Iraqi Christians

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ASSYRIAN CHRISTIANS in IRAQ CRY FOR HELP

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Wednesday, February 1, 2006

IRAQ: CHURCHES TARGETED AS TENSIONS RISE
- pray for the Christians of Iraq

By Elizabeth Kendal
World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission (WEA RLC)
Special to ASSIST News Service

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA (ANS) -Feb 1/06 - On Sunday 29 January, five car bombs exploded in Kirkuk and Baghdad between 4:10pm and 4:30pm. Three people were killed by the Kirkuk bombs which went off outside the Church of the Virgin and an Orthodox church. In Baghdad, car bombs exploded outside the Vatican embassy, The Disciples of St Peter and Paul Orthodox church and an Anglican church. At least 14 people altogether were injured. An Assyrian Christian source reported that Assyrian Christian university students in Mosul were beaten by mobs of Muslim students angry about the cartoons of Mohammed published in Denmark last September. It appears the church bombings were also linked to local anger over the Danish cartoons.

(BACKGROUND. As the Copenhagen Post explains: last year, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten challenged Danish illustrators to submit cartoons of Mohammad after reports that artists were refusing to illustrate works about Islam for fear of Islamic fundamentalist retribution. Twelve of the cartoons were published to test whether Muslim fundamentalists had begun affecting the freedom of expression in Denmark. Muslims were incensed. The cartoons reappeared in a Norwegian magazine on 10 January, causing tensions to soar to new heights. Clerics and international Islamic bodies are provoking widespread Islamic agitation. Jordan's parliament has called for the Danish artists to be punished. Libya has closed its embassy. Muslims are being encouraged to boycott Danish goods. The artists and newspaper editor have received death threats. On 28 January the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) released a statement decrying the 'obnoxious and distasteful act whose gravity is of un-proportional magnitude'.)

On Friday 27 January, Muslims in Baghdad listened to fiery sermons denouncing the Danish and Norwegian publications. Sheikh Hazem al-Aaraji, preaching in his mosque in the Shi'ite Kadhimiya neighborhood of Baghdad, described the cartoons as an attack on Islam. In a subsequent demonstration in Kadhimiya, Muslims marched and shouted slogans including, 'Jews, the army of Mohammad and Ali will return.' (This is a 'war cry' threat of religious cleansing popularised by Hamas. It refers to the Jews of Khaybar who were conquered and subjugated by Mohammad in 628 and then expelled, along with the Christians of Najran, from the Arabian Peninsula by Umar in 640 when he 'cleansed' it according to Mohammad's wish that no religion other than Islam should exist there.) Zaman.com (Turkey) reported that some 10,000 angry Muslims, mainly supporters of Iraqi Shiite Leader Muqtada Al-Sadr, protested in Baghdad against the newspaper and the Danish government. Al-Sadr's deputy, Salah Al Ubaydi, addressed the crowd. After Sunday's bombings, Iraq's Muslim Ulema Council released a statement condemning the attacks, declaring, 'This is not the way to deal with the newspaper that has offended the prophet Mohammad.'

Iraqi Christians are extremely vulnerable. Sunnis and Shi'ites are reported to be polarising along sectarian lines with social groups and even whole suburbs becoming less mixed and identifying more by religious affiliation. It is also reportedly the same with student groups in universities. As people, groups and whole communities start to identify by religious affiliation rather than their common Iraqi nationality, the Christian minority find themselves increasingly despised, marginalised and exposed. They are endangered, without equality before the (Islamic) law, having no clan networks and retaliation ideology, and lacking security in a lawless Islamic society. Muslim threats to treat the Christians as the Jews of Khaybar should not be taken lightly. Two-thirds of the Assyrian Christian population died in the Assyrian genocide of 1915. The Jews were massacred and forced out of Iraq in early June 1941 and 1947-51, ending a 2600-year history of Jews in Mesopotamia/Iraq. While over 100,000 Jews were rescued by Israel, the Christians were shamefully abandoned by the West. Anyone who thinks such atrocities could not occur in this enlightened, UN-supervised age of human rights should just remember Rwanda 1994, and pray for the Christians of Iraq.

PLEASE PRAY SPECIFICALLY FOR:

	God to mercifully protect, preserve and strengthen his children,his witnesses, in Iraq.
	the Christians of Iraq to grow in brotherly love, solidarity and spiritual unity, across denominational and racial lines (spiritual victory!).
	their growth also in wisdom, faith and prayer with a real sense of urgency for the Holy Spirit to descend upon their nation – may God answer their prayers and reveal his glory.

Prayer: adapted from Hezekiah's prayer in Isaiah 37:16,17,20

O Lord Almighty, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth.
You are the maker of heaven and earth.
Give ear, O Lord, and hear; open your eyes, O Lord, and see; listen to the threats made against your children.
Now, O Lord, our God, deliver them from the hands of those who would harm them, so that all kingdoms on earth may know that you alone, O Lord, are God.
Amen.

