Chaldean archbishop kidnapped in Iraq found dead: church

Yahoo News ^ | March 13, 2008

[NYer]

A Chaldean Catholic archbishop kidnapped last month in northern Iraq has been found dead, the information service of the Italian Catholic Church said Thursday.

The body of Paulos Faraj Rahho, the archbishop of Mosul, was found near the northern city, the Church said, quoting the auxiliary archbishop of Baghdad, Shlemon Warduni.

"We recovered his body near Mosul," Warduni said, according to the Church's news agency SIR. "The kidnappers had buried him."

Rahho was kidnapped on February 29 in Mosul after a deadly shootout in which three of his companions were killed.

Iraqi forces in Mosul had fanned out to search for Rahho, whose abduction was branded as "atrocious" by Pope Benedict XVI.

Rahho was the latest in a long line of Chaldean clerics to be abducted in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003. Two priests were kidnapped in the city in October, and last June a priest and three deacons were attacked in front of their church.

Iraq's Christians, with the Chaldean sect by far the largest community, were said to number as many as 800,000 before the 2003 invasion.

Associated with the "Crusader" invaders and regarded as well-off, they are now victims of sectarian cleansing, killings and kidnappings at the hands of both Sunni and Shiite Islamists, as well as criminal gangs.

[G8 Diplomat]

Very sad news. Prayers for the bishop.

[Kolokotronis]

“Yet the liberals will continue to say that Islam is a “religion of peace”, and Christianity is a religion of hatred and intolerance.”

LIBERALS!!!!!!!!!?????????????? “Islam is the Religion of Peace” is the line of that Pres. Jorge “New World Order” Bush who grovels at the feet of the Mohammedan pagans whenever they snap their fingers, tells them we all grovel too and pays them hundreds of millions of our dollars to buy weapons to kill Christians and Jews. This holy hierarch’s death is just one more stone in the edifice of Bush’s “legacy” of dead Christians and the smoking ruins of Eastern Christian Churches from the Adriatic to the Iran/Iraq border.

[LordBridey]

There are some world views that are so violently opposed to each other they simply can’t co-exist.

Yet, historical facts contradict this dictum. Jews and Christians have existed and thrived in Islamic lands for a millenium. How do you square that reality with the one you are propagating?

It is deport, or be deported—or beheaded. That may be troubling to you, but I suspect cowardice is at work. That’s okay. We’re all a little afraid, but I don’t want my daughters to have to undergo female circumcision and head to toe veiling. Do you?

A little afraid? Your fear is so consuming that you allow it to transform your the virtues you wish to protect into the very vices that you condemn. Cowardice can be defined as the unwillingness to face facts. Your argument has too many holes in it to resemble anything like courage. The hyperbole about circumcision issues from a terrified mind.

[SatinDoll]

> “...there has been continual violence against the Chaldean Catholics in Iraq, the Coptic Catholics in Egypt and Christians in Africa...” <

This horrible treatment is exactly why almost a million Jews fled Muslim nations in Africa and the Middle East to emigrate into Israel. Little known is that Syria wanted to take all Muslims fleeing Palestine, but King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia blocked that action using the Arab League.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

You've never heard of the SCUD attacks and Israelis having to put on gas masks? You haven't been listening to the president of Iran lately?

Now you are getting ridiculous. The US has launched missiles at civilian targets, and threatened to destroy enemies. This is not equivalent to the Holocaust, whatever Code Pink types might think. (Not saying you are CP, only that you are using their rhetorical techniques)

[phillyfanatic]

Amazing how the Left can never see how Islamofascism is out to kill every faith, every ethnic group not of theirs. Will they ever admit it??

[Allegra]

Thank you for your support and kind words. :)

[farmer18th]

You just aren’t listening to Ahmadincrap’s rhetoric. He’s talking about pushing Israel into the sea, and he is, in fact, a Holocaust denier, even as he plots genocide. You aren’t, by chance, Muslim, are you? I haven’t seen this impassioned a plea on behalf of the head-choppers in quite some time.

[farmer18th]

Yet, historical facts contradict this dictum. Jews and Christians have existed and thrived in Islamic lands for a millenium. How do you square that reality with the one you are propagating?

Non Muslims "thriving" in Muslim countries is a term only Al J. Television would use. The westerners who live in Saudi Arabia and who can't openly worship Christ--out of curiosity, would you call that "thriving?" The Sudanese Christian girls who have been raped by Muslim rape squads--would you call that "thriving?" The American soldiers who have been killed by radical MUSLIM IEDS--would you call that "thriving?"

[Norman Bates]

God bless this martyr’s soul.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

I haven’t seen this impassioned a plea on behalf of the head-choppers in quite some time.

First I am making an impassioned plea for reason and clearheadedness, which I am beginning to think is a losing proposition in your case.

