Posted: 5/19/03
Iraqi Christians fear for safety
By Mark Mueller
Religion News Service
BAGHDAD, Iraq (RNS)–Two weeks ago, Raad Karim Essa arrived home from work to find his furniture on the street. His Muslim landlord wasn't renting to Christians anymore.
| Father Adda, an Assyrian Orthodox Christian, prepares for Palm Sunday at his ancient monastery on Mount Maqloub, just outside the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, April 19. The monastery was built in 363 A.D., and its renovation was funded by ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Although Iraq under Saddam was primarily a Muslim state, the regime tolerated other religious groups. In post-war Iraq, Christians increasingly express fear that a Shiite Muslim majority will not grant freedom of worship for all. (REUTERS/Nikola Solic Photo) |
“He told us not to argue and threatened us,” said Essa, 42, a father of four. “He said the government was no longer here to protect us. What could we do? We feared for our lives.”
"The Muslims want to destroy us," said Amira Nisan, 38, Essa's wife. "I think we were better off under Saddam."
Such a sentiment is voiced increasingly today among Iraq's 800,000 Christians.
Like most of their countrymen, Christians greeted the fall of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein with celebration and hope. But in little more than a month, their desire for greater religious freedom has been replaced by fear of the fundamentalism rippling through Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority, which has moved quickly to exert its influence after decades of violent repression.
Christian women say they've been harassed by Shiite men for walking on the street without head scarves, and priests complain that Shiite clerics inflame religious hatred by calling for the expulsion from Iraq of “non-believers.”
The most overt acts have been directed at Iraq's liquor stores and manufacturers, almost universally run by Christians. The owners of those facilities say they've been threatened with death for selling alcohol, forbidden under a strict interpretation of Islamic law.
"I'm afraid for my people," said Bishop Ishlemon Warduni, the religious leader of Iraq's Chaldean community, which represents about 80 percent of the nation's Christians. The remaining 20
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| A woman attends mass at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church in Baghdad. Some Iraqi Christians fear persecution by Shiite Muslims, who have more freedom to practice their religion since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. (Noah Addis/RNS Photo) |
percent is comprised mostly of Syrians, Assyrians and Armenians.
“During the war, we were not afraid like we are now,” said Warduni, 60. “All Christians are in danger.”
Warduni recently expressed his concerns in a letter to President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. On May 13, the bishop was to make his case in a meeting with Jay Garner, the retired U.S. Army general who has been administering Iraq.
“We would like a guarantee of our rights, our freedom and our protection,” Warduni said. “We have a 2,000-year history in Iraq, and that is now threatened. The fanatics would see us gone.”
The worries are most pronounced in southern Iraq, a Shiite stronghold where clerics have issued the most strident calls for the creation of an Islamic republic. Underscoring the dangers, the Christian owners of two liquor stores were shot to death the first week of May in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, after rebuffing demands to shutter their shops.
But religious tensions are high and rising in Baghdad as well.
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"Ten days ago was better than a week ago, and a week agowas better than today," Warduni said. "I have no doubt that tomorrow will be worse. We're losing what little protection we had."
Under Saddam, Christians were permitted to worship but not to publicly express their views or proselytize. It also was forbidden to give children Christian names.
While those strictures have been swept aside, Christians say they feel even less free in the face of growing Shiite pride and power. In the chaotic days after Baghdad's fall, Shiite clerics sent armed followers to patrol neighborhoods and to safeguard schools and hospitals from looting.
Still under Shiite control, some of those hospitals now bear signs ordering any woman seeking treatment to wear a head scarf.
The relationship between Muslims and Christians has grown more sensitive with the profusion of new mosques. In almost every Baghdad neighborhood, vacant buildings and former government offices have been converted into Shiite houses of worship
The relationship between Muslims and Christians has grown more sensitive with the profusion of new mosques. In almost every Baghdad neighborhood, vacant buildings and former government offices have been converted into Shiite houses of worship.
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