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Iraq: Shia Muslim “Popular Mobilization Unit” blocks Christians from church, strafes church with gunfire

Dec 23, 2018 3:00 pm By Robert Spencer

Somehow the Shabak doesn’t seem to have gotten the message that Muslims in the West are selling to credulous Christians: that Muhammad taught tolerance and peace toward Christians. He didn’t really. He taught that the Christians should be warred against and subjugated under Sharia (cf. Qur’an 9:29), and that is why this kind of thing keeps happening.

“The New Threat to Iraq’s Christians,” by Benedict Kiely, Real Clear Politics, December 18, 2018:

In March of 2017, with the battle for control of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, raging just miles away, I was driven into the town of Karamles, recently liberated from ISIS control. Together with a journalist friend, the parish priest of the town and an American adviser to the Catholic Archdiocese of Erbil, we walked among the ruined buildings surveying the results of ISIS occupation, which included a burnt church.

Virtually none of the former inhabitants had yet returned. There was nothing in the way of functioning infrastructure — no water or electricity — and many of the buildings were still booby-trapped with IEDs. The parish priest’s own house, intact because it had been used as an ISIS base, also had a bomb left inside it, which was discovered and disarmed when he returned.

Before ISIS, Karamles had some 10,000 residents, most of them Christians. Father Thabet Habib, the enthusiastic pastor, was determined that they should return and that the town would rebuild and thrive. As we left, the U.S. adviser told me to turn and look at the large metal structure that formed an official entrance to the town. Three flags flew from it. One was the flag of the Iraqi army, the second was that of the local Christian militia, the NPU. But it was the third banner that he wanted me to notice: the flag of Ali, the fourth Caliph of Islam, revered by Shia Muslims, and the official emblem of one of the Shia “Popular Mobilization Units.”

Why, he asked, was that flag flying as there were virtually no Shabak, the ethnic Shia population, living in this Christian town. Fr. Thabet interpreted its ominous significance: “The next attack on Christians,” he said, “will come from the Shabak.”

I returned to Karamles this past May, and much of Fr. Thabet’s positive dream is coming true. Due in great part to the generous help of the U.S.- based Knights of Columbus, the town is coming back to life, with houses and infrastructure being restored and families moving back. Many challenges remain, however, principally the need for jobs and security. At the entrance to the town is the ancient monastery of St. Barbara, desecrated and used as an ISIS base, complete with large tunnels. It has been restored and celebrations have resumed.

So far, the issue with the Shabak in Karamles has stayed relatively calm. But not so in the town of Bartella, liberated from ISIS in October 2016. It had a pre-ISIS population of 30,000 people, the majority of whom were Syriac Christians.

I have known the pastor of Bartella, Fr. Behnam Benoka, since I first visited Iraq in early 2015, when all of the Christians of the Nineveh Plain, some 120,000 people, had been driven out by ISIS. Fr. Benoka was then running a medical clinic in one of the largest refugee camps in Erbil, dealing with families traumatized after having fled their towns and villages with only the clothes on their backs. Fr. Benoka, widely regarded as one of the most able and effective Christian leaders in Iraq — he speaks multiple languages, including excellent English — was the priest telephoned by Pope Francis in December 2014 to share his concern for all the persecuted Christians terrorized by the Islamist terrorists.

In May of this year, I walked through the Old City of Mosul, perhaps the first Western priest to ever do so, accompanied by armed Iraqi police. Much of the Old City was still dangerous, with IEDs that had yet to be cleared and, sadly, many unrecovered bodies. However, driving into the town of Bartella, I felt a much greater sense of oppression than I’d felt in Mosul just hours before. Those in the town have a feeling of being surrounded. Meeting with Fr. Benoka in his parish, he confirmed my feelings.

Bartella, a Christian town for centuries, was controlled by the Shabak militia’s “Brigade 30,” one of the Hashd al-Shaabi PMU forces backed and resourced by Iran. Fifteen years ago, U.S. military forces assisted in settling some 2,000 Shabak families from Mosul and placed them in and around Bartella. That was already a considerable change to the demography, but after the entire Christian population fled from ISIS in 2014, it could be argued that Bartella’s fate was sealed.

Last week I spoke with Fr. Benoka for over 40 minutes on FaceTime. A few weeks ago, the Shabak militia blocked the road to his church, preventing his congregation from attending. They also strafed the church with gunfire. Fr. Benoka told me that this was the second time his church had been attacked in the last nine months. One of the militiamen held a handgun to the priest’s face when he went out to demand that they clear the street and stop shooting.

