Convert Or Face Death: Iraqi Christians Flee Mosul
LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – Although Christians have lived in northern Iraq and Syria for nearly two-thousand years, and at least six hundred years before Islam, today they face extinction across the region.
“Our people are disappearing,” Canon Andrew White, head of the Anglican Church in Iraq “It looks as though the end could be very near,” he told the BBC.A week ago, Christians were warned to either leave the city of Mosul and other areas under Islamic State control, or they would have to pay a tax or be put to death. Today, nobody has heard from those Christians and nobody knows what is happening to them.
Are they being quietly “put to the sword” as this militant strain of Islam asks they be?
The Human Rights Watch reported on July 14 that homes in Mosul were painted with red letters to indicate Christian homes. Other homes of Shiite Muslims were also adorned.
Christians who have escaped reported being deprived of all their belongings except their clothes. Jewelry, money, automobiles, even food and water were confiscated on the edge of town as Christians were forced to pass through Islamic State checkpoints.
However, we know a number of Christians remained, for many reasons. Some were too destitute to travel or had weak and infirm family who could not make the desert trek to safety.
Those that left were warned “don’t even dream of returning.”
For those that remain, they can almost certainly expect harsher treatment than that meted out to fellow Muslims at the hands of ISIS terrorists.
Estimates hold that 200,000 Christians live in the region, however only a fraction of these have been accounted for. Where are all the missing Christians? Are they already being put to the sword? It’s very possible.
Islam is very clear on these issues, the deal is very simple. For those who live under the rule of a fundamentalist Islamic state, the options are laid bare. One can flee, convert, pay a fine, or be put to death. There will be no coexistence. And although Christians, Muslims and Jews have lived together in this region of the world for centuries, the strain of Islam that dominates them is now so extreme that Islam represents an existential threat to Christians and Jews.
Decades ago, the world watched as the Jews, and many others, including a large number of Catholics, were rounded up, persecuted by Nazis. Nobody outside of the European continent believed these people were being systematically killed on an industrial scale.
Yet they were. We’ve seen the haunting images and video. Smiling Nazi officers standing beside their victims in the moments before they shot or gassed them. Today, Islamic State terrorists are posing with their victims, making videos, and even tweeting crude jokes about their carnage.
They glorify and revel in their killing and believe with all sincerity that they are doing the work of Allah.
The world once solemnly promised to never allow another holocaust to happen again. Yet, we have witnessed episodes of ethnic cleansing and genocide repeatedly throughout history. Time and again, the world has stood silent as whole populations and tribes were exterminated, relocated, and forced into destitution.
Today, nobody is running toward the Christians to help them. These people are on their own and they have nothing. Over 400 families have checked into refugee camps in Kurdish controlled districts in northern Iraq. Hundreds more wander in the desert and the diaspora continues.
Billions of people will stand idly by, and do nothing in the face of evil, but Your Catholic Voice Foundation isn’t going to accept this. Yes, we will pray for peace, and we will condemn this evil. However, we will also open our purses and wallets and make available emergency funds that these people will need.
Queen Of Liberty™ 
To think they blew up the tomb of Jonah that had been in Mosul for how many thousands of years, then proceeded to butcher men, rape women, behead children, crucify those whom they deemed infidels. It’s unbelievable, isn’t it. Little drips of outside help are coming from here & there, but not enough to help these people, whether they be secular, Christian, or another religious minority.
I watched the video footage by Channel 4 News on vocativ, taken aboard one of the helicopters supplying food & water, it is heart wrenching. I have heard estimates that 150,000 Yizidis may have been on Mt Sinar, I have heard some put the death toll at 70,000 because of the heat, lack of shelter, food and water.
Are there yet any demands from our great leaders in Washington that something be done, or commitments from our president that something will be done before it is entirely too late for all of them. I haven’t heard but a peep here and there. They must all be on vacation.
Thank God at least the Kurds are fighting. God bless them.
ن
Obama’s administration will secretly side with the enemy. He blames America for everything anyway. I think he is a secular humanist who only pretended to be a Christian to make political contacts. I know some people think he is Muslim but I believe he is a secular humanist who has Muslim sympathies because of his time in Indonesia and so forth. He might blame Christianity as much as he blames America. All the values of both are under attack by radicals like Obama.
In some cases, I think he quite openly sides with the enemy. I think about how he has treated our ally Israel. I think about how he has slighted and talked down to the Egyptian leadership, so much that they now are buying arms from the Russians. I think about how he let the nations in Eastern Europe down, with the dismantling of defense systems there. How he has diminished our military. How he has virtually disarmed our troops fighting in Afghanistan with his inane policies. How he has elevated the Muslim Brotherhood, by speech and by invitation and meetings in our White House. How he has constantly derided the American people with whom he disagrees, while complimenting dictators such as those from Africa he hosted in our White House. How he mentions that we should be ‘more like’ …..Germany, or be more of this, more of that. He has not a stitch of patriotism nor love for this country.
That’s so true. I don’t even remember Clinton, or Carter doing some of the things Obama has done. He is unlike any other American president.