Posted on 05/15/2010 8:31:49 AM PDT by Mister Ghost
Christian children have been tortured to death, reported the U.S. Catholic Bishops. Islamic fanatics broke into a Chaldean home near Mosul and killed a ten-year-old boy while shouting, "We've come to exterminate you. This is the end for you Christians!" ChaldoAssyrian workers have been murdered for "collaborating" with the United States. And Christian women have been hit hard; it was at Mosul University that some young Christian women were raped and killed for offending some Muslims by wearing jeans and having a picnic with male colleagues.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.washingtonpost.com ...
Some of the Sunnis in Iraq have problems as well:
“I hereby inform you that the Kurds in Iraq have a prearranged program for operations [aimed at] desecrating, defiling, and burning the Koran, after the Kurdish authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan prepared the ground for them legally...
“The plan was revealed the day a copy of the Koran was found in a public trashcan in the religious city of Halabja. When the devout scholars became upset, they were told that it was the act of an isolated individual. A few weeks later, a copy of the Koran was found in the bathroom of the Khamkhane mosque in the city of Al-Sulaymaniyah; again they called it the act of an isolated individual. Early this year, a number of copies of the Koran were found torn and desecrated in the suburbs of [the city of] Erbil, and they said, for the third time, that it was the act of an isolated individual. After that, the talk about what is being done to the Koran and about the [Kurds’] excuses [regarding it] was repeated so often that it became repugnant...
May 10, 2010 Special Dispatch No.2942
Kurdish-Sunni Tensions Rise against Backdrop of Ongoing Koran Desecration by Kurds in Iraq and Norway
In the wake of a series of incidents of desecration of the Koran and offenses against Islam by Kurds, both in Iraqi Kurdistan and in the Kurdish community in Norway, Kurds and Arabs alike have spoken out in condemnation and called for a halt to it. The Kurdistan Islamic Union issued a communiqué accusing the Kurdish magazine Weran of blatantly attacking and harming the prophets of Islam in its No. 6 issue. The union vehemently condemned and renounced the statements in the magazine, calling them loathsome, immoral, and insulting to all the monotheistic religions – Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.[1]
The Iraqi website Iraqirabita.org accused Kurdish elements “headed by the Peshmerga forces” of waging an “organized campaign” recently against the Koran and Islam, noting that after several copies of the Koran were found torn and burned in Kurdistan, in northern Iraq “the good voices became louder” in opposition to such deeds. As an example, the website quoted Sheikh ‘Abd Al-Khalq Runaki, a preacher at Runaki Mosque in Erbil, Kurdistan, as demanding that Iraqi Kurdistan President Mas’oud Al-Barazani take as serious a stand vis-à-vis these attacks and insults against Allah and His Prophets as he had once done vis-à-vis insults against the Peshmerga.[2]
Two other noteworthy reactions to events were:
1. An appeal by Najmuddin Faraj Ahmad, aka Mullah Krekar, founder and former commander of the Kurdish Salafi-jihadi organization Ansar Jihad, who since 1991 has been living in Norway as a political refugee, to the Islamic ummah (nation), its rulers, and its clerics. In his appeal, he enumerated a series of attacks on the Koran by Kurds in Kurdistan and in the Kurdish community in Norway, and called on the Kurds to take immediate and determined action against such attacks before they become all too common.
2. The call by Sheikh ‘Abd Al-Mun’im Mustafa Halima, aka Abu Basir Al-Tartusi, a senior salafi-jihadi ideologue, to the Kurds, particularly those in Iraq and Syria, to end the desecration of the Koran amongst them, and to give the fold of Islam priority over nationalist Kurdish zealotry. Al-Tartusi went on to warn the Kurds that if they continue to join with the “Crusaders” and the infidels against Islam and the Muslims, the Islamic ummah would vomit them forth from among it, and would declare an “insane” war against them that will never let them live in peace.
The following are translated excerpts from both these reactions:
Mullah Krekar: The Kurds in Iraq Have a Prearranged Program – Backed by Kurdistan Authorities – to Desecrate the Koran
Mullah Krekar wrote: “To the rulers of the Islamic ummah, the devout scholars, preachers and leaders, and all sons of the Islamic ummah:
“I hereby inform you that the Kurds in Iraq have a prearranged program for operations [aimed at] desecrating, defiling, and burning the Koran, after the Kurdish authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan prepared the ground for them legally...
“The plan was revealed the day a copy of the Koran was found in a public trashcan in the religious city of Halabja. When the devout scholars became upset, they were told that it was the act of an isolated individual. A few weeks later, a copy of the Koran was found in the bathroom of the Khamkhane mosque in the city of Al-Sulaymaniyah; again they called it the act of an isolated individual. Early this year, a number of copies of the Koran were found torn and desecrated in the suburbs of [the city of] Erbil, and they said, for the third time, that it was the act of an isolated individual. After that, the talk about what is being done to the Koran and about the [Kurds’] excuses [regarding it] was repeated so often that it became repugnant...
