Christian posters and lurkers will find more information about these attacks on the Christians of Iraq, and suggestions for action, if they visit the websites of 'Release International' and 'The Barnabas Fund'. At both, donations can be made to assist the Christians.

I will draw attention also - this notice is for Christian readers - that on 9 November is the ' Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church'. If your parish priest/ pastor/ minister is 'on side', such a day could include educating people about jihad and dhimmitude.

There are, of course, non-Muslim countries (worst of all, North Korea) that severely persecute Christians. But it is the Muslim countries that comprise the majority of persecuting regimes.

So the 'Day of Prayer', while not at all forgetting the plight of Christians in, for example, China and North Korea and Vietnam could include a special focus on the plight of Christians in Muslim-dominated countries and regions.

One could have books such as Bat Yeor's 'The Dhimmi' and 'The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam' set out on tables for people to open up and sample - or to open up, and use as inspiration for their prayers.

If you have refugee Sudanese, Nigerian, Assyrian or Lebanese or Coptic Christians in your suburb or town, they could be contacted and asked how they might like to take part...indeed, they could be encouraged to lead that part of the proceedings that involves intercession for dhimmi Christians.

And in the case of the Muslim countries, although 9 November is the 'day of prayer for the persecuted church', I know that on that day I will not merely be praying for Christians who suffer under Islam; I will be praying for ALL non-Muslims (whether Jewish, Hindu, animist, Buddhist...) who suffer Muslim oppression, contempt and violence in Muslim lands or Muslim-dominated regions.

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at October 13, 2008 4:59 PM

Hi Robert, Hugh, Marisol, et al.,
Iraqi Christian blogger Marshmallow is speaking out against the persecution of her fellow Iraqi Chrisitians (It would be nice if people gave her some support):

STOP CHRISTIANS PERSECUTION IN MOSUL!!
Where is the government? Where are you Maliki and Talabani? Where are you hiding Human Rights minister? Are you aware of what is going on in Mosul? Is the cancellation of item 50 gave you more power? Or was it a hindrance in your way? Do you know that 900 families fled Mosul to the suburban and villages to seek their lives? Do you know that those families are escaping Mosul on daily basis in droves? Are you saying that you know the Iraqi history very well? I doubt it!! If you would, then you have to know that WE HAVE THE RIGHT more than any other creature to stay in Iraq, we are the patriarchs; we established and found Mesopotamia, although we are the minority now but we are the original inhabitants!! What should I call this massacre? Killing campaign? Why is this happening? Why especially in Mosul?

Do Mosul Muslims hate Christians that much? Why is that? What have we done? What mistake have we done to them? Where is Prft Mohammed from all of this? Is he commanding them to kill Christians? Are they getting the answer through their prayers or night visions? What kind of peace that all were talking about? In Ramadan and Eid?? Irony! We have had enough of this stenchful antipathy which is annoying our hearts... I am in a mid of a chaotic situation, I can't laugh and talk and live my life while my Christian relatives are going through the worst...I can't accept the idea of “Islam is religion of peace" while Muslims are butchering my fellows with knife...

Posted by: Mister Ghost at October 13, 2008 5:00 PM

I'm as glad that Saddam is gone as anyone; he was a butcher. But he protected Christians from Islamic persecution, and what do we do with that? The US government (and even more so the Crown) doesn't have the will to force our "liberated countries" to respect basic human rights. And the governments are so weak that they wouldn't be able to do it even if they had the will. Only a brutal strongman (Saddam) or oppressive state machinery (Turkey) can control the monster.

Posted by: Cyril Lucar at October 13, 2008 5:00 PM

I'm as glad that Saddam is gone as anyone; he was a butcher. But he protected Christians from Islamic persecution, and what do we do with that?
-Cyril Lucar

Was Saddam any less of a butcher with the Christians than he was with Shia or Kurds, or even with Sunnis who threatened his rule?
He subjected Christians to relocation if they were anywhere near the oil fields.

So let's never hear again about overthrowing tyrants anywhere. There will always be one group or another that was better off under the tyrant.

The Vatican says Christians were better off under Saddam? And what does that mean? A little persecution is better than a lot? Christians weren't FAVORED by Saddam.

