And all of it was perpetrated by Sharia supremacist groups acting in the name of Islam. "'Obliterating' Iraq's Christians," by Nina Shea in the Washington Post, May 14:
What is most startling about the report of the heartless double bus bombings on May 2 that targeted and injured 80 Christian students traveling to northern Iraq's Mosul University was that the young Christians there attend university at all. Since the U.S. invasion, Iraq's Christians have been mostly driven out of the country by violence directed against them for their religion. Their communities are shattered. That these young people continued to dream of preparing themselves to serve their country signals that community's deep commitment to Iraq and a modicum of hope they still harbor for its future.Unless the Obama administration acts fast to develop policies to help them, though, their hope will likely be in vain.
Relentless waves of bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, extortions and rapes have triggered a mass exodus of Christians from Iraq over the past seven years. Since 2003, over half of the estimated 1.5 million Iraqi Chaldean Catholics, Assyrian, Syriac Orthodox, and Armenian Christians, as well as some Protestants have fled to Syria, Jordan and farther flung places. While only 3 or 4 percent of Iraq's pre-2003 population, they account for 40 percent of its refugees, the UN reported.
Christians remain the largest non-Muslim minority there but church leaders express a real fear that the light of the faith in Iraq that is said to have been kindled personally by Thomas, one of Jesus' Twelve Apostles, could soon be extinguished. Iraq's other non-Muslim religions, the much smaller groups of Mandeans (followers of John the Baptist), Yizidis (an ancient angel-centered religion), Bahai's and Jews are also all being forced out by violence.
Religious persecution in Iraq is so "egregious" that the country has now been included, alongside the likes of notoriously repressive Iran and China, on a recommended short list of "Countries of Particular Concern" under the International Religious Freedom Act, by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
No Iraq group, Muslim or non-Muslim, has been spared massive and appalling religiously-motivated violence; however, as the independent federal commission found, the one-two punch of extremist ruthlessness and deep governmental discrimination now threatens the "very existence" of Iraq's ancient Christian churches, some of whom still pray in Aramaic, the language of Jesus of Nazareth....
why would anyone civilised and cool ever want to stay in a muslim country ??
living in a muslim country is bad for your life, wife and child or children and your genetics.
a change of locale is on your cards if you're stuck in a muslim country AND if you're not muslim which means you're educated AND know the true meaning of COOL.
this exodus of non-Muslims leaving the ME has been going since old Mo began his death cult, and only with oil wealth has it sped up.
It is very clear Islam does not tolerate Christianity and is actively seek to eliminate Christianity from the face of the earth...
I'm surprised the Washington Post ran this article. The Post is a leftist rag that usually paints islam in a positive light and runs stories about how victimized muslims are.
If any of you would like to help Iraqi Christians in Syria or Jordan, the IOCC ( International Orthodox Christian Charites) is sending aid and helping to train the women in particular with job training. The IOCC works with ACT-International as well. ACT-international is an organization of Christian churchs; Protestant and Orthodox.
There is also a program to provide school supplies, health and baby suppy kits to the refugees in Syria and Jordan.
Just a thought. My ladies' group is making school supply kits and baby supply kits.
What we did was to ask what they needed most. They will send the kits to the Iraqi refugees if you designate that on your boxes of kits.
We did many kits for Haiti and it felt great to be able to help by putting somethings together ourselves.
Thanks everybody!!
Here is a link for the IOCC:http://www.iocc.org/giftsofheart.aspx
Have any of you noticed a pattern going on in the last 20 or so years regarding Christian REFUGEES???
I mean, the HEAVY persecutions of Christians in places where there is some sort of war in which the USA and her allies( NATO) are working WITH muslim governments or those REBEL-type groups like the KLA in KOSOVO, who want to set up "democratic" governments??
Look at Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq?
Seems as if the USA is helping to make the Middle East devoid of its few Christians. Inadvertantly, of course. The $audis are pleased no doubt.
Now Syria which is NO saint in any way, has many more Christians than it wants. Jordan, also has MORE of them now. Iraqi Christians have arrived and keep appearing on their "doorsteps". What is next for the refugees? I think nothing good unless they can escape to the WEST.
Perhaps those who know islamic perecution first hand could help to save us in the USA.
We have a moral obligation to designate these people as political refugees and admit them to America. Their abilities as Arab speakers could be invaluable as Homeland Security assets. Instead, we admit more and more Somali Muslims as refugees...so they can bring Jihad to America.