“The Sunnis in the Kurdish cities continued to defend the Koran, despite their weakness, filing lawsuits and complaints to the Kurdish municipal authorities, but to no avail...
“Everyone was surprised when in the city of Bawa Nur, an [apparently] lucid policeman went into a mosque during public prayers and ripped up Korans that were there, and then fearlessly and shamelessly provoked [the worshippers]. The worshippers filed a complaint against him with the police, and he was arrested for two days; then he was released [just] so that he could rip up the Koran again a week later, in another mosque, in the city of Kalar, during public prayers.
“On April 14, 2010, the anniversary of the so-called Al-Anfal Campaign by [Saddam Hussein’s] Iraqi regime,[3] Kurdish amputees [who were wounded in that campaign]... attacked the Koran, particularly the ‘Al-Anfal’ sura, in public, on the media controlled by both ruling [Kurdish] parties, making the general atmosphere charged.
“Influenced by this atmosphere, on April 22, 2010, an exiled Kurd in Norway burned the Al-Anfal sura, and this shameful operation was filmed and broadcast on YouTube, after [the perpetrators] showed themselves and filmed themselves as they openly provoked the sentiments of the Muslims... That [Kurdish] community [in Norway] was still stupefied when the next day another Kurd, in Oslo, burned the Al-Nisaa, Al-Anfal, Al-Fath, and Al-Nasr suras, filming his loathsome actions and posting them on the same website... Then a third Kurd did the same, and a[nother] group [of Kurdish exiles in Norway] has already decided to repeat the performance.
“Oh devout [Muslims], this is a serious matter! It demands nothing but a serious and resolute stance. For these amputees would not have done what they did unless they felt that the Kurdish Muslims had become weak and unable to defend themselves and their religion.
“You have incited Arab nationalism and the nationalism of other nations [against us], and you have situated [yourselves] in the worst facet of nationalist Kurdish fanaticism; you have joined [a particular side], or borne hostility [for a particular side], in the name of your Kurdish nationalism; you have associated with Satan out of Kurdish nationalist fanaticism, and have declared war on Islam, its people, its culture, and its history in order to defend your jahili [pre-Islamic] nationalist fanaticism; you have joined the Crusaders and asked for their help against Islam and the Muslims, and you have helped them invade [Iraq] and attack its people, out of the abominable nationalist Kurdish fanaticism that you espouse today.
http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/4144.htm
Christian is a relative term...
A Christian is a person that worships Christ right? Am I missing something?
Yep.
Christian is literally defined as a “Christ Follower” or “Christ-like”. There are many folks who call themselves Christian, but don’t in any way resemble Jesus Christ, nor do they live by His teachings or example.
By Nina Shea
director, Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom
What is most startling about the report of the heartless double bus bombings on May 2 that targeted and injured 80 Christian students traveling to northern Iraq's Mosul University was that the young Christians there attend university at all.
Since the U.S. invasion, Iraq's Christians have been mostly driven out of the country by violence directed against them for their religion. Their communities are shattered. That these young people continued to dream of preparing themselves to serve their country signals that community's deep commitment to Iraq and a modicum of hope they still harbor for its future.
Unless the Obama administration acts fast to develop policies to help them, though, their hope will likely be in vain.
Relentless waves of bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, extortions and rapes have triggered a mass exodus of Christians from Iraq over the past seven years. Since 2003, over half of the estimated 1.5 million Iraqi Chaldean Catholics, Assyrian, Syriac Orthodox, and Armenian Christians, as well as some Protestants have fled to Syria, Jordan and farther flung places. While only 3 or 4 percent of Iraq's pre-2003 population, they account for 40 percent of its refugees, the UN reported.
Christians remain the largest non-Muslim minority there but church leaders express a real fear that the light of the faith in Iraq that is said to have been kindled personally by Thomas, one of Jesus' Twelve Apostles, could soon be extinguished. Iraq's other non-Muslim religions, the much smaller groups of Mandeans (followers of John the Baptist), Yizidis (an ancient angel-centered religion), Bahai's and Jews are also all being forced out by violence.
Religious persecution in Iraq is so "egregious" that the country has now been included, alongside the likes of notoriously repressive Iran and China, on a recommended short list of "Countries of Particular Concern" under the International Religious Freedom Act, by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
No Iraq group, Muslim or non-Muslim, has been spared massive and appalling religiously-motivated violence; however, as the independent federal commission found, the one-two punch of extremist ruthlessness and deep governmental discrimination now threatens the "very existence" of Iraq's ancient Christian churches, some of whom still pray in Aramaic, the language of Jesus of Nazareth.
The Sunni-Shiite violence rightly concerned the Bush administration. The surge that was devised to alleviate it, however, did not address the unique plight of the Christians. Evidence suggests it may have even made things far worse for them by flushing terrorists northward into the ancestral Christian areas around Mosul and the northern Nineveh Plains. In 2007, Pope Benedict directly told President Bush that in Iraq, "the society that was evolving would not tolerate the Christian religion."
