The historical presence of non-Muslims in lands currently controlled by Muslims is obvious, but often overlooked. And the fact of their presence is crucial in answering the skewed or nearsighted historical narratives that inform many a discussion on foreign policy: It can be employed to highlight the double standards that exist with respect to Islamic law and the "right" to possess a particular territory (e.g. Israel, the "right of return," etc.).
Those inconsistencies depend on the inequality of believers and unbelievers under Islamic law, as well as the historical revisionism in Islamic teachings, whereby Adam, Moses, Abraham, and Jesus are prophets of Islam, and Christianity and Judaism are corrupted versions of a pre-existing Islamic monotheism. By modern standards, those factors are no justification for any right to rule.
"On Christmas, Iraq Christians eye uncertain future," by Missy Ryan for Reuters, December 25:
BAGHDAD, Dec 25 (Reuters) - Rushing to Christmas mass, Iraqis in their Sunday best hurried into Baghdad's Sacred Heart church, pausing just long enough so a uniformed security guard could pat them down for suicide vests or dangerous weapons.
The juxtaposition of faith and fear is one that resonates across Iraq, where as violence drops people are cautiously venturing out from homes bunkered by blast walls and sand bags and taking up activities abandoned during years of bloodshed.
Christians, who with Yazidis, Shabaks and others make up Iraq's fragile minorities, marked perhaps their safest Christmas since 2003 on Thursday, but many still talk of a precarious future in a nation at risk of backsliding into civil war.
Iraqi Christians, believed to number around 750,000, have been targeted like others in Iraq's 28-million, mainly Muslim population by the horrific violence since the 2003 invasion. Their plight often gains heightened attention in the West.
Reliable figures are hard to find on how many Christians are among the millions who have fled the country, but some Christian leaders warn of a threat to the existence for their community.
A series of high-profile attacks against Christians in the northern city of Mosul this fall prompted the flight of thousands of families and fuelled a fear of being singled out.
"Christians have no political ambitions and they don't have militias to defend themselves. They are peaceful people," Thaier al-Sheikh, the pastor of the Sacred Heart church, said as he sipped tea in his rectory.
"Christians have been here longer than Muslims, 600 years longer. We are the roots of Iraq," he said. [...]
Suspicions that religious minorities had no future in Shi'ite Muslim-led Iraq were aggravated in November by parliament's decision to give minorities just six out of 440 local government seats in provincial elections next month.
Christians were set aside three seats nationally, with only one in Baghdad -- too few in the eyes of many Christians.
The government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had sought a greater share of seats for minorities, but many Christians felt slighted when it approved the law with a smaller number anyway. [...]
The displacement of Christians was one reason that attendance at the Sacred Heart church is still a fraction of what it was before 2003, Sheikh said.
With mass underway, hymns waft out of the plain concrete building topped by a simple dome.
Inside, parishioners young and old are packed in pews before an altar garlanded by flowers and lit by softly twinkling lights. Shiny angels dangle around a homemade nativity scene.
Despite the festive scenes, the city outside the church's walls remains a violent place. Buildings are pocked with bullet holes; men with guns man checkpoints everywhere.
Across the city, in a Shi'ite Muslim area of western Baghdad, a car bomb near a popular restaurant killed four people and wounded 25 on Christmas morning.
Yet Peter Maqdusi insisted that Christians' millenarian history here means they have no choice but to await a more stable, peaceful Iraq.
"We have made sacrifices and our ancestors have made sacrifices. This is our land," he said.
Perhaps there is something in the soil over there and in Mid-East.Once you are there , you tend to become very possessive. Please take care of the engaged troops there. They may return with magic.
....someone remind them that Jews have been in Iraq much longer than Christians
very Happy CHristmas to you Robert, or do you celebrate in January?
Ploome:
Assyrian Christians as a native people of Iraq have been in that land longer than Arabic Muslim invaders. They have been Christian for close to 2000 years but they are Assyrians descended from the polytheist Assyrian empire which brought the Jews in bondage to their country after conquering huge swaths of the Middle East. [Indeed Jesus spoke Aramaic because of that Assyrian conquest. My Assyrian-American neighbors often brag that they say the Our Father in "the original, as Jesus said it."
This man is speaking as an ASSYRIAN Christian thinking of himself and his ancestral history in the way in which I, an Italo American, think of myself as a ROMAN Catholic. Roman in blood and Catholic in baptism.
I know this is a long post, but I would like everyone to be able to read this. It's not that often we have good news coming out of Iraq, and even less a report like this from the Christians there and Canon Andrew White:
Dear Friends,
This weekend at St George's was even more wonderful than usual! On Saturday we had a shorter than normal service so that people could go to the Mothers' Union (MU) Bazaar. The MU had worked on the preparation of the Bazaar for weeks. There was food, clothes and toiletries in abundance. Things were sold very cheaply so people could afford them. Whilst the Bazaar was going on I secretly baptised two people - a brother and a sister who have been coming to the Church for a while. Their father was Muslim but their mother was a Christian and she had secretly taught them about Jesus. Both the brother, called Mohamed, and the sister, called Mariam, are serious about their desire to follow Jesus. Mariam is the architect working on our new hall for the overflow of people now coming to church and the kindergarten. Also with me on Saturday was Azhar who cleans our rooms in our compound in the International Zone. She was another person who I baptised after she started having dreams about Jesus. In the service I looked at her and she was in tears it was such an emotional thing for her to be in Church worshiping the Almighty.