Posted by: PMK at October 13, 2008 5:51 PM

The "surge" has worked only in the sense of making a second Saudi Arabia. We're making it safe only for Muslims, from being killed by other Muslims. Now the jihadists can concentrate on spreading Islamic propaganda in the West using Iraq's massive oil profits. Way to go Bushie faux-patriots.

Posted by: Max Publius at October 13, 2008 7:09 PM

The Iraqi Christian cited above, asks a series of questions. I have taken the liberty of reproducing those questions - and supplying the answers.

Q: "Why is this happening? Why especially in Mosul?"

A: it is happening because the Qur’an, Sira, Hadith and the Pact of Omar and all the mainstream Muslim commentators, jurists and theologians 9th-20th century say that this is what Muslims should do to non-Muslims.

Q: Do Mosul Muslims hate Christians that much?

A: Yes.

Q: Why is that?

A: Because they are taught to hate and attack Christians: by Qur'an, Sira, Hadith and the orthodox interpreters, 9th C-21st century.

Q: What have we done?

A: You are Christians, that is all. *That* is the casus belli. *That* is the unendurable humiliation and persecution and 'corruption in the land' that you have 'caused', all by merely choosing to remain Christian, rather than join Mohammed's Organised Crime Gang/ Death Cult/ War Cult and bow to the Arab Imperial Religion.

Q: What mistake have we done to them?

A: Same as the previous answer: you have chosen to remain Christian rather than bow to Mohammed and ‘allah’. So long as you do that - stay Christian - you offend them by existing.

Q: Where is Prft Mohammed from all of this?

A: The false prophet Ubul Kassim/ Abu [a]l-Kassim, Ha-Meshugga ['the Madman'], alias 'Mohammed', is the very model that your attackers are carefully and piously imitating.

Q: Is he commanding them [the jihadists] to kill Christians?

A: Yes he is. Mohammed was (or is very effectively portrayed as being) a warlord and mass murderer. His supposed words from 'allah', are the instructions the Muslim thugs are following when they attack, rob, rape and kill Christians and attempt to reduce you to terrified dhimmitude, paying them 'protection' money in order to be - perhaps! it isn't guaranteed! - grudgingly permitted to continue to exist.

See Qur'an Surah 9, especially 9: 29, and a great many passages in the Qur'an, including those verses which tell Muslims that they MUST NOT befriend Christians or ally with them in any way - except feigningly and temporarily, for Muslim advantage.

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at October 13, 2008 8:04 PM

The anguished and bewildered iraqi Christian blogger quoted by a poster above, needs to consider this sampling from the texts of Islam:

Tabari IX:69 -
“He who believes in Allah and His Messenger has protected his life and possessions from us.

"As for those who disbelieve, we will fight them forever in the Cause of Allah.

"Killing them is a small matter to us.”


Ibn Ishaq's canonical 'life of Mohammed', 327:
“Allah said, ‘A prophet must slaughter before collecting captives.
'A slaughtered enemy is driven from the land.
'Muhammad, you craved the desires of this world, its goods and the ransom captives would bring.
'But Allah desires killing them to manifest the religion.’” 


(From the Hadith) - Sahih Bukhari:V5B59N727:

"When Allah's Apostle became seriously sick, he started covering his face with a woolen sheet. When he felt short of breath, he removed it, and said, "That is so! Allah's curse be on Jews and Christians".

She might also find illumination in the words of certain no-nonsense western scholarly observers of the Muslim world.

Joseph Schacht, scholar, in his book "An Introduction to Islamic Law" (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982) writes:

"The basis of the Islamic attitude towards unbelievers is the law of war; they must be either converted, or subjugated, or killed."

Jacques Ellul, French sociologist, Professor of Law, and lay theologian, veteran observer of many a futile and fatuous 'inter-faith "dialogue"' in France, writing his foreword on 'jihad', for Bat Yeor's "The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam":

"There is so much talk nowadays of the 'tolerance' and fundamental 'peacefulness' of Islam, that it is necessary to recall its nature, which is *fundamentally warlike* {my emphasis added - dda}".

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at October 13, 2008 8:18 PM

The persecution of Christians in Mosul, in Iraq, today, does not come out of nowhere.

And the hatred and the aggression have nothing whatever to do with the 'occupation'; and everything to do with Islam and the attitudes it inculcates, toward the non-muslim.

