The leader of a Christian organization said recently that pulling American combat troops out of Iraq will worsen the situation for Christians in that country.

Dr. Carl Moeller, CEO of Open Doors USA said that he believed President Barack Obama’s decision to pull out U.S. soldiers from Iraq is premature and will accelerate the persecution of Christians in that country.

Moeller said, “I believe that we’re turning this country over to a government that is in chaos — it is in transition at best. It hasn’t yet settled on a firm form of government. We have just basically said, ‘Please don’t disturb us as you collapse.’”

Moeller said the Christian community is a definite underdog in the largely Muslim country adding, “We have very clear indicators from the ground that the Christian community in Iraq is suffering greatly by increased violence between factions of Islam. I’ve spoken at length with refugees all around the region [who are] saying it’s an unreported disaster — the extinction of the Christian community in Iraq,” according to a OneNewsNow report

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Ethnic cleansing in Iraq has caused half of 1.4 million Christians who lived there to leave the country.

Quoting the Assyrian International News Agency, the report said that these Assyrian Christians compose less than 4 percent of Iraq’s population.

They speak Aramaic, a dialect close to what Jesus spoke 2000 years ago, and are descendants of the first converts to Christianity.

Indyposted said that post Sadaam Husssein, many traditional protections that were given to non Muslims are no longer enforced due to various Muslim factions in Iraq.

Ethnic cleansing has taken place through bomb attacks, assassinations, rapes and kidnappings, Indyposted reported.

The report adds that Iraqi Christians who have fled are oftentimes denied asylum in other countries.

Many are living underground in Sweden.   According to AINA, Iraqi Assyrians in Sweden are arrested, put in a plane, then flown back to Baghdad.

According to Indypost, instability for Iraq’s Christians has been an outgrowth of the war in Iraq.

The London Telegraphnoted that the US Commission on International Religious Freedom has branded Iraq’s religious persecution “of particular concern” and called on the Obama administration to intervene before the ancient religious communities are exterminated.

So far their appeal has not moved Hillary Clinton according to the London Telegraph, adding that “In these paranoid times, to defend Iraqi Christians from their Muslim fellow-citizens could be misinterpreted as an attack on Islam.”

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Some 3,000 angry Muslims, spurred by their imam, went on a rampage in the coastal city of Marsa Matrouh in Egypt recently, completely destroying 18 homes, 23 shops, and 16 cars owned by Christians according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

The Muslims had just finished their Friday prayers when they were exhorted by the mosque’s imam to cleanse the city of its infidel Christians, whom they call Copts, the WSJ said.

During the rampage some 400 Copts barricaded themselves in their church for 10 hours until the frenzy died down.  Since May of last year, over a dozen violent incidents have occurred in villages in Egypt.  One of them was a drive bye shootout at Christians leaving a Coptic Christmas church service, resulting in seven dead and 26 seriously injured, according to the WSJ.

The Copts comprise 12% of the population of this primarily Muslim country.  The last few years have resembled a Christian purge however, with waves of mob assaults forcing up to thousands of Christian citizens to flee their homes, the WSJ said.

Despite frantic appeals the police usually arrive after the violence is over.  Then they coerce the injured to accept “reconciliation” with their attackers.  No Muslim to date has been convicted for any of these crimes, the WSJ said.

The Egyptian government insists that there is no sectarian problem in the country, and they say those who draw international attention to the Copts’ plight are traitors, the WSJ said.

The United States and the rest of the Western democracies, despite repeated Coptic appeals, have done little besides calling upon the Egyptian regime to foster greater tolerance, the WSJ reported.

Egypt’s Christian Copts suffer customary and official discrimination.  For example, no church can be built or even repaired without a presidential decree.  Also, Copts may not join intelligence and security services because they are deemed a security risk, the WSJ said.

The discrimination springs from a traditional social norm that rules the elite and large sectors of the Muslim community.  This norm, though no longer legal, lives in the social psyche that views Christian and Jewish minorities as dhimmi in Muslim lands.

The dhimmi status presumes it is unreasonable in an Islamic society to expect strict equality between Muslims and the infidels; and that an individual offense by a dhimmi against a Muslim warrants retribution for the entire dhimmi community, the WSJ said.

Be Sociable, Share!

•