For months we have followed here the deteriorating situation of Christians in Iraq, as the Sharia impulse reasserts itself. This is a problem that is not going to go away, and is only going to get worse, because those who can do anything about it don’t care, either because they themselves don’t believe, despite lip-service, in the equality of non-Muslims with Muslims, or because they have convinced themselves that Islam is a religion of peace, mercy, and tolerance — and therefore these things either aren’t happening at all or are just being perpetrated by a tiny minority of extremists that is of no great significance.
From the Christian Science Monitor, with thanks to Sharon and Susan:
BAGHDAD — It was 10:30 in the morning, almost four months ago, and the children were getting ready for church. Aziz Raad Azzo, 5 years old, was drinking his milk; his 14-year-old sister Raneen was putting on her new clothes. When they heard a car pull up, Raneen, thinking her father was home, ran to the window and flung open the shutters. Four men shot her and her little brother in the head.
The children’s crime: Their father, a Christian storekeeper, had sold alcohol.Before the murders, the family received a photocopied death threat. “We are warning you, the enemies of God and Islam, from selling alcohol again, and unless you stop we will kill you and send you to hell where a worse fate awaits you,” reads the warning, signed by “Harakat Ansar al-Islam,” the Partisans of Islam Movement.
These murderers were not warping the peaceful teachings of Islam. They were following an established principle of Islamic law: dhimmis “are forbidden to openly display wine or pork” (Umdat al-Salik, o11.4(6)). Above all this means they are not to sell it in a place where Muslims can buy it.