The fate of Christians in Iraq

  • My priest, Fr. Elias, sent out this arti­cle in an e-mail two days ago, and it’s been on my mind since then. (Talk­ing about it means that there are some grim details, so let the reader be aware.)

    Iraqi kid­nap­pers who abducted a Syr­ian Ortho­dox priest three days ago left his beheaded corpse in an out­ly­ing sub­urb of the north­ern city of Mosul last night. Father Bou­los Iskan­der, 59, was snatched off a Mosul street on Mon­day after­noon (Octo­ber 9) while search­ing for car parts at local mechanic shops.


    The arti­cle goes on to tell how the kid­nap­pers asked for a large ran­som and demanded that the Fr. Iskander’s church, St. Ephaim Ortho­dox Church, denounce the Pope’s remarks. Both these demands were met — a $40,000 ran­som was paid and posters denounc­ing the Pope’s remarks were put up around the church. But Fr. Iskan­der was killed any­way. His beheaded and dis­mem­bered body was “arranged” in a dis­trict nearby, so appar­ently the kid­nap­pers didn’t feel the need for any haste.

    This is the Suf­fer­ing Church indeed. Touch­stone mag­a­zine has a reg­u­lar fea­ture called that, but it doesn’t usu­ally touch this close to home. Well, close to my spir­i­tual home anyway.

    As I said, it’s been a few days since I first read this. I don’t get past two ques­tions in response, which aren’t par­tic­u­larly deep but seem to be all I can come up with:

    1. What kind of peo­ple are these? What kind of god is Allah sup­posed to be?I don’t feel good about this line of ques­tion­ing, but this is the basic prob­lem with ter­ror­ism as a means of reach­ing peo­ple. You don’t leave them any other choice but to think along prim­i­tive lines.
    2. Will there be any Chris­tians left in the Mid­dle East? Or any Ortho­dox? I remem­ber read­ing an arti­cle on the Ortho­doxy Today Web­site decry­ing the flight of the Ortho­dox from the Holy Land, but do we have any right to ask them to stay? And alter­na­tively, where would they go?

    This arti­cle from the New York Times tells of the lot of the Chris­tians liv­ing in Iraq and men­tions the egress that has hap­pened in the last few years:

    Over the past three and a half years, Chris­tians have been sub­jected to a steady stream of church bomb­ings, assas­si­na­tions, kid­nap­pings and threat­en­ing let­ters slipped under their doors.

    Esti­mates of the result­ing Chris­t­ian exo­dus vary from the tens of thou­sands to more than 100,000, with most head­ing for Syria, Jor­dan and Turkey.

    The num­ber of Chris­tians who remain is also uncer­tain. The last Iraqi cen­sus, in 1987, counted 1.4 mil­lion Chris­tians, but many left dur­ing the 1990’s when sanc­tions squeezed the coun­try. Yon­adam Kanna, the lone Chris­t­ian mem­ber of the Iraqi Par­lia­ment, esti­mated the cur­rent Chris­t­ian pop­u­la­tion at roughly 800,000, or about 3 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion. A Chaldean Catholic aux­il­iary bishop, Andreos Abouna, told a British char­ity over the sum­mer that there were just 600,000 Chris­tians left, accord­ing to the Catholic News Service.

    Other hunts of Ortho­dox Web­sites turned up this story on Ortho­doxy Today. The story is from Reli­gious News Today, and com­bines report­ing of the behead­ing of Fr. Iskan­der with the con­cerns from the Amer­i­can lay lead­ers of the Chris­t­ian Ortho­dox Church in the Order of St. Andrew. They believe that con­di­tions for Ortho­dox Chris­tians are get­ting worse:

    Turkey recently con­fis­cated 75% of the prop­erty of the Ecu­meni­cal Patri­ar­chate, closed its sem­i­nary and requires the Turk­ish Prime Minister’s approval of new Ecu­meni­cal Patri­archs. Turkey also requires that Ecu­meni­cal Patri­archs be Turk­ish cit­i­zens while it dri­ves the eli­gi­ble pop­u­la­tion in Turkey toward extinc­tion. Unless changed, this will result in the ter­mi­na­tion of this nearly 2,000-year-old Sacred See begun by Christ’s Apos­tle Andrew and spir­i­tual head of 250 mil­lion Christians.

    The ter­ror­ists seem dis­or­ga­nized, but oppor­tunis­tic. Their actions don’t seem to show any strat­egy or be incred­i­bly well-planned, but they’re so hap­haz­ard and so ruth­less that I don’t know how any­body could accu­rately pre­dict what they would try next.

    Bot­tom line: If I lived in the Mid­dle East, I’d be hav­ing to choose right now between my home (and the home of Chris­tians from the Church’s begin­ning) and my life. Let’s hope we never have to make those choices, and that we can always offer those who flee a safe har­bor where Mus­lim out­rages don’t have to be endured.

    After­thought
    I for­got this part. With all this on my mind, it was timely that my daily read­ing took me to the first chap­ters of Rev­e­la­tion where John in a vision is hear­ing the word that Christ has for the seven churches under John’s care:
    And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write, “These things says the First and the Last, who was dead and came to life: ‘I know your works, tribu­la­tion and poverty (but you are rich); and I know the blas­phemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a syn­a­gogue of Satan.

    Do not fear any of those things which you are about to suf­fer. Indeed, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and you will have tribu­la­tion ten days [which the Ortho­dox Study Bible says denotes “a lim­ited time, prob­a­bly not to be taken lit­er­ally”]. Be faith­ful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.

    He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who over­comes shall not be hurt by the sec­ond death.’” (Rev. 2:8–12)

    Many years to Fr. Bou­los Iskan­der, and prayers for St. Ephraim Ortho­dox Church in Iraq.


    Related posts:

    1. No room at the inn. Or the megachurch.
    2. The num­ber of abor­tions under GWB
    3. ex-Patriarch of the West, cont.
    4. Refut­ing “The Judas Gospel”
    5. The peo­ple speak to “DaVinci”

    October 24th, 2006 | Grace | No Comments |

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