Will the Islamophobia never end? "Iraq: Kirkuk church bombing injures at least 20," from AKI, August 2 (thanks to C. Cantoni):
Kirkuk, 2 Aug. (AKI) - A priest and at least 19 others were injured Tuesday by an autobomb that detonated outside a church in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, according to comments made by the local police.The attack took place in Kirkuk's Shatterlo neighborhood at around 5:30 a.m., according to a police. More than 40 homes were damaged by the blast.
Terrorists in Iraq have stepped up attacks against the country's minority Christian population. An attack against a Christian church in Baghdad on 31 October, left 58 worshippers dead including two priests. It was one of the worst in the spate of attacks that have targeted Iraqi Christians and have left scores dead....
NO problem to the evil Left! These Christian-hating Muslim terrorists must be against "Western Imperialism" - according to the ever stupid Judeo-Christian-hating Left manifesto!
"There have been calls for Iraq to create an autonomous Christian region in the north of the country, where around 100,000 Christians have taken refuge since the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003" --from the article
With the problems arising for the Copts in Egypt since the so-called "Arab spring" and with the (hopefully) successful partition of South Sudan from the Moslem North, both the nature of the problem for the Iraqi Christians and its solution can be seen.
The Christian Iraqis, Copts and South Sudanese are all indigenous peoples. They have an inalienable right to worship as they see fit in their own homelands. If this right comes under threat, they have the further right as a people to dissolve the political bands that have connected them with another.
I remember reading that somewhere. Maybe somebody can provide me with a reference...
I remember reading that somewhere. Maybe somebody can provide me with a reference...
Scratchin' my noggin on that one...Something about "One if by land, two if by sea..." something something....
A lesson of history the muzloid zombies fail(ed) to learn.
"Terrorists in Iraq have stepped up attacks against the country's minority Christian population."
Terrorists or just pious Muslims?....
Terrorists in Iraq have stepped up attacks against the country's minority Christian population. An attack against a Christian church in Baghdad on 31 October, left 58 worshippers dead including two priests. It was one of the worst in the spate of attacks that have targeted Iraqi Christians and have left scores dead....
..............................
Yes, this is true. This attack in Kirkuk has an additional aspect, as well.
The Kurdish north of the country had actually been something of a haven for Christians in Iraq—at least by the standards of the region.
Kurds had actually invited Christians to move into the area, for several reasons—they knew Christians would not be a threat to them, that they could probably be convinced to vote along Kurdish political lines, which would aid Kurds in maintaining semi-autonomy.
Quite a few Christians did relocate to Kurdistan.
The recent attacks in Kirkuk—mostly, it seems, perpetrated by non-Kurdish Sunni Muslims—have made it abundantly clear that for Iraqi Christians, there *is no haven*.
I have a missionary friend in Arbil, Iraq about 50 miles North of Kirkuk.
Funny, I don't hear Bolton making pointed statements like that during all the hours he gets every month on the national news entertainment networks.
Coming to a city near us as we seem to morf into a minority status. God help us!
Re. the Kurds.
We should not entirely give up hope.
Not long ago, the New Testament was translated into at least one dialect of Kurdish.
The Kurdish literary scholar within Turkey whom the Bible Society engaged to work on one such translation - he was already a somewhat disaffected Muslim, and chafing against the Turkish repression of his language and people - became a *Christian* (and a very enthusiastic, actively evangelising one!) as a result of doing the translation.
He is not the only Kurd, either, who has become a Christian in the past ten years. Sources to which I have access inform me that there *is* a small - and growing - Kurdish-speaking church, composed entirely of converts from Islam, meeting discreetly in homes in parts of the Kurdish territory. If you think about it, it makes sense: Kurds are despised by the Arabs because non-Arab Muslims are always looked down on and mistreated by Arab Muslims; and Kurds have *also* been despised and mistreated, and their language and culture attacked and suppressed, by the Turkish Muslims - and then along comes Christianity, telling them that God is happy to speak and be spoken to in their native tongue. Christianity embraces and redeems their ethnicity, freeing them from the burden of having to become fake Arabs. And the gospel in the mother tongue, by accessing the part of the brain that operates in that tongue, does an end-run around the Arabic-language cult programming. (Just as, in Algeria, Gospel broadcasts in the Berber language, and scripture translations in Berber, have borne fruit in the phoenix rising of a Berber-speaking church; though one that is also quite comfortable speaking Arabic and French, and includes Arabic-speaking apostates from Islaml).
Were a 'Christian homeland' to be established for the Assyrian Christians, I could envisage the Kurdish Muslim-background Christians choosing to throw their lot in with their Assyrian brothers and sisters in faith.