The Archbishop of Irbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, has accused Britain's Christian leaders of failing to do enough in defence of the vanishing Christian community in Iraq.
He referred to the current, pressing threat from Islamic State (IS) jihadists as a "final, existential struggle", following the group's initial assault in 2014 that displaced more than 125,000 Christians from their historic homelands.
"Our tormentors confiscated our present," he said, "while seeking to wipe out our history and destroy our future. In Iraq there is no redress for those who have lost properties, homes and businesses. Tens of thousands of Christians have nothing to show for their life's work, for generations of work, in places where their families have lived, maybe, for thousands of years."...
The Archbishop of Irbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, has accused Britain's Christian leaders of failing to do enough in defence of the vanishing Christian community in Iraq. “Our tormentors confiscated our present," he said, "while seeking to wipe out our history and destroy our future.” So what is the GOP doing since George Bush, Republican former presiden, was responsible for this travesty? We should allow them to migrate to America. After all they are Christians.
Saddam Hussein, with his dissolute sons, was indeed a wicked and most unpleasant tyrant.
He did however offer the Iraqi Christians some basic protection, provided they kept out of politics and did not evangelise Muslims.
Unfortunately, when President Bush the younger, and our British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, took it in their heads after 9/11 to partly blame Saddam Hussein for that outrage, (even though Al Qaeda hated him and had him in their crosshairs to oppose him), and to whip up the “Weapons dossier”, they had no idea how to replace the tyrant they had got rid of.
The result in the ensuing anarchy that followed was that Iraq was effectively carved up between Shia militia areas, Sunni fanatics that later formed the basis for ISIS, and some Kurdish areas, most of which, apart from the Kurds were hostile to the Christians. This combined with political correctness in the West to ignore what happened to the Christians ended up in a recipe for disaster.
Amen 1517. There will always be God's people on this earth until Christ comes back, and no amount of temporal persecution will "extinct" them from this world. When Jesus said, "Matthew 16:18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.", that literally means no matter what man tries to do, we will always remain. Glory to God!!
The church will never become “extinct”. I pray those who are persecuted and displaced find their peace and strength in Christ. Our “history” on earth becomes irrelevant in light of eternal glory.
Emma Green wrote: .... But the fate of Christianity in places like the Nineveh Plain has a geopolitical significance as well. Religious minorities test a country’s tolerance for pluralism; a healthy liberal democracy protects vulnerable groups and allows them to participate freely in society. Whether Christians can survive, and thrive, in Muslim-majority countries is a crucial indicator of whether democracy, too, is viable in those places. In Iraq, the outlook is grim, as it is in other nations in the region that are home to historic Christian populations, including Egypt, Syria, and Turkey. Christians who live in these places are subject to discrimination, government-sanctioned intimidation, and routine violence....
...under President Donald Trump, has made supporting Christianity in the Middle East an even more overt priority of American foreign policy than it was under George W. Bush or Barack Obama. Since Trump took office, the Nineveh Plain has received significant amounts of investment from the U.S. government....
--"The Impossible Future of Christians in the Middle East"