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More persecution of Christians in Baghdad. From AsiaNews, with thanks to Insubria:
Baghdad (AsiaNews) – “Get rid of the cross or we will burn your Churches”. This is the threat aimed at the Chaldean Church of Sts Peter and Paul, located in the ancient Christian quarter of Baghdad, Dora. Local sources say an unknown armed Islamic group is behind the threats which are inseminating terror in the capital. The Arab website Ankawa.com and Aina news agency speak of a campaign of persecution in act in the area. Even Mosul, a Sunni stronghold, the Christian presence is being gravely threatened.Msgr. Shlemon Warduni, Chaldean auxiliary bishop of Baghdad, tells AsiaNews “in the last 2 months many Churches have been forced to remove their crosses from their domes”. In the case of the Church of St. George, assira, Muslim extremists took the situation into their own hands: they climbed onto the roof and ripped out the cross. In the Chaldean Church of St John, in Dora, which has been without a pastor for months now, the parishioners themselves decided to move the cross to a safer place following repeated threats.
The same threats which have arrived at the Church of Sts Peter and Paul, which has so far however withstood intimidation: the cross hasn’t been removed but the threats continue. “The Iraqi people are tired – says Warduni – we have been suffering for far too long the situation has become unsustainable; we ask God to give us peace. The Christians, just like the Muslims, want to rebuild Iraq, we don’t want to be forced to flee, because this is where we were born, this is where we have lived our lives”.
The Islamic group active in Dora seems to have delivered an ultimatum to the Christian community there: convert to Islam or die; moreover reports say that they have delivered a Fatwa forbidding Christians to wear the cross or make any religious gesture. It also permits the confiscation of goods and properties belonging to the Christian families who find themselves forced to flee their homes for safety at short notice.
Posted by Robert at April 18, 2007 2:20 PM
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Send those "human shileds" over there! You know, those self-righteous dimwits that vowed to stand in front of orphanages and hospitals as Bush and Blair would never attack them and risk their lives (the shields being so much more important than Iraqi children and sick you understand).
They got a bit miffed when Saddam superglued them to the doors of military installations.
Anyway, job for them now.
Posted by: Celsius![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 18, 2007 2:39 PM
Christians are beginning to feel like the muccus characters in a Musinex commercial....DOOMED....
Posted by: exsgtbrown at April 18, 2007 2:57 PM
What does CAIR and Ibrahim Hooper have to say about this? I won't hold my breath waiting for their press release, but wouldn't it be nice to inundate their email boxes with questions asking for comments on this?
Posted by: pak152 at April 18, 2007 3:15 PM
Reading articles like this is what has turned me decidedly against the iraq war.
Worse yet, it’s probably a conscious decision from U.S. civilian officials not to protect the Chaldeans out of fear of "offending" muslims.
I used to be a Bush supported, now I am not. I am not a hater like many, but I think he is singlehandedly destroying the Republican party....
Posted by: adobe at April 18, 2007 3:45 PM
"he is singlehandedly destroying the Republican party...."
-- from a posting above
If American forces are still in Iraq in 2008, the Republican candidate, whoever he is, will not have a chance. And he might be someone who does recognize the folly of this now Night-Light Unto the Muslim Nations project, as workinig against the formulation of a policy, designed to weaken the Camp of Islam, and to hearten, and strengthen, and inspire, the as-yet-unformed Camp of Infidels. The would-be candidates on the Republican side should not be afraid to, should take every opportunity insttead to distance himself from the continued presence of American troops in Iraq, should instead note that what "victory" is possible can only come about not if those troops go rather than stay, and dare to suggest that at this point continuing to remain would mean squandering men, money, materiel, and damaging morale both civilian and military, all in a "civil war" or rather a series of mini-wars. And this should be done while listing all the other much more effective and less costly means to check the main instruments of Jihad, including (gasoline tax, severe restrictions on Muslim immigration, for we have no way of distinguishing those who wish to challenge the legal and political institutions of this country so as to remove what are termed the "obstacles" to the spread and inexorable future dominance of Islam, possible seizure of Darfur and the southern Sudan to protect the non-Muslims and non-Arab Muslims, and announcing intelligent efforts at propaganda to exploit, rather than attempt to prevent (which is what the Bush policy in Iraq is all about), perhaps even to widen, the fissures, sectarian, ethnic, and economic, that exist within Islam and which Infidels have done nothing to cause.
Otherwise, the Republicans will not have a chance, no matter who may be the Democratic candidate.
Posted by: Hugh at April 18, 2007 4:32 PM
Time to install steel crosses (with electric wires routed up to them from the church's fusebox) and let the loons climbing up to tear them down get a shocking revelation.
If our "Crusader" forces can't protect these people, we're running a self-defeating campaign, since "democracy" requires that the minority voices be defended against the tyranny of the majority.
Email Bush about this anti-Christian terrorism.
president@whitehouse.gov
Posted by: profitsbeard at April 18, 2007 6:00 PM
Otherwise, the Republicans will not have a chance, no matter who may be the Democratic candidate.
Posted by: Hugh
Even Hitlery? Hard to imagine more than 50% could vote for Satan incarnate.