The reason the Post ran this article is that Iraq is an American client...thus, this is just another stick with which to beat America. Motivationally, it is the furthest thing from an honest exposition of Islamic intolerance from a liberal news source. Nonetheless, we should accept the crumbs gladly.
All in the name of Islam.
Helping our Christian brothers?!?
Oh no! Don't even dare to hint they are our brothers. The idea of Brotherhood of Christians is deeply offensive to Islam.
We would have to bomb Serbia again to mollify the monster.
The same kind of persecution is going on to local Christians in Pakistan,where they are treated as untuchabels,doing all menial jobs like scavenging,toilet cleaning,and street sweeping etc. These Christians are too poor to migrate over to western countries,unless they are allowed to migrate under REFUGEE status. Instead of inviting the problem creating Muslims from these lands of persecution,such as Pakistan,Egypt,Bangladesh,and Indonesia, the western governments should advise their Immigration Boards to allow these Christians as refugees first,and then the Muslims.WILL THE OBAMA GOVERNMENT DO THAT?Will the Christian leaders DEMAND this from the OBAMA government?
where would islam be if oil had not been found in the desert?
The USA and its allies are responsible for the destablization and destruction of Iraqi civil society and have created the conditions for the increased persecution of non-Moslems,who have lived in the region for centuries.They have created anarchy and called it 'democracy' and they're bringing the same 'gift' to Pakistan and Afghanistan---where next,the Central Asian republics?
Ladies and gentlemen
observe.
'mac' seems to think that everything was hunky-dory for the non-Muslim minorities - whether Jews or Christians or Mandaeans or Zoroastrians - within dar al Islam, until ...well, shall we guess, does he think the 'cause' of the current wave of persecutions is...the fault of them wicked, wicked Jooz insisting on refusing to live as cringing dhimmis under the Muslim boot?
I assume he thinks that the mass killings of Bulgarians in the early 19th century and of Armenian Christians in the 1890s were all the fault of the West interfering in and upsetting the *wonderfully just and fair* Islamic system, and cannot possibly be blamed on anything within Islam, on any of the things that sharia says can be done to non-Muslims, or on any choices made by the Muslim murderers; or that Bat Yeor writing in 'The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam', or in 'Islam and Dhimmitude' or in 'The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam', or of Mary Boyce writing about the vicious Muslim persecution of the remaining Zoroastrians in Persia, or of Antoine Fattal writing about the oppression of dhimmis, or for that matter, Maimonides in 1200 writing to the Jews of Yemen who were enduring a fresh outbreak of Muslim cruelty, and declaring that nobody had ever treated the Jews worse than did the Arab Muslims, were all telling lies?
Curses, foiled again,you've exposed another one of my nefarious plots. I wasn't denying Moslem oppression of non-Moslems,my point is that their position is worse since the 'US liberation'. The Americans, in a fit of monumental hubris,'broke' Iraq,they're not going to fix it, are they? Are you too young to remember Vietnam or other countries in Indochina? They're different from the Bourbons,although they learn nothing, they seem to forget everything.
Iraq - or the region one might refer to as Mesopotamia, the land of the Two Rivers - was broken when the Arab Muslims first invaded it, centuries ago. So long as the majority of the population remain slaves to the Arab war-god 'allah', it will remain broken, and nobody will be able to 'fix' it.
Ever since it was conquered by Muslims, and its non-Muslim inhabitants reduced to near-slave dhimmis, and reduced numerically over time (by drivings-out, by periodic orgies of murder, by forced or semi-forced conversion to Islam) to a tiny remnant of what they once were, Mesopotamia like all regions within the de facto Empire of Islam has been descending slowly but steadily, by fits and starts, into the Pit. That process was momentarily impeded by the Mongol non-Muslim interregnum, which for a brief period (much to the rage and disgust of the Muslims) restored some human dignity to the Jews and Christians; but when the Mongol rulers stupidly embraced Islam, the descent into Hell resumed.
About the argument that Americans "broke" Iraq. Prior to the invasion George W. Bush said that Iraqi's are just as capable of practicing democracy as we are. To deny this would be to insult the intelligence and morality of Iraqi's, it would be Western arrogance.
And now, now that Saddams "Hell's Angels'-gang is no longer in charge, for strategic reasons protecting Christians, now Muslims are viciously attacking Christians.
To blame, hold Americans, responsible for that, is WESTERN ARROGANCE again.
