Increasing Danger

style=width:203px;height:300px;float:right;" >THE SURVIVAL OF Christianity in Iraq is fast becoming a critical issue, with the Middle East’s Christian leaders arguing that political instability across the region must be resolved if the ongoing Christian exodus is to be stemmed.

In October, the kidnap and execution of Fr. Boulos Iskander, a Syrian Orthodox parish priest in Mosul, prompted Iraq’s Chaldean patriarch to denounce the international community’s seeming indifference to the fate of the country’s Christians, saying this jeopardised the existence of Christianity in the Middle East.

Although Fr. Iskander’s relatives had received a ransom demand for $350,000, they were then informed this would be reduced to $40,000 if the Syrian Orthodox Church publicly reprimanded Pope Benedict for his Regensburg speech earlier this year that was deemed offensive to Islam.

However, despite Fr. Iskander’s family raising the money and Orthodox officials posting billboards around the northern Iraqi city repudiating the Pope’s remarks, the priest’s decapitated body was found dumped by the roadside a week later.

Patriarch Emmanuel III Delly of Baghdad responded to the killing by criticising the “role of the international community that is unable to control the dramatic situation in the country”.

Sobering statistics

Estimates suggest Iraq’s Christian population has halved since the US-led invasion of the country in 2003, from a pre-war population of over 1.2 million to a current estimate of about 600,000. The patriarch called on the international community to act to protect the few indigenous Christians that remained as “a minority suffering because of the fratricidal war that has afflicted the country for many years”.

Speaking in late October during a brief visit to Lebanon, where he was taking part in a meeting of the Assembly of Patriarchs of the East, the patriarch called for reflection on the internal persecution and international indifference that had prompted the Christian exodus.

“There is the danger that the Middle East, the blessed land of God, will be emptied of its Christian presence,” he said, adding that this process represented a “big loss not only for Iraq, but for the cause of humankind.”

Despite the “continual violence” that the patriarch said existed in Iraq today, he exhorted Christians not to flee, highlighting the “need to keep the flame of the Christian presence burning in the land of Abraham”.

He paid homage to Fr. Eskandar for refusing to leave his flock despite receiving several death threats. By refusing to deny his faith and his mission, the patriarch said, the murdered priest sowed “the strength of his faith in Christ, Lord of History”. By his example, Christians “may learn to forgive and to persevere despite threats and challenges,” Patriarch Delly added.

Iraq’s highest Sunni religious authority, the Ulema Council, called the priest’s death “a cowardly murder… committed by people who want to deprive the country of every religious and national symbol that can hold Iraq together by trying to start a religious war between sons of the same nation”.

Life after Saddam

Since the 2003 US-led occupation of Iraq, there has been a near-total breakdown of law and order, a spate of kidnappings, executions and car bombs, and rival Shia and Sunni militias often fight pitched battles for control of potentially lucrative oil-rich areas. It is no wonder that so many Iraqis choose to flee their homes for a more stable life oversees. From the Christian perspective, the feeling of insecurity is heightened when one considers that an estimated 30 churches, as well as numerous Christian-owned business and shops selling alcohol, have been targeted by bomb blasts in the past three years.

The sentencing to death of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein (for the murder of 148 people in Dujail in 1982 after a failed assassination attempt on his life) in early November did nothing to quell Christian fears. While Hussein was in power, the country’s Christians lived in relative peace with their neighbouring Sunnis and Shiite communities. After Hussein was arrested, however, they became an increasingly easy target for violence. Anti-American elements in Iraq associate the country’s Christian communities with the majority Christian armies of the United States and Britain, who many Muslims believe are waging a modern-day crusade against Islam.

Out of the population of 26 million, 1.6 million Iraqis have fled the country and a further 1.5 million are displaced within Iraq, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. In Jordan alone there are 500,000 Iraqi refugees and a further 450,000 in Syria. In Syria alone they are arriving at the rate of 40,000 a month. Although Iraqis of all creeds are on the run, the country’s Christian minorities are particularly hard-hit, with many of their churches now standing closed.

So severe has the situation become that the American bishops’ conference has called for “specific measures” to be implemented in order to protect the country’s Christians and other religious minorities.

American bishops demand action

Bishop Thomas Wenski, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on International Affairs wrote an urgent letter to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in late October in which he said the Iraqi Christians’ “rapidly deteriorating situation” was causing “deep concern and growing alarm”.

