insufficiently-Islamic - very often on entirely-imaginary trumped-up charges, and get away with it. They kill any one of their number who is even suspected or alleged (often falsely) to have apostasised or 'blasphemed'.
And they kill the 'dhimmis', simply for the heinous 'crime' of being non-Muslim, as in this case, or else on this or that flimsy trumped-up pretext ( 'breaking the dhimma', of 'blasphemy', whatever) which provide the pretext for claiming that this or that dhimmi, or indeed the person's entire community, requires to be 'punished'.
If someone wants to murder another human being with impunity and even feel good about it, Islam seems to offer a plethora of mechanisms to encourage and enable them to do so. Other societies try to restrain and remove their psychopaths and sadists - the ideology of Islam seems to be set up to impose psychopathic and sadistic behaviour patterns even on people who are not born with that particular kink in their genetics.
Now: the Mohammedans living within the non-Muslim lands, in the 'west' or anywhere else, read exactly the same books, or are preached to from the same books, go on the same hajj, say exactly the same prayers, as the Mohammedans who 'honor' murder, kill 'apostates' and 'blasphemers', and murder dhimmis for fun and profit.
Ockham's Razor says to me, therefore, that the main difference between Muslim behaviour in kafir-majority lands, and in Muslim-majority lands, is probably context - at the moment those among them who would dearly like to do to us kafir here exactly what those jihadists did to Mr Bashar al-Hazim in Mosul, just don't feel *quite* strong enough to get away with it....yet.
Every time I learn of a Christian being executed in the name of islam, I am dismayed to see little or no coverage in the news media and I would like to suggest that all of us on these blogs report every single item to every news media outlet, every religious organisation that we belong to, to human rights organisations and to our government representatives, that we can. Somehow the word has to get out as the West in the main appears to be asleep and not to care about these atrocities, and given the fact that there appears to be no escape from islamisation of the West, none more so than with election of the messiah obama about to happen. I'm probably preaching to the converted, but anything is worth a try because I truly believe that if we don't stop the islamic crusade against us, we are heading for who knows what.
We cannot talk about Christianity in Iraq without mentioning the work done under extremely difficult and dangerous conditions by the Vicar of Baghdad, Canon Andrew White. He is the only vicar working in the city.
He describes his trip to his church St Georges as follows:
"It is impossible to really describe what it is like here in Baghdad. I live in the fortified International Zone but even here I am surrounded by my bodyguards at all times and we can't move without carrying the right pieces of plastic ID around our necks. When we do move we can't move more than five miles an hour, have to stop every few yards a different security barriers and when we get to them the colour of your piece of plastic dictates how quickly you will be allowed through. All very intense, but it does not compare to my regular trips to St George's Church.
This journey begins at the home of the Iraqi National Security Advisor. I am driven into the security compound by my bodyguards and transferred to the care of the Iraqi Army. With body armour on, I take my seat in an armoured car with blackened windows. Other military vehicles surround us and slowly we drive through the IZ stopping at it countless checkpoints. Eventually we leave the IZ and are met by an array of Iraqi police cars and further military vehicles. The sirens go on, guns are pointed out of the windows of all the vehicles and we speed down the road. If we meet a traffic jam, the other cars are yelled at through loud speakers and they try and make way. If that does not work our whole convoy just moves to the other side of the road, and moves the wrong way quickly down the road. At every crossroad, the police have stopped all other traffic. We come to the road where the church is- the road is closed off. We speed to the Church and drive into the grounds. The army run to surround the church, others check that it is safe and I am eventually allowed out of the car to be met by scores of our children.
With the army remaining inside and outside we begin our worship. My mind goes back to the days before the war. There was none of this kind of security, and there was no congregation at our Church, why because it was Anglican. Commonly it is still known as the English Church. Our congregation is large, our worship wonderful but I only need to look at our people to realise what has really happened here following the war. We only have six men in our congregation of several hundred, the rest have been killed. Many of even the young women wear black as they are still mourning the loss of their husbands. Scores of people have been kidnapped, even this year. So from the pulpit every week I see the effect of war on these people. It is impossible for us to forget the tragedy outside. We hear the guns shooting and the bombs blasting and we simply continue worshipping. After the service food is provided for the whole congregation- we alternate; one week it is food the next week money. If we do not give, they do not have. The cost of this provision is colossal and it is primarily provided by Churches in England. Every week thanks go out to those who enable our people to live."
Quite a contrast from the way Muslims are treated in the west.
About a year ago, I met an Iraqi Christian on a train here in Germany, and after a while he told me that he would most likely lose his residence permit and be deported to Iraq, and that he feared for his life. These fears are obviously well-founded.
Then I met some Syrian Christians, and what I heard about their situation among a Muslim majority didn't sound much better. And then there is this man who was beheaded in Somalia for converting Christianity, and so on.
Meanwhile, the Muslims in the West complain about "Islamophobia" and "hate crimes". I think we all know what a "hate crime" actually is.
When the same individual who said "When a man strikes you on the cheek, turn the other cheek also" also said "Let he who does not have a sword sell his coat and buy one", it seems a bit of a stretch to interpret that first statement to apply with regard to people who clearly mean to kill you.