Shia Muslims in Basra turn to helping Christians

Iraqi Shia Muslims are showing a “new kindness” to Christians, having persecuted them during Iraq’s recent civil war, according to the Archbishop of Basra, writes Abigail Frymann Rouch.

Archbishop Habib Jajou told The Tablet last Friday that the Shia in the south of Iraq were “understanding day by day that they were on the wrong road when they accepted [having] militias to persecute the Christians” in the violence that erupted between 2004 and 2008, following the US-led invasion of 2003. Referring to another religious minority, he continued: “So they are trying now to do something to make those Christians – and Mandaeans – stay, not to migrate.” Ninety per cent of the city’s 5,000 Christian families have left the country since the 1960s. Basra diocese is now home to 350 Christian families, including 50 refugee families from areas seized by Islamic State two years ago. Some of the families have been housed in the six now-redundant churches.

The archbishop, who was making a pastoral visit to London and gave a talk at the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas), attributed this change to criticism of Iraqi Muslims’ treatment of minorities by the UN and various NGOs. A new generation of Shia also wanted to explore their Babylonian and Chaldean heritage, acknowledging their country’s pre-Islamic history. He said Shia Iraqis often brought him crosses they had made, as gifts.

He said the diocese runs a library, a kindergarten and computing classes for Muslims and Christians. “We try now to be witnesses of faith for Muslims; they come to us for pastoral care.” Nonetheless, Christians in Basra continued to live in fear of the Shia militias active in the area, and the Iraqi Government was too divided to bring about peace and reconciliation, he said.