He called attention to the “growing and deliberate” targeting of Christians, who make up more than 40 per cent of all Iraqi refugees, despite only comprising 4 per cent of the population, according to statistics compiled by the UN High Commission for Refugees.

The Committee on International Policy called for a new administrative region to be created centred on Nineveh which would ensure the protection of the country’s indigenous minorities.

“The growing and deliberate targeting of Christians is an ominous sign of the breakdown in Iraqi society of civil order and inter-religious respect and represents a grave violation of human rights and religious liberty,” said the committee’s letter. It cited the kidnapping of four priests including Fr. Iskander, the crucifixion of one Christian teenager, as well as the abduction and rape of Christian women and teenage girls, as reasons for the ongoing Christian exodus.

“It’s a disaster in Iraq at the moment,” said Philip Najeem, procurator of the Chaldean community at the Vatican. “When you don’t have any security in Iraq that’s why all these terrorist organisations are doing what they are doing… What’s happening these days is that there’s no security in the country so Christians are fleeing.”

The bishops’ letter deplored the sectarian violence engulfing the country’s Sunni and Shia communities. “The vulnerability of Christians and other religious minorities is dramatic evidence of the serious and growing security challenges facing the entire nation of Iraq,” said the letter.

New Administrative Region

The committee said the American administration should consider the creation of a new ‘Administrative Region’ in the Nineveh Plain Area that would be directly related to the central government in Baghdad, which would provide the area’s Christians with greater safety and offer them “more opportunity to control their own affairs”.

The letter also urged the American government to work with Kurdish authorities in the country’s north to ensure the safety of Christians, many of whom are fleeing to the relative safety of the Kurdish-controlled areas.

Calling on Washington to adopt a “more generous refugee and asylum policy” for those fleeing for their lives, the committee’s letter also called for “an urgent review of economic reconstruction aid programs… to make sure that the aid is distributed fairly so that all elements of Iraqi society are able to rebuild their communities.”

The impact of ongoing regional instability on local Christians is being felt further afield than Iraq. The impact on local economies and services, as well as on the psychology within communities, were key factors driving Christians away from the region, the Council of Catholic Patriarchs of the Orient said during their meeting in October.

The wider perspective

The council’s sixteenth assembly closed in Bzommar, outside Beirut, with a statement focusing on the dwindling presence of Christians not only in Iraq, but also in Lebanon, Israel-Palestine, and the wider region.

The statement said that Eastern-rite Christian Churches acted as a bridge between Western Christianity and Islam, creating an avenue for dialogue between the faiths. The Christian leaders were adamant that this link should not be broken.

Despite this summer’s 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Islamic militant group, the patriarchs said that Lebanon “remains a source of hope” which “must play an effective role” in solidifying the coexistence of religions in the Middle East.

Reinforcing this message during his homily at Mass outside Beirut following the patriarchs’ meeting, Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir criticised Lebanon’s political infrastructure for failing to pay sufficient attention to the role of the Lebanese ‘family’, which he said was a crucial factor in maintaining a unified society.

In their statement, the patriarchs were hopeful that the Lebanese people would not allow sectarian tensions to divide this family, and rather “work together in rebuilding what has been destroyed in order to regain their normal life”.

“Our message is in the first place that of safeguarding co-existence in the face of aggravating conflict of cultures and religions,” said the patriarchs, who included Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir of Beirut, Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah of Jerusalem, and Chaldean Patriarch Emmanuel III Delly of Baghdad, as well as Greek-Melchite Patriarch Gregory III Laham, Coptic Patriarch Antonios Nagib, Syrian-Catholic Patriarch Boutros VIII Abdel Ahad, and the assembly’s host, Armenian Catholic Patriarch Narsis Bedros XIX.

Emphasizing the need to promote dialogue between religions across the region, the patriarchs’ council “expressed its solidarity with the Islamic world in its efforts to consolidate peace and eradicate violence”.

Calling on Muslim organisations to “vigorously condemn terrorist actions committed, at times, in the name of the Muslim faith,” the patriarchs added, “We know that the true Islam and the Koran are innocent of any violence. These actions do not only harm Islam, but they also destroy co-existence that has been there for so many generations, especially in Iraq”.