Posted by: Allahfanculo at April 18, 2007 10:24 PM
BLAME BUSH - THOSE CHRISTIANS LIVED IN PEACE BEFORE HE SENT HIS DRUNKARD ARMY
at April 18, 2007 10:38 PM
Again, here we go with Abdullah's "It's not the fault of Muslims" mentality. So are you saying it's the nature of Muslims to harass Christians if they can get away with it? Well, I don't expect yo to give objective thought to that let alone answer ANY of my questions, as objectivity is not in the wiring of your myopic brain. The fault lies with the evil islamomaniacs who can't leave people in peace. Got news for you dude, the Christians in Iraq walked a thin line BEFORE March of 2003. Now it's just in the news.
Posted by: never_submit at April 18, 2007 11:14 PM
How pathetic to be so threatened by two perpendicular bars. Definitely offensive, this symbol.
Galatians 5:11-12 Brothers, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished. As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!
at April 18, 2007 11:21 PM
Abdullah, are you in reality a Christian or Jew who just likes making provocative statements?
Posted by: aussie_antipodean at April 19, 2007 12:19 AM
It strikes me that this is about enforcing dhimmi rules - "do not show the cross" (as per a Saudi sermon on behaviour required of non-Muslims in a Muslim country, cited in Myth of Islamic Tolerance, p. 49).
I wonder how long it will be before the thousands of visible crosses all over Western countries and in Eastern countries such as India or the Philippines, on churches and in cemeteries, start being vandalised wholesale?
My faith enjoins me to charity for the human beings born into Islam, most of them trapped beyond hope of escape, hermetically sealed off from any alternative. But for the SYSTEM of Islam itself - especially the thrice-accursed sharia law with its truly damnable rejection of reciprocity, its perversion of justice that is worse than Jim Crow or Apartheid, its cruelty equalling or exceeding Chairman Mao, Stalin, ancient Assyria or the Aztecs, its encouragement of total contempt, vanity, falsehood, pride, envy, wrath, greed, lust and sloth in the hearts of the Master-Religion Muslims as, like Nazi concentration camp guards, they are encouraged to stamp on the faces of the 'subhuman' non-Muslims and feel good about doing it...for that inhuman and soul-destroying system, the more I learn about it, the more I recoil in revulsion. I cannot find enough words to describe its ugliness. Thank God for Oriana Fallaci.
Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at April 19, 2007 1:16 AM
"BLAME BUSH - THOSE CHRISTIANS LIVED IN PEACE BEFORE HE SENT HIS DRUNKARD ARMY
Posted by: Abdullah"
......hey Abby, no, they did not....
"During Saddam's wars with the Kurds hundreds of Assyrian villages were destroyed their inhabitants were rendered homeless, driven out of their historic homeland, and scattered as refugees in large cities or the neighboring countries. dozens of ancient churches some dating to the early centuries of Christianity were bombed and turned into rubble. "
....Other Christians were harrassed, tortured, raped, executed and/or forced to live as second class citizens....
at April 19, 2007 6:16 AM
Abdullah,
I do blame Bush! I blame him for removing Saddam Hussein who knew how to keep you Muslims in line, and was wise enough to appoint Christians like Tarik Aziz to run his government.
Posted by: Provoslavni at April 19, 2007 11:18 AM
We should all be seriously afraid of Islam and the radicals within. Tearing down crosses in supposedly "free" Iraq, shows the lengths they (Islamists) will go to, to destroy "Infidels" (read non-Islam).
There is no safe haven from these murderers and rapists. They will come for you in the middle of the night and they will NEVER stop even after the US is out of Iraq and Afghanistan and the entire Middle East.
I am not a right wing extremist. I'm a realist!
They have been doing this for thousands of years and they will never, ever stop. Ever. Think about it!
Posted by: PhreedomPhighter at April 19, 2007 2:49 PM
It's time for an Assyrian homeland. In fact, it's long overdue. It's time to withdraw coalition troops from Sunni and Shia areas, but coalition troops can be garrisoned in Assyrian territories to ensure Assyrian safety and autonomy and to provide a hospitable forward staging area for military operations in the region.
This will stop and, ideally, even reverse the exodus of non-Moslems from their homelands. It will leave the Sunnis and Shias to work out their differences unencumbered with Western military aid, training and money. It might -just might- provide a jarring example of people living peacefully and in prosperity, while their Moslem neighbors continue in the ways set for out them by the man they hold to be an excellent example, for all people, for all time. This could demoralize dar al Islam, as has been suggested elsewhere.
The present administration won't do this. It won't do the right thing. Unlike others, I believe that President Bush is bright, or at least bright enough to know which side his bread is buttered on. How else to explain Dubya's support of Dubai's take-over bid of American portlands? But he remains under a cloud, not only resulting from a shaky mandate from the 2000 election but from a series of decisions that seem to favor business cronies, the Halliburtons, the Dubai Ports Worlds and various oil interests.
If he wants to bring freedom and democracy to the Middle East, he must subordinate his loyalties to his business associates. If he wants to bring freedom and democracy to the Middle East, let him bring it to the people who have the greatest opportunity for understanding its significance: the non-Moslems.
Posted by: Chatillon at April 19, 2007 3:06 PM
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