Iraqi Christians fear for their future
The government in Baghdad will not make room for minorities, says an Iraqi priest.
“The Islamic State and Iraqi political Islam, both in their own way, aim for the Islamization of Iraqi society.” These are strong words for Baghdad from Iraqi priest Amir Jaje, a member of the Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies in Cairo. Fuelling the priest’s anger was the passing of a series of laws restricting individual freedoms while the Iraqi military is engaged in the fight to liberate Mosul.
One law prohibited the importation, exportation and production of alcohol; another sanctioned the censorship of the press and other publications; yet another banned a certain way of putting on makeup and some clothing for women in universities. According to Father Jaje, these demonstrate that “even if the offensive against ISIS goes well, the situation for Christian minorities will not improve, because the goal of political Islam, of which ISIS is an extreme expression, harkens back to a model in which there is no space for non-Muslim minorities. And it does not matter to us whether the inspiration is of Saudi or Iranian origin.”
From June to August 2014, the summer in which ISIS proclaimed the restoration of the Caliphate, 90 percent of Mosul’s Christians fled the city. In the same period, Christians in the historically Christian area of the Nineveh plain fled, and at the end of the year there were practically no Christians left in the city. ISIS took over all of the villages, humiliating the population and stripping it of all its belongings.
“Only a few remained, primarily elderly and the ill, those who did not have time to flee. They have tried to adapt by paying the jizya,” the tax paid historically by the “people of the Book” (especially Christians and Jews - Ed) in the land of Islam, Father Jaje explained.
When the priest spoke to Oasis from Cairo in early November, the Iraqi army and an international coalition had been fighting for several days to liberate the villages of the Nineveh plain and Mosul. Jaje’s hometown, Qaraqosh, was recaptured, though its residents cannot yet return. He said:
“The Cathedral of Notre Dame, the largest church in the Nineveh plain, was completely burned down, and the churches of Mar Youhanna and Mar Zena were burned down, desecrated and turned into shooting ranges for the soldiers of the ‘Caliphate.’ Other places dear to us have been used for military training.
“For us, as Iraqi Christians, the loss of the churches is more painful than the loss of personal belongings, because the destruction of our places of worship means the destruction of our hope. Despite the offensive, some will now decide to leave Iraq. We are a martyred church in this country, but we still have hope despite all that has happened.”
Even in the villages liberated after two and a half years of ISIS occupation, the dangers persist. “There could be tunnels underneath the city hiding soldiers and mines inside houses. It will be a while before it is safe to go home.”
The future of the Nineveh Plain
Before the inhabitants of the liberated villages can return home, the infrastructure needs to be rebuilt, mines need to be eliminated and buildings must be secured. “However, the real problem will start after that and will be more serious and deep,” warns Father Jaje. The bigger conflict will be with the intra-community among Kurds, Sunnis and Shi’ite, among the minorities and even Turkey:
“Each of the main players during this fight wants to claim ownership over the region and the merit of having recaptured it. Furthermore, the problem of how to treat those who collaborated with ISIS in Mosul will also arise, as they risk suffering ruthless revenge.”
The dialogue and the relationships between communities remain key for the priest: “We must reciprocally recognize that the other is different and respect this diversity, even more so when we believe in the same God.”
Father Jaje, an Islamologist and expert in Shi’ite Islam, is a member of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. His work entails meeting often with leaders of other faiths and confessions. In Najaf, in early October, he spoke with the Shi’ite ulemas of the Hawza ‘ilmiyya(the Shi’ite institution for the training of imams) and discussed Iraqi pluralism. The ulemas proved sensitive to the problem of the flight of Christians, “because Iraq, born in diversity, risks losing what makes it unique.”
As a result of this meeting, a shared proposal came about: change school curricula, which teach exclusion, and substitute the Islam class with a class on the history of religions. Moderate Muslims, explains father Jaje, represent the guarantee of the presence of Christians in Iraq “and we are responsible for keeping hope alive.”
MercatorNet update: Hopes of an early liberation have dissolved in Mosul. After seven weeks only a small sliver of the city's eastern neighborhoods has been declared cleared and secured, reports CNN.
“Coalition forces are now locked into a grueling house-to-house battle for the city, a fight that will take many more months. ISIS has resisted fiercely -- blowing up hundreds of car bombs, placing snipers on the rooftops of homes, and even using civilians as human shields.”
Francesca Miglio is a graduate in International Relations of the Mediterranean region and is on the staff of the Oasis Foundation. Republished from Oasis with permission.
Violence of all kinds, from political rhetoric to slaughtering civiians, continues to mark 2016. On Sunday, a blast in the Coptic Cathedral in Cairo killed at least 25, mostly women and children, and bombs in Turkey have killed 38, mostly police.
As the year draws to a close and we approach Christmas, it becomes ever clearer that society needs mercy if we are not to fall into a spiral of hatred. David Lapp has written a very thought-provoking article about the power of mercy in drawing a drug addict back from the brink.
"A merciful response is by no means naïve about the capacity for human evil," he writes, "but it insists that the good is ultimately more powerful than evil. Thus, a response of mercy recognizes that if we want to deploy the most powerful weapons against things like drug abuse and delinquent fathers and other thorny social problems, we must seek out the good in a person’s life—to look for the 'space in which the good seed can grow,' as Pope Francis put it."
Michael Cook
Editor
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