Posted on 06/24/2004 11:21:12 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
Assyrian Christians recently liberated from Saddam Hussein's regime are suffering a string of deadly attacks church leaders believe are religiously motivated.
Christians and churches have received letters in Arabic threatening that if they don't follow Islamic practice and support "the resistance," they will face the consequences: "torture, and burning or exploding the house with the family in it," says Elizabeth Kendal, researcher for the World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission, in a report published by the Assist News Service.
Mandaean Christians, who follow the teachings of John the Baptist, have been receiving the same threats and suffering the same violence, Kendal says.
The unchecked Islamic aggression is forcing the Christians to flee, she states, citing some examples.
On June 7, four masked men drove into the Christian Assyrian Quarters of the Dora district of Baghdad and opened fire on Assyrians going to work. Four were killed and several others wounded.
In the afternoon, the same day, three Assyrian women were killed in another drive-by shooting as they returned home from working at the Coalition Provisional Authority.
On 22 March, an elderly Assyrian couple was murdered in the Assyrian district. The wife was beaten to death and the husband had his throat cut.
As WorldNetDaily reported, Ken Joseph Jr., an Assyrian who directs Assyrianchristians.com, says several developments that "bode ill for Christians in Iraq are causing believers to flee the nation."
Facing next Wednesday's deadline for transfer of power, a temporary constitution that reads Islam is the "Official Religion of the State," and the failure to receive even one position on the Executive Council and only one ministry post – the Christians of Iraq are voting with their feet, says Joseph.
Kendal says the Assyrian Christians greatly fear that the history of abandonment and massacre of their minority group is about to repeat itself.
Historians regard the Assyrians as the indigenous people of Iraq. In biblical times, their homeland was centered around the Nineveh plains in Upper Mesopotamia, now northern Iraq, where they were visited by the prophet Jonah. The Assyrian Church of the East was founded in AD 33. Some 600 years later Arab invaders put the Assyrians under Muslim domination.
Invasions over the centuries nearly eliminated them. The Assyrians fought for the Allies in World War I and were promised autonomy in their homeland upon victory. But they were abandoned to the mercy of the Ottoman Turks when the British mandate was lifted in 1932, resulting in the massacre of two-thirds of the population.
In Saddam Hussein's secular state, the Assyrian remnant suffered severely under his discriminatory ethnic policy of Arabization.
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Why has he chosen to silently watch the murder and mutilation of the followers of Jesus Christ throughout the world, when the sword is held by a muslim? Why does this 'defender of the faith' decry any defensive measures Jews and Christians take to protect their families and countries?
You are what you write.
What's your problem?
Are you trying to say that Christians are not being persecuted in lands controlled by Muslims?
Although Slick Willie and the Witch couldn't take part in direct efforts to exterminate the Christian and Jewish populations of the Planet, they sure were supportive of about anyone else who did, weren't they?
Yassir Arrafat and his lovely Bride frolicing with the former first couple in the Rose Garden comes to mind as perhaps only one example.
Didn't we take sides over in Kosovo with the Religion of Exterminaton? And the UN has been presided over the hunting down and annihalation of how many Christians over there in the Balkans since then?
It seems to me that as far as the Klintoons were concerned, their Moslem buddies couldn't kill Christians or Jews fast enough or too prolificly.
So then Hellary packs up her carpet-bag, slithers over to the Big Apple, and tells all the Jews there;
"Vote for us!; We want to exterminate you!"
And what do they do?!
The silly liberal Schmucks VOTE for her!!!
"OY!", already!!
Eventually....
We must start planning how to win a Holy War.
A coalition of Hindu, Buddist, Shinto, Jewish and Christian faiths against our common enemy: Islam!
There is something very odd about that statement. The Ottoman Turks did not exist in 1932 - Turkey was a republic. And the Turkish govt had no power at all in Iraq after the 1919-21 period, when the British took over, post-world war one. The Ottomans cannot have been killing anyone in Iraq in 1932.
>> The Ottomans cannot have been killing anyone in Iraq in 1932.
Hey, stop spoiling all the fun..
The Muslim Turks did their disgusting genocide butchery of the Assyrian Christians earlier in 1915 when about 750,000 Assyrians, or about three fourths of the entire Assyrian population, were killed during "The Year of the Sword" (Shato do Sayfo), bitterly recalled by minorities today.
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