Church in the World

Patriarchs plead for protection from Islamists

Christian leaders in Iraq have been issuing increasingly desperate pleas for help this month as Islamist militants put them under ever-greater pressure either to convert to Islam or leave. Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Emmanuel Delly and Mar Dinkha IV, Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, issued a joint statement denouncing an al-Qaida-led insurgent group for the rising violence.

"Christians in a number of Iraqi regions, especially those under the control of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq, have faced blackmail, kidnapping and displacement," said the statement. The Islamists were gaining ground in Baghdad "while the Government has kept silent and not taken a firm stance to stop their expansion", it said.

Patriarch Delly, who had kept a low profile since the Iraq war began in 2003, complained earlier this month that "Christians are killed, chased out of their homes before the very eyes of those who are supposed to be responsible for their safety". He did not spare United States military forces either, saying: "The Americans came to Iraq without our consent. God does not appreciate what you have done and are doing in our country ..." He was especially critical of US forces for taking over the Chaldeans' Babel College in Baghdad after the seminary there moved to Kurdistan for safety in January (The Tablet, 20 January).

Reports from church sources in Iraq say the Islamists have scoured Christian areas of Baghdad, threatening residents to convert or leave and putting up posters telling women to wear the veil. Some families are told to pay a monthly protection tax of about US$200. One report said families who refuse to convert must quit Baghdad immediately, leaving all possessions behind. Several families are reportedly taking refuge in local churches.

Another Islamist tactic is to force churches to remove their crosses or be burned down.

A Chaldean priest, Fr Nawzat Hanna, was kidnapped in Baghdad on Saturday while visiting a sick parishioner, but was released three days later, looking as if he had been beaten. The seizure for ransom was seen as a response to the church leaders' growing calls for help against the Islamists. "We cannot go on living like this, it's inhuman, it's humiliating," the Auxiliary Bishop of Baghdad, Shlemon Warduni, told AsiaNews before the priest's release. Afterwards he paid tribute to Fr Hanna's bravery. "His family have already moved abroad but he instead chose to remain with his parishioners," he said.

The United Nations said in January that half of the 1.5 million Christians in Iraq before 2003 had fled the country and many of the rest were moving to "safe areas" in Kurdish regions of northern Iraq. But house-to-house searches for Christians have spread to Mosul and smaller towns in the north.

Bishop Gregotios Yohanna Ibrahim of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Aleppo, Syria, has also spoken out against the campaign against Iraqi Christians. "The forced emigration of Christians is terrible and not accepted by either Islam or Christianity or by reasonable human beings," he said.

n Cardinal Nassrallah Sfeir, the Lebanese Maronite Patriarch, appealed for calm as several days of clashes in northern Lebanon left more than 50 people dead in the country's worst internal fighting since the 1975-90 war, writes Michael Hirst. At least 10 civilians died in crossfire as street battles broke out on Sunday between the Lebanese army and militants from the al-Qaida-linked Fatah al-Islam group. "These clashes are the product of enemies to the country and the truth," the cardinal said.

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