Yet, no American policy was directed to enable this ancient group survive the religious cleansing that the invasion unleashed.
The Christians and the other smallest minorities are not simply caught in the middle. The refugee branches of both the UN and U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops separately concluded after extensive research that their presence in Iraq is being "obliterated" (the bishops group's term) because of fiercely intolerant attacks specifically targeting them. From southern Basra to northern Kirkuk, the religious minorities have suffered bloody reprisals from terrorists and extremists for failing to conform to Islamic behavior -- in their dress, social patterns, and occupations, as well as in their worship.
The sustained violence against the Christians started with a coordinated bombing of churches in August 2004. The Christians remember that similar bombings of synagogues in 1948 prompted Iraq's Jewish community to flee, leaving a total of seven Jews in Baghdad today. During the 2007 surge, the capital's integrated Dora neighborhood was religiously cleansed when the Christians there were ordered to convert or be killed in a fatwa from Sunni militants.
The 2,000 Christian families who left have not returned.
In 2008, the charismatic Catholic Chaldean Archbishop Rahho was abducted while he prayed the Lenten Stations of the Cross at his church in Mosul and later was found dead. Other priests have been beheaded or otherwise assassinated.
The list of victims includes lay people; Anglican Canon Andrew White, who leads a Baghdad ecumenical congregation, reports: "All of my leadership were originally taken and killed -- all dead."
Christian children have been tortured to death, reported the U.S. Catholic Bishops. Islamic fanatics broke into a Chaldean home near Mosul and killed a ten-year-old boy while shouting, "We've come to exterminate you. This is the end for you Christians!" ChaldoAssyrian workers have been murdered for "collaborating" with the United States. And Christian women have been hit hard; it was at Mosul University that some young Christian women were raped and killed for offending some Muslims by wearing jeans and having a picnic with male colleagues.
The Chaldean Federation of America has documented some of the personal threats received by Iraq's Christians, such as the following:
"To the traitor, apostate Amir XX, after we warned you more than once to quit working with the American occupiers, but you did not learn from what happened to others, and you continued, you and your infidel wife Rina XX by opening a women hair cutting place and this is among the forbidden things for us, and therefore we are telling you and your wife to quit these deeds and to pay the amount of (20,000) thousand dollars in protective tax for your violation and within only one week or we will kill you and your family, member by member, and those who have warned are excused. Al-Mujahideen Battalions."
Such threats and violence against Iraq's smallest minorities is conducted with impunity. Iraq's government has made no serious attempt to ensure either justice or adequate security for them.
Thus far the rapid erosion of Iraqi Christianity and of religious pluralism generally has drawn little notice from President Obama. There are compelling moral and national security reasons for the administration to help these minorities. Not only do they tend to be educated and skilled modernizers, who can help Iraq, but their very presence in Iraq will promote peaceful coexistence more generally, which will help us all. As a Chaldean Bishop remarked: "This is very sad and very dangerous for the church, for Iraq and even for Muslim people, because it means the end of an old experience of living together."
I’ll settle for Christians professing their belief in Christ and making an effort to do god even though they fail to be perfect.
Nothing about Christianity says one has to be perfect (Bible is clear, none are perfect). But actions and putting faith into our lives is what sets us apart (along with love).
For most of Christian history, anyone who stepped foot in a church building was classified as Christian. Even those who never professed any faith - but dutifully attended church (sometimes because the law required it) have been counted as Christian.
Radical Islam is a homicidal mental disorder, and its followers should be dealt with as one would a diseased, rabid coyote. There simply is not room enopugh on the planet for civilized society and Radical Islam.
Radical Islam: Good For TARGET PRACTICE!
;-/
For your reference:
bflr
But of course we can’t offer them immigration status-that’s reserved for our poor neighbors to the south....
Islamic fanatics broke into a Chaldean home near Mosul and killed a ten-year-old boy while shouting, "We've come to exterminate you. This is the end for you Christians!" ChaldoAssyrian workers have been murdered for "collaborating" with the United States. And Christian women have been hit hard; it was at Mosul University that some young Christian women were raped and killed for offending some Muslims by wearing jeans and having a picnic with male colleagues.
According to the Koran - they are being good muslims.
“At the beginning of the 20th century, 20 percent of the Middle East was Christian. At the start of the 21st century, only 5 percent is Christian.”
May the arm of the Lord be bared against the oppressors of His children. God will not be mocked.
“May the arm of the Lord be bared against the oppressors of His children. God will not be mocked.”
What if it’s 3000 AD and this **** is still going on?
“What if it’s 3000 AD and this **** is still going on?”
If we’re still here, in this place, God will still defend His children. I will do all I can to defend my brothers and sisters in Christ in Iraq - including supporting organizations that are in country doing that.
http://christiansofiraq.com/index.html
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