He is talking about destroying Israel at this time, whatever he may end up doing. We threatened to destroy our enemies in WWII and the Cold War, and Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Military Japan and the Soviet Empire were, in fact, all destroyed.

As far as my attitude on the subject of this thread is concerned, please see my first post, #55, above. If we are going to start arguing on the basis of religious faith, I am a Catholic, and we are the folks who launched the Crusades, responding to the requests for aid from our Orthodox brothers (despite some later unpleasantness with them)

[LordBridey]

Non Muslims "thriving" in Muslim countries is a term only Al J. Television would use.

Just explain it to me then. How do 800,000 Chaldeans survive in Islamic Iraq? How do Maronites survive in Islamic Lebanon? How do 25,000 Jews survive in Islamic Iran if, as you say, Islam is out to get every non-Muslim in the world, even if they were remotely close to being capable of such a feat, which they are not? How can anyone take you seriously if you don't explain these facts? How is it that the holocaust denying Ahmadinijad, ready to push Israel into the sea, allows 25,000 Jews to survive? What is going on here? Are the Iranians bad Muslims?

[farmer18th]

Just explain it to me then. How do 800,000 Chaldeans survive in Islamic Iraq? How do Maronites survive in Islamic Lebanon? How do 25,000 Jews survive in Islamic Iran if, as you say, Islam is out to get every non-Muslim in the world,

Mohammed taught his followers to convert, kill, or tax. Minorities in Muslim countries, as you probably know, are called "dhimmis." They are second class citizens and they pay tribute to the ruling Muslims. Ask someone who tries to open a Christian Sunday School in Riyadh. It won't happen. You would have to be suicidal to be a Christian street preacher in Saudi Arabia. You seem to be saying, "fine; they aren't being killed," but that's not exactly a measure of progress. This whole thread was begun precisely because Chaldeans are being kidnapped and killed in the new "Muslim-Devout-Friendly" Iraq.

[LordBridey]

Here is another question. Out of 1 billion Muslims, how many are radicalized jihadi terrorists? A few hundred? A few thousand? What about the other 999,999,990? Are they that ignorant about their faith, that they do not understand their duty to kill infidels? You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.

[farmer18th]

First I am making an impassioned plea for reason and clearheadedness, which I am beginning to think is a losing proposition in your case.

Well "clearheadedness (sic)" is not likely in Muslim countries--because if you refuse Dhimmi status, you will lose your head entirely. Ask Nick Berg. (Oh, wait; can't.)

He is talking about destroying Israel at this time, whatever he may end up doing. We threatened to destroy our enemies in WWII and the Cold War, and Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Military Japan and the Soviet Empire were, in fact, all destroyed.

You need to go back to Distinction Night School. We destroyed regimes, and governing ideologies, that threatened us. The Islamic World can't see fit to allow Jews a homeland in their ancient homeland. They want them dead simply for being Jews. There's a collosal difference between Islamic faith-hatred and America responding to agression.

[farmer18th]

You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.

And you've got a lot of thinking to do. When we liberated the German Death camps some of our commanders made surrounding German villagers march through them, to see what they had been complicit in perpetrating. The same holds true for the billions of Muslims who hold their tongues, or, worse, cheer on their violent co-religionists. They are born and bred to hate non-Muslims, whether they take they strap on bombs themselves.

Watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHf1sOzCcpQ&feature=related

And then we'll talk.

[LordBridey]

Mohammed taught his followers to convert, kill, or tax.

Thank you. Now we are getting somewhere. Tax. So that must be how all these non-Muslims have survived in the Muslim world. So the all these prognostications of impending death or circumcision or burkhas or pigless farms are a bunch of hooey. The Muslims value money more than their doctrine. Interesting. Says a lot about the faith groups who have mangaged to survive for so long. They value their faith more than their money.

[farmer18th]

Thank you. Now we are getting somewhere. Tax. So that must be how all these non-Muslims have survived in the Muslim world. So the all these prognostications of impending death or circumcision or burkhas or pigless farms are a bunch of hooey. The Muslims value money more than their doctrine. Interesting. Says a lot about the faith groups who have mangaged to survive for so long. They value their faith more than their money.

Wow. You've managed to defend Muslim cut-throats AND offend oppressed religions minorities at the same time. Must be a special feeling.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Ask someone who tries to open a Christian Sunday School in Riyadh. It won't happen.

Not now I know. But according to a current thread Sunni, Wahhabist Qatar has just given permission to open a Catholic Church, accommodating the faith of foreign workers (mostly Filipinos)

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

offend oppressed religions minorities at the same time

How is LordBridey saying that 'They value their faith more than their money' in any way offensive to the religious minorities? Saying that they value their faith LESS than their money would be offensive.