Good thing they’re a democracy now, eh? From AP, with thanks to Twostellas:
AIN KAWA, Iraq – For the Toma brothers, life was getting more precarious by the day. One of them had survived two shootings. Their cousin had been murdered. A CD of beheadings named them as American agents. “Long Live Saddam Hussein” and “Allahu Akbar” had been painted on their church. It was clearly time to flee.
Too late. As Hani and Khaled Toma backed out of the garage to make the two-hour drive from Mosul to the relative safety of Irbil on Sept. 2, a dozen gunmen riddled their red BMW with bullets, adding two more to the dozens of members of Iraq’s tiny Christian community who have been murdered in Iraq’s post-invasion blood bath.
Over the past year, about 100 families from Mosul have taken refuge in Ain Kawa, a small Christian suburb of the northern Kurdish city of Irbil. Hundreds more have fled to other Kurdish-protected villages and towns….
The Toma family lived in Al Sa’ah, long a predominantly Christian neighborhood of Mosul but in recent years home to increasing numbers of Muslims.
“There are a lot of Wahhabis there now, watching us,” Raad Toma said, referring to adherents of the puritan form of Islam preached by Osama bin Laden. He said he had seen a wall poster in the neighborhood saying, “Killing of Christians and Jews is required as soon as possible.”…
Even in cases where justice is done, the dangers persist. The man who knifed Sonya Nasri’s husband to death and injured her 24-year-old son was caught, tried and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Muslim custom gives the victim’s family a say in the sentencing, and the perpetrator’s father demanded that Nasri agree to a shorter prison term. When she refused, he threatened in open court to kill her son Ghaydan in revenge.…
The role of Iraqi Christians in the marketing of alcohol is one reason they have come under threat. Also, Christians are viewed as wealthy, making them more likely to be kidnapped for ransom.
More dangerous, perhaps, is the notion that they are friendly toward their American co-religionists and therefore are “Crusaders” bent on destroying Islam. “They see us as being hand-in-hand with the Americans,” said Father Toma, who is not related to the Toma brothers. “It is a wrong label.”
“Unfortunately, they’ve turned it into a war against the Crusaders and are taking it back to the Middle Ages,” he said, adding that churches in Iraq haven’t been attacked since the Mongols destroyed Baghdad in the 13th century.
Christians participated enthusiastically in Iraq’s Jan. 30 election, and although mainstream Muslim leaders have denounced the attacks on them, Raad Toma expects the vote will result in “extremist Islamists” taking power. He says they have already infiltrated the Iraqi security forces.
He says he needs surgery for the gunshot wound that has left him with a limp, and wants to leave Iraq,
“Things are going to get much worse for Christians,” he said.