FALLUJAH ATTACKS KILLS 21, AS ASSYRIAN CHRISTIANS CRY FOR HELP
Growing concern about lack of security in Sunni triangle and other areas of Iraq

Saturday, February 14, 2004

By: Stefan J. Bos
ASSIST News Service

FALLUJAH, IRAQ (ANS) -- At least 21 people were killed and many others wounded Saturday, February 14, in Iraq's tense Sunni triangle, shortly after the country’s Assyrian Christian community warned its churches will become the next target of a terrorism.

Reporters said the attackers fired rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons at the police station in a daring attack in the troubled town of Fallujah Saturday morning. “Scores of prisoners held at the police compound were reportedly released by the attackers.” the Voice of America (VOA) said.

The latest violence, which followed two suicide blasts this week that killed over 100 people, underscored concern among especially minority Christians in the region about what they see as Muslim violence against them and those supporting the U.S.-led coalition. Several Assyrian Christian churches have already received threatening letters and leaflets, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported Friday, February 13.

"Our branch here in Baghdad received a report warning us, 'You have to inform the chairman to take care. We have some information,' added Willeam Warda, the head of the Culture and Information Department of the Assyrian Democratic Movement, grouping many of Iraq's Assyrian communities.

THREATS TAKEN "SERIOUSLY"

"They didn't declare what kind of information, but we depend on the report that we received and we take the subject seriously," he told RFE/RL.

Up to one million Assyrians are believed to be living in Iraq, the only group that still speaks Aramaic, an ancient Semitic language spoken by Jesus and his disciples. Most are in Baghdad and central Iraq, but large communities can also be found in the north and south of the country.
Warda said many Christian churches are responding to the anonymous threats and violence by cutting back the number of services and working only during daylight hours.

"All the churches now are paying attention to these kinds of threats, and they are changing the time [of their services]. Even churches which used to hold meetings for youth and things like this are postponing them and neglecting some lectures for youth and for women, » RFE/RL quoted him as saying...

MUSLIMS DENY OFFICIAL INVOLVEMENT

But some Iraqi Muslim organizations denied threatening Christians. An official of Al-Hawza al-Ilmia, a powerful Shi'a movement, said his group condemns unconditionally the threats against the Christian churches, the network reported.

"We heard about the signs that [Christian churches] might be attacked, and we condemn such operations, because Islam respects all sacred places, like mosques, churches, et cetera," said Sheikh Abd al-Jabbar Menhal, a Baghdad representative of the group.

Christians told ASSIST News Service (ANS) that the United States has been slow to employ enough Iraqi policemen and soldiers to improve the security situation for them and other vulnerable groups in Iraq suffering under Muslim extremism.

IRAQI FORCES DESPERATE

Yet Saturday’s attack also showed that Iraqi security forces seem unable to deal - so far - with the increasingly sophisticated terrorist attacks. VOA quoted police and hospital officials in Fallujah as saying there may have been up to 50 attackers who took part in the assault. Most of the dead were said to be Iraqi policemen and several civilians caught in the crossfire.

The attack came two days after the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East was ambushed in Fallujah at the same compound. NBC Television showed a fierce gun battle between American forces and gunmen who attacked General John Abizaid's convoy with rocket-propelled grenades from nearby rooftops Thursday, February 12.

No injuries were reported, but one soldier told NBC’s Nightly News it was difficult to establish whether some of the attackers had been killed or wounded. Analysts say the attacks have been carried out by groups with links to Al-Qaeda or remnants of the old regime, including radical Sunni groups frustrated by their community's loss of prestige and power following the fall of Hussein.

Fallujah has been one of the most troublesome and violent towns in Iraq for U.S. soldiers, as it is an area where former President Hussein drew a lot of support, VOA reported.

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Back from Iraq, Pastor Describes Near Miss, Laments U.S. Missionary Deaths

March 25, 2004

(AgapePress) - A Canadian pastor who recently returned from Iraq says his team was supposed to be in Mosul the very same day four Baptist missionaries from the U.S. were murdered there.

Full story Here

THERE IS NOT ONE CHRISTIAN NATION ON EARTH WHERE MUSLIMS ARE PERSECUTED.

Yet in most nations where the majority of the population are Muslims, there is systematic government persecution of Christians.

"Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance."

--Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights--

Christian Conversions - According to the Bible - Can NEVER be forced.

Any Conversion to Christianity which would be "Forced" would NOT be recognized by God. It is in His True and KIND nature, that those who come to Him and choose to believe in Him, must come to Him OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL.

Don't Let anyone tell you that Christians support Forced Conversions.

That is False. True Christianity is NEVER forced.

Core Universal Rights

The right to believe, to worship and witness
The right to change one's belief or religion
The right to join together and express one's belief

Core Universal Rights

The right to believe, to worship and witness
The right to change one's belief or religion
The right to join together and express one's belief