ICC Note: The Archbishop of Baghdad urges the West to release what has been happening in Iraq over the past decade in regards to the country’s Christian community. The general insecurity and violence has impacted the Christian community most of all. Some 850,000 Iraqi Christians have left the country, according to a recent statement by the U.N. The long-term impact of such a large-scale demographic shift will be staggering. Perhaps the most worrying figure is that similar scenarios are currently in play in Iraq’s neighboring country of Syria and in Egypt. This factor must be added into the calculus of the world’s decision makers.
12/18/2013 Iraq (World Watch Monitor) – The Archbishop of Baghdad, Louis Raphael I Sako, has called on the West to help put an end to the “mortal exodus” of Christians from the Middle East.
Sako, who is also Patriarch of Babylon, told a conference in Rome, “Christianity and Freedom: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives”, that the West must assist the Muslim nations of the Middle East in “modernising Islam’s approach to religious freedom” and “convince Muslim nations that their repression and persecution of their minority Christian communities is not only harming the Christians, but is harming the societies themselves”.
Sako, a keynote speaker at the conference run by the Religious Freedom Project at Georgetown University, which recently hosted the UK’s Baroness Warsi, said the situation in Iraq over the past 10 years has gone from bad to worse, and that he can see similar situations unfolding in Egypt and Syria.
“In Iraq, after 10 years, we still don’t have security. There are daily attacks, explosions, kidnappings and murders. The same scenario is happening in Syria and in Egypt,” he said.
Sako quoted the Coptic Catholic Patriarch, Ibrahim Isaac Sidrak, who said that in the past 18 months, more than 100 Egyptian churches have been attacked. In Syria, Sako said 67 churches have been attacked and 45,000 Christians have left the country.
The Iraqi Archbishop pointed towards the rise of political Islam as one of the major opponents of the Church in the Middle East, while he said the US-led invasion of Iraq has “destroyed the country”, being replaced by a period of sectarian violence.
He added that governments seem “generally incapable” of controlling the sectarian battles between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.
“Suffering became an everyday struggle for all Iraqis, but especially for Christians,” he said. “Muslims are always strong enough with their tribes. They also have the advantage of living in a country ruled under Islamic orders. But Christians and other minority groups have been worn down by a worsening security situation.”
Since 2003, Sako said more than 1000 Christians have been killed in Iraq (and others kidnapped and tortured), while 62 churches and monasteries have been attacked.
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