Murdered Christian Clergy in Iraq

Muslim Persecution of Christians

By Robert Spencer

“Get out your weapons,” commanded Jaffar Umar Thalib, a 40-year-old Muslim cleric, over Indonesian radio in May 2002. “Fight to the last drop of blood.”[1]

The target of this Jihad was Indonesian Christians. Christians, Jaffar explained, were “belligerent infidels” (kafir harbi) and entitled to no mercy. This designation was not merely a stylistic flourish on Jaffar’s part. On the contrary, kafir harbi is a category of infidel that is clearly delineated in Islamic theology. By using this term, Jaffar was not only inciting his followers to violence, but telling them that their actions were theologically sanctioned.

Jaffar’s words had consequences. The death toll among Indonesian Christians in the chaos that followed was estimated to be as high as 10,000, with countless thousands more left homeless.[2] Journalist Rod Dreher reported in 2002 that Jaffar Umar Thalib’s jihadist group, Laskar Jihad, had also “forcibly converted thousands more, and demolished hundreds of churches.”[3]

What happened in Indonesia was treated by the international press as an isolated incident. In fact, however, the violent jihad there was part of the ongoing persecution of Christians by Muslims throughout the Islamic world. This violence, reminiscent of barbarous religious conflicts of seven hundred years ago, is the dirty little secret of contemporary religion. Fearful of offending Muslim sensibilities, the international community has averted its gaze, allowing the persecution to take place in the darkness. Nowhere else is religious bigotry legitimated by holy writ, in this case the Quran, or by a significant number of religious leaders, in this case imams. Nowhere else does religious bigotry have such bloody consequences. Nowhere else does such religious bigotry take place almost entirely without comment, let alone condemnation, from the human rights community.

Christian persecution by Muslims has become a familiar narrative, repeated with terrifying frequency in Muslim controlled areas throughout the world, but especially in the Middle East.

On April 5, 2008, Youssef Adel, an Assyrian Orthodox priest at St. Peter and Paul church in Baghdad, was killed in a drive-by shooting as he was opening the gate of his house.[4] This attack came just weeks after the death of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho of the Chaldean Catholic Church, who was kidnapped in the Iraqi city of Mosul on February 29 while three Christians with him were also killed. On March 12, the kidnappers phoned a church in Mosul to announce that Archbishop Rahho was dead, and indicate where the body could be found.[5]

While mosques proliferate throughout the west, Christian clergymen have become an endangered species in Iraq. In October 2006, a Syrian Orthodox priest, Fr. Boulos Iskander, went shopping for auto parts in the Iraqi city of Mosul. He was never seen alive again. A Muslim group kidnapped him and initially demanded $350,000 in ransom; they eventually lowered this to $40,000, but added a new demand: Fr. Boulos’ parish had to denounce the mildly critical remarks about Islam made the previous month by Pope Benedict in an address in Regensburg, Germany, that had caused rioting all over the Islamic world. The ransom was paid, and the church dutifully posted thirty large signs all over Mosul

denouncing the Pope’s statements. All to no avail: when Fr. Boulos’ remains were discovered, he had not only been murdered but dismembered.

Five hundred Christians attended the funeral. Looking at the crowd, another priest commented: “Many more wanted to come to the funeral, but they were afraid. We are in very bad circumstances now.”[6]

There is no doubt of that. The murders of these three clergymen took place against a backdrop of increasing danger for Christians in Iraq. In March 2007, Islamic gangs knocked on doors in Christian neighbourhoods in Baghdad, demanding payment of the Jizya, the religion-based tax assessed by Islamic law against Christians, Jews, and other non Muslim groups who live in Muslim lands.[7] Meanwhile, Christian women throughout the country are threatened with kidnapping or death if they do not wear a headscarf. In accord with traditional Islamic legal restrictions on Christians “openly displaying wine or pork” (in the words of a legal manual endorsed by Cairo’s venerable Al-Azhar

University), liquor store owners in Iraq have likewise been threatened.[8] Many businesses have been destroyed, and the owners have fled.

In fact, half of the nation’s prewar 700,000 Christians have fled the country since 2003. The difference in the violence they face is one of degrees. Even in the relatively secular Iraq of Saddam Hussein, where the notorious Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz was a Chaldean Catholic Christian, the small Christian community faced random violenc from the Muslim majority. Aside from outbreaks of actual persecution, including murder, Christians were routinely pressured to renounce their religion and to marry Muslims.[9] Iraqi Christians today are streaming into Syria, or, if they can, out of the Middle East altogether. An Iraqi businessman now living in Syria lamented that “now at least 75% of

my Christian friends have fled. There is no future for us in Iraq.”[10]

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