Here is the testimony of Samuel Zwemer, great scholar, observer of the Muslim world, missionary and traveller.

Samuel Zwemer (d. 1952), an American scholar of Islam, and former editor of Moslem World, wrote the following in 1920 (in "Moslem World," Vol. 10, pp. 154-155):

“Its [Islam's] intolerance and persecuting spirit have been revealed within the past few years, the blood of a million martyrs {the Christians of Armenia, murdered by Turkish and Kurdish Muslims in 1915-1916 - dda} testifying to the failure of Islam, its absolute failure to understand the words that open every chapter save one of their Sacred Volume: ‘God the Merciful and Compassionate’.

"A few years ago one of the leading Moslems of Baghdad {NOTA BENE - BAGHDAD} wrote an article for a French journal entitled, The Final Word of Islam to Europe :

‘For us [Muslims] in the world there are only believers and unbelievers;

'love, charity, fraternity toward believers;

'contempt, disgust, hatred, and war against unbelievers.

‘Amongst the unbelievers the most hateful and criminal are those {the Christians - dda} who, while recognizing God, attribute to Him earthly relationship, give Him a son, a mother.

‘Learn then, European observers, that a Christian of no matter what position, from the simple fact he is a Christian is in our eyes a blind man fallen from all human dignity.’…".

And it was *that* hatred, expressed by that 'leading Moslem of Baghdad' (a literate 'intellectual', publishing his hatred in France!) which produced a murderous jihad campaign against the Assyrian Christians in Iraq after the British left in 1932; with a death toll of at least 70 000.

As my second witness, I will adduce another renowned and authoritative Western scholarly observer of things Islamic, the Jewish researcher, S D Goitein, discussing the situation in the same part of the world, some twenty years later than the time at which Zwemer wrote.

In 1949, speaking of the Arab Muslim world generally, in particular Egypt, he warned:


“Islamic fanaticism…is now openly encouraged…writers whose altogether Western style (was mentioned earlier) have been vying with each other for some time in compiling books on the heroes and virtues of Islam…

"What has now become possible in educated circles may be gathered from the following quotation from an issue of the ‘New East’, an Arab monthly periodical describing itself as the ‘organ of the academic youth of the East’:

QUOTE 
‘Let us fight fanatically for our religion;

let us love a man-because he is a Moslem; let us honor a man- because he is a Moslem; let us prefer him to anyone else-because he is a Moslem;

and never let us make friends with unbelievers, because they have nothing but evil for us.’ UNQUOTE."

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at October 13, 2008 8:34 PM

PMK: "The Vatican says Christians were better off under Saddam? And what does that mean? A little persecution is better than a lot? Christians weren't FAVORED by Saddam."

While I don't pretend to be an expert on this, I think Christians were somewhat favored by Saddam, especially in comparison to the Sharia types. Saddam had Christians in the highest levels of his government. Christians support secularism, something religious Muslims are never satisfied with. The Ba'ath Party has always tried to maintain good relationships with Christians because it needs them as part of their support against the Islamists.

Posted by: Cyril Lucar at October 14, 2008 12:33 AM

Why Iraqi Christians are not forming militias?

Posted by: AlexD at October 14, 2008 3:00 AM

Swords and knives are being sharpened. Ropes are being woven and hanging decks are being erected. They are waiting for the Americans to get out of the way.

When Obama surrenders this coming winter and our troops begin to withdraw after their defeat, the remnants of the Christians in Iraq will be massacred in masses just like 75 years ago (1933) when tens of thousands Assyrians (Christians) were massacred in one day in their own villages (Semele Massacre).

No one can stop this from happening assuming that someone cares. In the next two years, thousands of Christians in Iraq will be ambushed, beheaded, hanged or killed for the ultimate prize - women. Yes women, 50% of the Christians are women that can be raped over and over again. Why wait for Allah to provide 70 virgins when you die if you can have an advance while you are alive. After all, a bird in the hand is better 70 birds on a tree.

This is what drives Muslims to be Muslims and this is what drives every Muslim to kill or to die for - the 70 women that Allah or Mohammed (according to the Danish cartoons) is grooming for the Muslim men.

We live in a very sick world full of Muslims who worship, kill and even kill themselves for, sex and women.

Posted by: American at October 14, 2008 10:59 AM