Look, male lions, when chasing away a former leader of the pack, taking his place, then proceed to track down and kill all the pubs of the former leader. Thereby ensuring the preparedness of the lioness to mate with them, securing his own offspring.
And we do NOT hold these male lions accountable, we do not despise them for what they do, we know they are unreasonable.
But people like you, Mac, still treat Muslims in the same way, like lions you don;t hold them accountable. You may subconsciously think they can't change, just like lions can't change.
But you do hold Americans accountable, indicating that you do expect them to be capable of change. You estimate Americans higher than Iraqi's if you primarily give responsibility for the deaths of Christians to Americans instead of the real killers, the Iraqi Muslims.
The real killing in Indochina, Mac, occurred AFTER the Americans left. And let's not forget all the places where America by it presence and persistence eventually insured democracy really took hold, places like Japan, so ably and enlightenedly governed by MacArthur, South Korea, the Philippines, Germany and many other nations. Yes, America has not achieved victory for democracy everywhere, and there were times when it had to temporarily support a right-wing authoritarian regime because of larger purposes, such as winning the Cold War, but no political entity in history is responsible for the liberty of so many people across the globe as is America. Surely you can see this. If not, you've been reading too much leftist distortion of the past.
In order to practise democracy a state is a necessary condition,where is the Iraqi state? The region is basically a collection of tribal fiefdoms. President Bush's claim that the imposition of democracy by force was feasible was probably a smoke screen for the attempt to control Iraq's oil supplies.If the Americans were sincere in their stated aim they would be ready to remain in Iraq until a functioning democratic and stable system government is introduced.They won't,the task is just too difficult,pity about all those Iraqi corpses. Of course Islamic society is dysfunctional,however it can't be brought into the 21st century by force of arms.
I haven't forgotten America's leading role against the Nazis,Japanese militarists and the Communists,my point is that US intervention is sometimes extremely detrimental to those small nations that were treated as pawns by American foreign policy planners,particularly during the Cold War.
Your statement that the 'real killing' occurred in Indo-China after the US left is not correct,the 'real killing' occurred when the Americans arrived,then continued after they left the region in chaos,as in Iraq. You're arguing that if someone sets fire to a house, he's not responsible for it burning down.
Even the modern Jihad was encouraged by US politicians as a useful proxy war against the Russians in Afghanistan,it wasn't such a good idea was it?
Muslims have been mass-murdering each other, and mass-murdering their near-slave dhimmi populations, and attacking neighbouring non-Muslim polities and destroying property and taking slaves and murdering civilians, ever since Jihad got going in the seventh century.
The Muslim population of Iraq, or of any other Islamic country, cannot live at peace with one another, or with anybody else, because the suspicion and aggression, the continual falsehood, and the zero-sum mentality, prevents them from doing so.
Unless, per miraculum, everybody simultaneously apostasised from Islam, Iraq will continue to be a hell-pit, whether Americans remain there or not, and whether non-Muslim outsiders try to intervene, or not: a place where men hate and destroy women, women live in terror of men (who can, and frequently do, kill them on the flimsiest of manufactured excuses), men hate and murder other men, and Muslims despise, rob, rape, and kill those who are not Muslims; and where the most violent and cleverest psychopath will, eventually, claw his way to the top of the heap and rule with a club of iron, only to be eventually dragged down in turn. See Wafa Sultan's "A God Who Hates" for a picture of what things are like in a society suffused with Islam. Nonie Darwish's book on Sharia has some insights, too.
Sometimes, because humans can grow weary of evil-doing as of well-doing, the pace of the killings and other monstrosities will slacken off; but at other times, the whole place will go mad.
The Christians were not *totally* persecuted under Saddam Hussein - but what is happening to them today, this violent onslaught, is identical with similar waves of orgiastic Muslim violence that have hit them in the past. (One sees a similar pattern in Coptic history, after the Islamic conquest; periods of Muslim slacking-off, for one reason or another, during which the dhimmi population may recover a little in numbers and prosperity; but then another wave of savage persecution, as the Muslims decide that it's time to teach them uppity dhimmis a lesson).
A posting made here last year by 'Ethoman':
ethoman | December 5, 2009 7:37 PM | Reply
'This is amazing what I've read here in his pdf.
*Genocides on Assyrian Christians every other generation since Islamization began in Iraq/Turkey* {my emphasis - dda} ... this is what Islamic immigration means to our grandchildren.
http://www.aina.org/reports/ig.pdf
'It is sad, but we should just get the Christians our of there, and send the Muslims out [of our countries]".