Iraq ‘s Christians imperiled By Charles Tannock

For the full story, go to Philly.com Iraq ‘s Christian communities are among the world’s most ancient, having practiced their faith in Mesopotamia almost since the time of Christ. The Assyrian Apostolic Church has existed since 34 A.D., and the Assyrian Church of the East dates to 33 A.D. The Aramaic that many of Iraq ‘s Christians still speak is the language of Christ.

When tolerated by their Muslim rulers, Assyrian Christians contributed much to their societies. Their scholars helped to usher in the “Golden Age” of the Arab world by translating important works into Arabic from Greek and Syriac. But in recent times, toleration has scarcely existed. In the Armenian Genocide of 1914-1918, 750,000 Assyrians – roughly two-thirds of their number – were massacred by the Ottoman Turks with the help of the Kurds.

Under the Iraqi Hashemite monarchy, Assyrians faced persecution for cooperating with the British during World War I. Many fled to the West. During Saddam Hussein’s wars with the Kurds, hundreds of Assyrian villages were destroyed, their inhabitants rendered homeless, and dozens of ancient churches were bombed. The teaching of the Syriac language was prohibited, and Assyrians were forced to give their children Arabic names.

In 1987, the Iraqi census listed 1.4 million Christians. Today, only about 600,000 to 800,000 remain. As many as 60,000, and perhaps even more, have fled since the beginning of the insurgency that followed the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Their exodus accelerated in August 2004, after the start of the terrorist bombing campaign against Christian churches by Islamists.

A recent United Nations report states that religious minorities in Iraq “have become the regular victims of discrimination, harassment and, at times, persecution, with incidents ranging from intimidation to murder,” and that “members of the Christian minority appear to be particularly targeted.”

Indeed, there are widespread reports of Christians fleeing the country as a result of threats being made to their women for not adhering to strict Islamic dress codes. Christian women are said to have had acid thrown in their faces. Some have been killed for wearing jeans or not wearing the veil.

Over the last two years, 27 Assyrian churches have reportedly been attacked for the sole reason that they were Christian places of worship. These attacks go beyond targeting physical manifestations of the faith. Christian-owned small businesses, particularly those selling alcohol, have been attacked, and many shopkeepers murdered.

Sadly, the plight of Iraq ‘s Christians is not an isolated one in the Middle East . Iran ‘s population has nearly doubled since the 1979 revolution, but, under a hostile regime, the number of Christians in the country has fallen from roughly 300,000 to 100,000. In 1948, Christians accounted for roughly 20 percent of the population of what was then Palestine ; now, they are about 1.6 percent of the Palestinian population in the West Bank, Jerusalem , and the Gaza Strip.

In Egypt , emigration among Coptic Christians is disproportionately high; many convert to Islam under pressure, and over the last few years, violence against the Christian community has taken many lives. Saudi Arabia ‘s Wahabbi regime prohibits any form of Christian worship.

The persecution of these ancient and unique Christian communities, in Iraq and in the Middle East as a whole, is deeply disturbing. Last April, the European Parliament voted virtually unanimously for the Assyrians to be allowed to establish (on the basis of Section 5 of the Iraqi constitution) a federal region where they can be free from outside interference to practice their own way of life. It is high time now that the West paid more attention, and took forceful action to secure the future of Iraq ‘s embattled Christians.