April 1, 2018 at 5:00 am
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§ Tragically,
Christians living in lands formerly under the control of the
"Caliphate" have been betrayed by many in the West. Governments
ignored their tragic fate. Bishops were often too aloof to denounce their
persecution. The media acted as if
they considered these Christians to be agents of colonialism who deserved to be
purged from the Middle East. And the so-called "human rights"
organizations abandoned them.
§ The West was
not willing to give sanctuary to these Christians when ISIS murdered 1,131 of them and destroyed or
damaged 125 of their churches.
§ We must now help Christians rebuild in the lands
where their people were martyred.
Persecution
of Christians is worse today "than at any time in history", a recent report by the
organization Aid to the Church in Need revealed. Iraq happens to be
"ground zero" for the "elimination" of
Christians from the pages of history.
Iraqi
Christian clergymen recently wore a black sign as a symbol of national mourning
for the last victims of the anti-Christian violence: a young worker and a whole family of three.
"This means that there is no place for Christians," said Father Biyos Qasha
of the Church of Maryos in Baghdad. "We are seen as a lamb to be killed at
any time".
A few days
earlier, Shiite militiamen discovered a mass grave with the
bodies of 40 Christians near Mosul, the former stronghold of the Islamic State
and the capital of Iraqi Christianity. The bodies, including those of women and
children, seemed to belong to Christians kidnapped and killed by ISIS. Many had
crosses with them in the mass grave. Not a single article in the Western mainstream media wrote about this
ethnic cleansing.
French Chief
Rabbi Haim Korsia made an urgent plea to Europe
and the West to defend non-Muslims in the Middle East, whom he likened to
Holocaust victims. "As our parents wore the yellow star, Christians are
made to wear the scarlet letter of nun" Korsia said. The Hebrew
letter "nun" is the same sound as the beginning of Nazareen,
an Arabic term signifying people from Nazareth, or Christians, and used by the Islamic State to mark
the Christian houses in Mosul.
Now a new
report by the Iraqi Human Rights Society also just revealed that Iraqi
minorities, such as Christians, Yazidis and Shabaks, are now victims of a
"slow genocide",
which is shattering those ancient communities to the point of their
disappearance. The numbers are significant.
According to the report, 81% of Iraq's Christians have
disappeared from Iraq. The remaining number of Sabeans, an ancient community devoted to
St. John the Baptist, is even smaller: 94% have disappeared from Iraq. Even 18%
of Yazidis have left the country or been killed. Another human rights
organization, Hammurabi, said that
Baghdad had 600,000 Christians in the recent past; today there are only
150,000.
These
numbers may be the reason Charles de Meyer, president of SOS Chrétiens
d'Orient, has just spoken of the "extinction of Christians".
Father Salar Kajo of the Churches' Nineveh Reconstruction Committee just spoke
of the real possibility that "Christianity will disappear from
Iraq".
Many ancient
Christian churches and sites have been destroyed by Islamic extremists,
such as Saint George Church in Mosul; the Virgin Mary
Chaldean Church, attacked by car bomb, and the burned Armenian Church in Mosul.
Hundreds of Christian homes have
been razed in Mosul, where jihadists also toppled bell towers and crosses. The
Iraqi clergy recently warned, "The churches are in danger".
Tragically,
Christians living in lands formerly under the control of the
"Caliphate" have been betrayed by many actors in the West.
Governments ignored their tragic fate. Bishops were often too aloof to denounce
their persecution. The media acted as if they considered these Christians to be
agents of colonialism who deserved to be purged from the Middle East. And the
so-called "human rights" organizations abandoned them.
European public opinion, supposedly always ready to
rally against the discrimination of minorities, did not say a word about what
Ayaan Hirsi Ali called "a war against Christians".
Some
communities, such as the small Christian enclaves of Mosul, are now lost
forever. Syriac Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II said there is a
"real danger" Christianity could just become a "museum" in
the Middle East. He noted that Iraq has lost 80-90% of its Christian
population.
A few
Christian villages have begun a slow and painful process of reconstruction with
funds donated mainly by international relief organizations such as the US Knights of Columbus and Aid
to the Church in Need. US Vice President Mike Pence recently
promised to help these Christians. Action now must follow words. Christians who
escaped and survived ISIS cannot depend today only on aid from churches and
private groups.
Among European governments, only Hungary took a
principled position and openly committed itself to save Iraqi Christianity from
genocide. Recently, the Hungarian government opened a school for displaced
Christians in Erbil; Hungary's Minister of Human Resources, Zoltan Balog,
attended the event.
Imagine if
all the other European countries, such as France and Germany, had done the
same. The suffering of Christians in Iraq would today be much less and their
numbers much higher.
The West was not willing to give sanctuary to
these Christians when ISIS murdered 1,131 of them
and destroyed or damaged 125 of their churches. We must now stand by their side
before it is too late. After the mass displacements and the mass graves, we
must help Christians rebuild in the lands where their people were martyred.
Otherwise, even the smallest hope of hearing the sound of Christian church
bells in the ancient lands of the Bible will be forever lost.
Giulio
Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and
author.
