Surely there is an element of denial in much of the West: Any day now, things will settle down, and the vaunted peaceful and pluralistic teachings of Islam will kick in... right?
"Iraq - Fleeing Christians face new hardships in Turkey," from Compass Direct News, November 14:
ISTANBUL, November 14 (Compass Direct News) – In this Turkish city’s working-class neighborhood of Kurtulus, Arabic can be heard on the streets, signs are printed in the Arabic alphabet and Iraqis congregate in tea shops.
In 99-percent Muslim Turkey, most of these Iraqis are not Muslims. And they are not in Turkey by choice. They are Christian refugees who fled their homeland to escape the murderous violence that increasingly has been directed at them.
It is hard to tell how many of Mosul’s refugees from the recent wave of attacks have made their way to Istanbul, but finding these residents here is not hard. A middle-aged Iraqi refugee who fled Mosul five months ago now attends a Syrian Orthodox Church in the poverty-stricken neighborhood of Tarlabasi, where gypsies, transvestites, and immigrants from Turkey’s east live in hopes of a better life in Istanbul.
Declining to give his name, the refugee said there is no future for Christians in Iraq and that nearly everyone he knew there wanted to leave the country. He said the only hope for Iraqi Christians is for Western countries to open their doors to Christian Iraqi refugees.
“We don’t have hope,” he said. “If these doors aren’t opened, we will be killed.”
Since October, violence in Mosul has pushed more than 12,000 Christians from their homes and left more than two dozen dead, according to U.N. and Christian organizations. In the face of Mosul violence, Iraqi Christians flee to Turkey before settling permanently in another country, usually in a place where their family has gone out before them.
Christian Sisters Killed
Weeks after the mass exodus of Mosul Christians to surrounding villages, Turkey and other nations, around one-third of families reportedly have returned due to the presence of 35,000 army and police and the Iraqi government offering cash grants of up to $800.
But those returning Christians were shaken again on Wednesday (Nov. 12), when Islamic militants stormed into the house of two Syrian Catholic sisters, Lamia’a Sabih and Wala’a Saloha, killing them and severely injuring their mother. They then bombed their house and detonated a second explosive when the police arrived, which killed three more.
The Christian family had recently returned after having fled Mosul. Many believe this attack will deter other Christians from returning to Mosul, and there are reports of Christians again leaving the area.
There has been a steady exodus of Christians from Iraq since the first Gulf War in 1991. The church in Iraq dates from the beginning of Christianity, but the population has plummeted by 50 percent in the last 20 years. The outflow of Iraqi Christians spiked in 2003 following the U.S.-led invasion.
Although Iraq as a whole has seen a dramatic decrease in violence due to last year’s surge in U.S. troops, the flight of Christians to Turkey has grown. One-third of the 18,000 refugees who registered in Turkey last year are from Iraq. In Syria, an estimated 40 percent of the 1.2 million Iraqis who have fled Iraq are Christians, though they make up only about 3 percent of Iraq’s population.
Monsignor Francois Yakan, the 50-year-old leader of the Chaldean Church in Turkey, said all Iraqi refugees are undergoing hardships regardless of religion, but that the situation is especially difficult for Christians since there is less support for them in Turkey.
“Muslims have the same difficulty as Christians, but there are more foundations to assist them,” he said. “The government notices Muslim immigrants, but nobody pays attention to us.”
Yakan travels to other countries to raise awareness of the plight of Iraqi Christians, trying to marshal the support of government and church leaders – last week he traveled to France, Romania and Germany. If Western governments don’t wake up to this crisis, he said, the results could be catastrophic.
“People don’t know the plight of Iraqi Christians. They have no government, no soldiers, and no power,” he said. “Christianity in Iraq is ending. Why aren’t they noticing this?”
"People don’t know the plight of Iraqi Christians ... Christianity in Iraq is ending. Why aren’t they noticing this?"
Because those who regularly demonize U.S. involvement there don't give a sh_t, and those who are trying to trying to laud successes don't see it as such.
Islam at work give asylum to Muslims from Iraq but forget about the Christians. Now I wonder who came up with that policy.
I actually read somewhere recently that Germany is granting asylum to some 100,000 Christian refugees from Iraq. They have the right idea. If Turkey is overburdened, take the CHRISTIANS off their hands. This is what we should be doing. Note how disproportionately Iraqis figure in Euro rape stats. Iraqis and Somalis are at the top, everywhere. Oddly, Pakis rarely rape with greater frequency that non-Muslims, which means that they rape minorities, like Indians, who don't report them, as their families have been infected, as have many non-Muslims from Muslim or formerly-Muslim lands, with the 'honor' virus. Somehow I just know that Iraqi Christians don't figure into those stats at all. I don't want those Christians to have to live in Iraq. I hope Christianity leaves Iraq. The Assyrians, the Maronites, the Chaldeans, they're all too good for that land. I hope Israel continues to take in more and more Lebanese Christians so that the next time Hezbollah starts a full-scale war with them they can bomb them without them being too panged by their characteristic Jewish guilt, that which held them back from destroying Lebanon in 2006. I say bring in more refugees, to America and to Europe, so long as they be non-Muslim. Iraqi Christians should be our second priority in immigration, after the Southern Sudanese, who have no Turkey in which to seek refuge, being completely surrounded by Dar al Islam.