After Church and the Bazaar I was taken by security to Camp Victory which is by the Airport. There, on this army base, I married two Philipino's Leo and Mia. They had met here in Iraq over a year ago. They so wanted to get married but could not find anybody to marry them. Finally, about three months ago, our Garda World Fixer at the airport (the person who tries to arrange flights out of Baghdad for us) asked me to help. I met with the couple on Saturday in the army base; in a shop surrounded by toys I married them. It was a very different wedding than normal with just a few people present in their Military and Civilian Uniforms. From Camp Victory I returned to the International Zone and went directly to the home of Dr Mowaffak Al Rubbaie, the National Security Advisor. We had serious things to talk about not least the hostage case and his visit to Church the following day.
The following morning I did my last ever service in the Chapel at the old United States Embassy, Saddam's former palace. They move out to their new embassy on 26th December. As usual, the service was great and we were able to commission two new lay leaders. One who is already an Episcopal Lay leader at the Pentagon (JK) and the other who is involved in a Church of England plant in the City of London (Peter). This was also a great service as we considered the Christmas season and its meaning.
From Chapel we went to St George's Church after meeting up with the usual array of Iraqi military. I can never really get used to the journey to Church; the mass of guns and armed vehicles ... just to go to church. It reminds me constantly that we are not ministering in normality. At church the hundreds and hundreds of people were arriving. With more people coming every week I am seriously wondering how we will fit them all in. We do not use pews but plastic chairs so we can fit them everywhere possible but still lots of people just stand. When the new hall is built we can have an overflow set up there. Dr Mowaffak (who is a Muslim) arrived, we went to see the clinic, he was deeply impressed. Being a physician he understood the equipment and drugs in the in the pharmacy. Sheherazad, our Pharmacist, wrote the following email to me last night about working in the clinic (in her own words):
Dear Father,
I can't explain how thankful I am to God that his will for me was to be in the church and to assist in a great ministry you are having here in Iraq. Now I knew why I was so sure that I am doing the right thing when I choosed to come back here and not to stay in the U.S. Everybody thought I am a fool but only God and me knows I am at the right place, and you know this because we are so sensitive to the voice of the Lord. What happened yesterday is just like magic. A famous politician comes to our simple pharmacy to say thank you because we are healing his people through the love of Jesus. This is so wonderful and extraordinary....Thank you Lord for all these blessings, I here surrender all my life to you, use me wherever and however you want to, I am yours.
I want to tell you thank you from all my heart for all what you are doing as we are celebrating the birth of our Lord. May God fill your days with more and more love and joy and complete healing for a greater work in his Kingdom in Jesus name, Amen.
Always praying,
Shehrezad.
We went into the Church. The worship was wonderful, we welcomed Dr Mowaffak and continued the service. It was two years since Dr Mowaffak last came to St George's. He could not believe how it had developed and how many people were present. Faiz made a presentation to him and spoke of how grateful we were to him, not least for getting me to Church each week with his personal security team. Dr Mowaffak then spoke to all the people and expressed how delighted he was to see such amazing developments. He spoke so warmly and lovingly. After his speech the children filed in by their hundreds to sing for him. They came and came and came, even I was deeply moved by their entrance. I held back the tears of joy but then looked at Dr Mowaffak and down his face were rolling tears. The head of security in one of the most dangerous places in the world was simply moved to tears.
After the service when I had returned to my trailer I found an email with the following words from Dr Mowaffak: "When I left the church I was so hyper elated that I cried in the car on my way to my residence".
This is a place of the Glory of G-d. When people see it and realise it they are profoundly affected. As we say at the beginning of every service "Allah Hu Ma Anna" (The Lord is here, and His Spirit is with us). My thoughts return to the writing on the bombed wall of Coventry Cathedral from the Book of Haggai "The later glory of this House shall be greater than the former says the Lords and in this place shall I give peace". This was the first passage I preached on after the war and it has come true in ways I could never imagined. St George's is indeed full of the glory of G-d and even though it is surrounded by war it is a place of profound peace.
May you all have a most glorious and blessed Christmas and I thank you all for your love, help and support. I pray and hope I will now get home for Christmas with my family. The following is a link to a short film of a few of our children from St George's with the US army:
http://www.necn.com/Boston/World/2008/12/20/S anta-visits-Iraqi-children-in/1229775101.html
With every Blessing this Christmas time,
Canon Andrew White
The willingness of western Christians to throw their Middle Eastern coreligionists under the bus never ceases to appall me. Some even seem to think that Arab Christians are the result of recent western missionary activity and that they ought to 'return' to Islam, which is the 'proper' religion for 'Arabs.' If I were Christian I'd be doing advocacy for ME Christians among mainstream churches here in North America and in Europe.
Here is the tiniest of glimmers of hope, although likely it just empty symbolism:
For first time, Christmas is official holiday in Iraq:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hwK_CSpBxsNuVUEaDuOwmSSCiqGwD959T3T00
Staring at the View, thanks for the account of Christmas in Iraq--I have read many like it, and it is terribly disheartening--although I am impressed by their bravery. You see the same pattern, wherever Muslims become a majority--threatening non-Muslims, driving them out, forcibly converting them, and outright killing them.
There are very few Christians left in north Africa, and Turkey, and in the birthplace of Christianity itself--historic Palestine. Bethlehem went in a few years from being a majority Christian town to a small minority.
Here's a article from the Jerusalem Post from last year, "Bethlehem Christians fear neighbors":
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467807655&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
"Christians have been here longer than Muslims, 600 years longer...."
From the article.
Of course, for Muslims NOTHING that occurred before their arrival, in whatever land they imposed themselves, is of any value or consequence at all. Only THEY and their exalted sense of superiority and self importance count in the alternate universe they have constructed.