Later, in a provocation unreported in any media, the same hostile militia went to Qaraqosh, the largest Christian town on the Nineveh Plain, and menaced the people living there. Fr. Benoka told me that the Shabak want to drive the Christians from the area. “They are the new ISIS,” he told me. “We are really vulnerable.”…

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Filed Under: Featured, Iraq, Muslim persecution of Christians Tagged With: Karamles, Mosul


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Comments

  1. Jaladhi says

    Dec 23, 2018 at 3:25 pm

    Shia or Sunni or Sufi or by any other name – they are all the same and dangerous to infidels

    • christianblood says

      Dec 23, 2018 at 3:57 pm

      Christians and other minorities suffer persecution not in the hands of Shiite or Iranian or Hezbollah muslims but from from Sunni, Wahhabi, Takfiri muslims which are 91% of all muslims and which US and West supports and are US & Western allies!!! Mind you, according to the (thereligionofpeace.com) 34305 deadly islamic terrorist attacks have been carried out since 9/11. Could you please show me a single one of them perpetrated or carried out by Iranians, Shiites or Hezbollah??? Please watch the Christian Lebanese Bishop below as he, in his own words (..confirms the fact that Hezbolah protects Christians 100%..) PLease watch the video clip below and start from from 5:29 mark:

      • Giacomo Latta says

        Dec 25, 2018 at 10:06 pm

        If Shia are not killing these Christians then it is because there is no Shia presence or because a Sunni presence has kept them docile. christianblood wants to make the subect one of shot. To him or her Dalmatian shit is better than Labrador shit. Big deal!

    • James says

      Dec 23, 2018 at 5:50 pm

      They will be massacred, and the West will stand by and do…nothing. Massacre by Muslims against Christians is totally OK as far as the West is concerned, It barely, if at all, merits mention.

      • christianblood says

        Dec 24, 2018 at 11:27 am

        James

        You are exactly right, James!

    • J D S says

      Dec 24, 2018 at 10:20 am

      Any group, religious or not, that tries to place(actually force) their way of of life above another group can in no way be a good thing…
      Islam and it’s adherentS have been doing this forever and the same world has just allowed it to continue….. Religion in itself is a good thing but as the founders of the U.S. Decided…..Religion controlled by government or a government controlled by a religion was a bad thing…That’s why they and theirs left that situation and came to America in the first place and established a nation that has desperation of “church and state” as it is known today… So in the world today we have lslam trying to impose, by nook and crook, what we have fought, bled and died to keep out of our way of life and apparently our do called leaders CANT or WONT see this.

  2. gravenimage says

    Dec 23, 2018 at 3:29 pm

    Iraq: Shia Muslim “Popular Mobilization Unit” blocks Christians from church, strafes church with gunfire
    ………………….

    More proof that ISIS i far from the only threat to Christians and other Infidels.

    Shia Muslims may have been persecuted under Sunni ISIS, but one of the first things they are doing is persecuting Christians.

    God,I hate Islam.

    • christianblood says

      Dec 23, 2018 at 4:04 pm

      graevnimage

      THE REAL DANGER TO CHRISTIANS IN M.E.D EAST IS NOT HEZBOLLAH OR IRAN BUT IT IS LIBERAL AMERICA, THE WEST AND THEIR SUNNI JIHADIST ALLIES LIKE SAUDI ARABIA, AL-QAEDA, TALIBAN, ISIS AND DOZENS OF OTHER JIHADIST GROUPS!

      • Guy Forester says

        Dec 23, 2018 at 4:17 pm

        The Assad family are typical ME despots. We had no business jumping on the anti Assad bandwagon. It made no sense. He hates Israel, but so what. They had a stable situation. Now, we have opened the door for Iran to go in there and really destabilize things.

        Russia has put itself in the middle of another muslim v muslim war. I suspect that they will tire of this just like in Afghanistan. Turkey now has a self appointed Caliph trying to revive the old Ottoman Turk empire. Good luck. NO ONE wants that corrupt regime back. Not the Russians (arch enemies for centuries), not the Persians, not the Arabs, and of course, not Israel.

        Instead of trying to tear Syria apart, the US should have found ways to develop constructive trade and economic ties that would hopefully lessen the likelihood of Syria going wacky.

        • gravenimage says

          Dec 23, 2018 at 8:19 pm

          Wait–defeating ISIS is tearing Syria apart?

  3. somehistory says

    Dec 23, 2018 at 3:29 pm

    As long as there is a moslim presence, there is terrorism. No matter the “sect”…islam is islam and islam is bloodthirsty due to its demonic source…satan the devil. That demon is bloodthirsty and so are his children.

    • Mirren10 says

      Dec 24, 2018 at 4:39 am

      +1.

  4. Queen Rex says

    Dec 23, 2018 at 3:48 pm

    Yet Pope Francis’s remains silent on these persecutions. Some shepherd he is.

  5. Guy Forester says

    Dec 23, 2018 at 4:05 pm

    I would really like to know who started yanking on the POTUS chains to “liberate” Iraq, starting with Bush 1. There was no good reason to go there and get involved with muslim internecine battles. All we did was move one despot out and move in another. The real victims are the Christians, Yazidis, and other non muslim groups that were able to survive prior to us “liberating” the area.

    If we are going to bring in refugees, these minority groups should be on the top of the list. Instead we get terrorist wannabe’s from Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, and Pakistan. BTW, the muslims that cannot get in via the front door are showing up at our southern border. How many Christians, Jews, Yazidis, Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists have flown planes into buildings, built pressure cooker IED’s, and shot up US military installations?

  6. Crusades Were Right says

    Dec 23, 2018 at 4:42 pm

    As a Western Christian I am sick to the back teeth with establishment media and politicians in the West telling me that people who hate me for being a Christian are my “allies”!

  7. DexDecuman says

    Dec 24, 2018 at 5:45 am

    Jihad Xmas…..

  8. Laurie says

    Dec 24, 2018 at 9:26 pm

    St Barbara. The saint of lost causes.

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