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The plight of the dhimmis is increasing. From Ekklesia, with thanks to Nicolei:
As world attention focuses on the struggle to achieve a balance of constitutional interests between Kurds, Sunnis and Shias in Iraq, a human rights group is campaigning to draw fresh attention to the serious plight of Assyrian Christians and other minority groups.In a letter to the Guardian newspaper in the UK yesterday, Glyn Ford, Labour Euro-MP for South West England, joined former Tribune editor Mark Seddon and Andy Darmoo, head of Save the Assyrians, to ask why no proper attention has been given to minorities who make up 6 per cent of the Iraqi population.
"In particular, what of the Assyrian Christians?", they write. "Prevented from voting in the elections, in recent months many have had their land occupied and stolen, their churches firebombed and their families attacked. Isn't it time that the international community began championing the rights of Assyrians and other minorities before it is too late?"
Until the invasion of Iraq in 2003 there were estimated to be around one million Christians in Iraq. They include the country's original inhabitants, but are wrongly portrayed by militant Islamists as American infiltrators.
Some recent estimates say that between 60,000 and 80,000 Chaldo-Assyrian Christians have fled the country since the fall of Baghdad.
Church bombings in Assyrian neighbourhoods of Baghdad and Mosul in August and October 2004, mortar attacks, raids against Christian homes, and forced conversions have also contributed to the unease of a community that has increasingly felt itself under siege.
At least one militant organisation, The Islamic Mujahideen, has in the recent past demanded that all Mandaeans (another minority group) convert to Islam, leave the country, or be killed.
"Christian women are harassed, have acid thrown into their faces, are kidnapped and raped," says one civil rights activist. "They seek some safety behind the Muslim hajib.”
Read it all.
Posted by Robert at August 20, 2005 2:09 PM
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The Assyrian Christians may be a minority now, but they were, once upon a time, most of the people in Iraq. The way in which, after the conquest of Muslim Arabs, Mespotamia was steadily islamized, the Christians and Jews pushed after a few centuries to the side of life, and greatly reduced in numbers, deserves study -- for it may be the fate of Europe, and of America. Demographic conquest, if not seen as the threat it is, can be even more successful and devastating, in the end, than military conquest.
It was the same everywhere. After a few centuries, once those non-Muslims were sufficiently reduced in numbers and as a fructifying influence, the so-called Islamic high civilization disappeared. What remained was military power, as with the Ottomans, and luxury, as with Mughal India. But when one compiles the lists of scientists, thinkers, artists, musicians, philosophers, Islam for the past thousand years does not contribute, save for a few mosques.
So here is the question that the entire non-Muslim world wishes to ask the world of Islam, even assuming that it were to accept the exaggerated claims made for that so-called "Islamic civilization":
"What have you done for me lately?"
Posted by: Hugh![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at August 20, 2005 7:00 PM
My sister who is a true Christian that lives in St.Louis, Missouri, makes it a point to show her fellow Christians what is happening to Christians in Islamic countries, and she is not aware of sites like this. I am sending her a copy of Bridgitte Gabriel's video interview from Duke University. She needs all the ammunition she can find.
P.S.
For those of you who don't know Bridgitte Gabriel is founder of American Congrss for Truth. She is a Lebanese Christian who was there during the Civil War.
Posted by: Infidel One at August 21, 2005 5:33 AM
A cautionary situation: The historical record is proof that this will happen wherever Muslims gain power or even influence.
Posted by: epg at August 21, 2005 6:50 AM
It didn't happen under Sadam.
Christians in Syria are also protected. I bet they can't wait for US "liberation" either.
Posted by: Timbo at August 21, 2005 8:16 AM
The Assyrians unlike the Arabized Chaldeans are really one of the toughest Christian groups in the Middle East. I met an Assyrian who later lost his life by the side of our fighting men in Iraq. He told me of British betrayal of the Assyrians. After being promised their own state if the fought by the side of the British in the First World War, they were betrayed by Western Dhimmis and thrust among the Kurds who perpetrated genocide against them on more than one occasion. The victims of the Anfal operations, which the Kurds often wail about, had many Christians among them. I walked into Assyrian Villages and Churches that were leveled by Sadam after the Gulf War. The UN spent billions in the Kurdish territories, but did not spend a penny on those destroyed villages.
I have seen the Kurds, emboldened by “their victory” (I thought it was ours) on Sadam, acting as thugs toward the local Assyrians. Steeling their land, and leasing it to the American at astronomical fees to the Americans, or using the land to reward Kurdish leaders and loyalists, kidnapping Christian girls (very beautiful, by the way), raping, and forcefully converting them, moving to their neighborhoods and taking over, and thousand upon thousands of examples of Kurdish malevolence toward the long suffering Assyrians.
The Kurds only look good when compared to their Arab neighbor which is no statement about them as a people. Historically, wherever the Kurdish tribes settled, local Christians were wiped out… Millions of Armenians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syrian Christian met their doom through out the centuries at the hands of Kurdish tribesmen. America by its moral failure to protect the Christians of Iraq is setting itself up for a major surprise by its presumed Kurdish allies.
Let’s not forget that the first battles fought on Iraqi soil were between militant Kurds, Ansar Al-Islam, and the United States Special Forces near the Iranian borders. The warped view of Pentagon Dhimmis toward the Kurds is through the Dhimmi prism which has only selective vision powered by the old staple of fools, wishful thinking rather than objective analysis, which would certainly lead to a hard crash on the rocky shores of reality
at August 21, 2005 6:45 PM
Timbo:
Some of Tariq Aziz's family were interviewed shortly after the fall of Iraq and complained that their cousin didn't use his position of power to do a damned thing for them, so there were issues then too. No matter what actions are taken or not taken, Christians are an endangered species throughout Muslim lands.
Posted by: waterdragon52 at August 22, 2005 10:14 AM
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