From above: have been infected, as have many non-Muslims from Muslim or formerly-Muslim lands, with the 'honor' virus...
I wonder with all this rape going on in Mohamadland, what the infectious rate is for other sexually transmitted diseases, especially AIDS...
They should create autonomous Christian self governing enclaves and then arm the populance, and make them responsible for there own security. The could set up alliances with Israel and the West should retreat into these enclaves and help defend them.
Here's the crucial bit, Muslims will not be allowed entry, they could build a fortress wall like Israel had to do.
The Muslims would rage and gnash their teeth, and go on and on and on about the one man and his dog who were evicted.
I bet within a few years you'd have a vibrant healthy society, were various ethnic groups rubbed along pretty well. Bit like Israel.
That's what the Muslims really hate, the fact there's all that money and loot, and they can't get there parasitical hands on it.
I entreat all Australians lurking or posting here to lobby the Catholic and Anglican churches to lean on the government to take in these people as refugees -- and give them precedent over their tormentors.
The national media barely noticed the murder of 5 million Sudanese Christians and animists, it does not fit the narrative that has been implanted in their cerebral cortexes.
What I find particularly galling is that many liberal and leftist westerners don't even realize that these ethnic groups are indigenous to the Middle East; I've heard it said repeatedly that they're ex-Muslims that were evangelized by Republican bible thumpers and deserve what they get for their apostasy.
jewcat - seconded.
I'll fire off letters to the Anglican Archbishop and to Cardinal Pell, this week, I promise. And letters to PM Rudd and to the Leader of the Opposition. If Rudd says he admires Bonhoeffer then here's his opportunity to do the sort of thing Bonhoeffer would undoubtedly have approved of.
Australia, to its everlasting shame, refused to take in any but a pitiful few of the Jews who wanted to flee Hitler's Germany (I've just been reading about the horrible Evian Conference). We could just about have fitted most of them in, somehow, anyhow! Anything to save them from being murdered on an industrial scale. But the Australia of that day and age was simply too gutless, too racist, too antisemitic and too unimaginative to realize that we were knocking back a slew of world-class scientists, doctors, musicians, artists, scholars... throwing them into hell to die....if we'd taken them in at the height of their powers, rather than the few traumatised survivors afterwards, who knows what they'd have helped us, as a nation, to achieve? Because of that appalling moral failure, Australia has Jewish blood on its hands.
Now Australia and the rest of the West faces the same moral choice, the same challenge, as it hears the cries of the Assyrian Christians of Mesopotamia.
We have a chance to help the native Christians of Iraq escape a classic jihad genocide. These people, too, most of them, are gifted people - many are educated professionals. But even if they weren't - I think Australia could fit them in, and the Christian faith that they share with the majority of Aussies, even if it's from an exotically different tradition, would ease their integration.
But: no Muslims. No more Muslims. Far too dangerous, far too much of a risk.
Posted by: dumbledoresarmy
Australia, to its everlasting shame, refused to take in any but a pitiful few of the Jews who wanted to flee Hitler's Germany (I've just been reading about the horrible Evian Conference). We could just about have fitted most of them in, somehow, anyhow! Anything to save them from being murdered on an industrial scale. But the Australia of that day and age was simply too gutless, too racist, too antisemitic and too unimaginative to realize that we were knocking back a slew of world-class scientists, doctors, musicians, artists, scholars... throwing them into hell to die....if we'd taken them in at the height of their powers, rather than the few traumatized survivors after wards, who knows what they'd have helped us, as a nation, to achieve? Because of that appalling moral failure, Australia has Jewish blood on its hands.
Not only Australia has Jewish blood on its hands, but all the nations that attended the Evian Conference.
Our heinous governments are even worse, they allowing the islamist into the west, and throwing all types of benefits their way while pumpings billions of dollars into the coffers of their murderous islamic regimes.
For those who did not bother to open the link to the Evian Conference, here it is again
http://christianactionforisrael.org/antiholo/evian/evian.html
After Bush illegal invasion of Iraq his best friend Josy Grahm sent some christian preacher over to convert muslim at gunpoint to christian it didnot work too well.
"After Bush illegal invasion of Iraq his best friend Josy Grahm sent some christian preacher over to convert muslim at gunpoint to christian it didnot work too well."
translation; I have nothing to offer to the discussion but I will throw some lies out there just for practice.
DefenderofIslam: Only Muslims practice coercion in religion these days. It's because you don't have any real arguments. Never once can the Da'wa boys explain why, if the Christians and Jews corrupted the biblical texts, the Christians and Jews still wrangle over the same Old Testament while the thousands of Christian Sects wrangle over the same New Testament. The Romanists and COnstantinopolitans wouldn't even tamper with two Greek letters at the beginning of the letter to the Philippians in the New Testament when those letters poked at their entire administrative system.
Further, when everyone knows that the Christian Trinity is the Father, SOn, and Holy Spirit, how come the Qu'ran thinks it's The Father, Son, and Mary? Something tells me that Allah (Iblis?), Jibril, or Muhammad--maybe all three--either goofed or deliberately lied.