Christophobia, ISIS and Christian Genocide in the Middle East

"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me." - Matthew 5:11

Ethiopian Christians purportedly executed by ISIS in Ethiopia

On March 17, 2016 John Kerry recognized that ISIS was committing genocide against Christians in Iraq and Syria.  ISIS marked Christian houses with the Arabic equivalent of the letter "N" for Nazarene and targeted Christians. There has been a reduction in the number of Christians in Iraq and Syria. For example, in 2006 35,000 Christians lived in Mosul and now only 20 to 30 remain.

Nine years earlier then Senator Barack Obama wrote Secretary of State  Condoleezza  Rice on September 11, 2007 concerned "for Iraq's Christian and other non-Muslim religious minorities who appear to be targeted by Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish militants." The then Senator from Illinois and future President continued writing: "The severe violations of religious freedom faced by members of these indigenous communities, and their potential  extinction from their ancient homeland, is deeply alarming in light of our mission to bring freedom to the Iraqi people."

Things did not improve for Iraqi or Syrian Christians during the Obama Presidency and with the rise of ISIS worsened.

According to Pew Research in 2016 globally 38,901 Muslim refugees entered the United States as opposed to 37,521 Christian refugees but this is a misleading number because it does not reflect the disparity in the Middle East and that Christians there have been targeted for genocide. In fiscal year 2016 when the Secretary of State recognized that Christians in Iraq and Syria were targeted for genocide the United States admitted 12,587 Syrian Refugees out of which 12,486 were Muslims, 68 Christians, and 24 Yazidis. This is troubling since Syria had a population of 22.85 million according 2013 statistics with 10% Syrian Christians which translates to 2.2 million.  Only 0.5% of Syrian refugees admitted to the United States are Christian or 68 if the refugee flow were proportional the number of Christian Syrian refugees would be approximately 1,000.

Elliott Abrams of the Council on Foreign Relations and now being considered for a top post at the State Department concluded in September 2016 that in a de facto manner the United States was barring Christians, not Muslims from the United States and went on to explain how to solve this problem with some common sense reforms that the Obama Administration failed to implement.

James Zogby of the Arab American Institute disputed Abrams line of argument and argued that Christians were being "used" citing the silence of the Bush Administration during the first three years of the Iraq war when they were being devastated in Iraq and made the argument that not as many Christians have fled as claimed by Mr. Abrams. Mr. Zogby is a critic of the Iraq war and in 2014 in an essay "A Precarious Christmas" wrote the following that seems to contradict his argument:

Caught in the middle, as one Syrian has termed it “between the anvil of the regime and the hammer of violent extremists,” the country’s Christians have paid a dear price. Scores of churches have been destroyed and two bishops have been kidnapped by shadowy extremist groups. The famed ancient Aramaic-speaking town of Maaloula has been over-run by an al Qaida affiliated group that is holding captive the nuns from that community’s monastery. In the face of this violence and destruction, almost half of Syria’s Christians have joined their Muslim compatriots as refugees. Those who remain in the country live in fear for their future.

As a human rights activist I don't agree with a religious test for refugees but am concerned Christians targeted for genocide are being underreported for political reasons. I'm also uncomfortable that when raising the issue of Christian persecution there is a hostile reaction not seen when discussing other religious minorities such as Yazidis or Shia Muslims. Has Christophobia,  the hatred, prejudice, and bigotry against Christians, become so entrenched in elite circles that with a Christian genocide underway in Iraq and Syria only 68 Christian Syrian refugees arrived in fiscal year 2016 and questioning how to save more is considered a controversial proposition. 

Republican Congressman Chris Smith is calling on the Trump Administration to provide relief for Christian genocide survivors fleeing the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In December 2016 Congressman Smith visited the Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese of Erbil in Iraq. This is an excerpt of the report on what the Congressman found.

  The Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Mosul, Nicodemus Daoud Sharaf, who had to flee ISIS and seek refuge in Erbil, told Smith, “So often concern for Christians is minimized. I am so happy, because you are the first American who has come to just ask about the Christians. We pray that President Trump will help us. We are the last people to speak the Aramaic language. Without help, we are finished.”       

“I also saw how the Obama Administration has shortchanged organizations conducting criminal investigations and collecting, preserving and preparing evidence usable in criminal trials. Perpetrators will dodge punishment unless there is specific evidence linking them to specific atrocity crimes. My Iraq and Syria Genocide Relief and Accountability Act legislation is a blueprint for how to assist Christians and other genocide survivors and hold perpetrators accountable. I will be working tirelessly to get this bill on the new President’s desk when we reconvene in January,” added Smith.

Syria and Iraq: Civil War and Genocide

A silent genocide in the Middle East

British Parliament and other buildings went red to protest religious repression  

There has been a civil war underway in Syria that emerged out of the 2011 Arab Spring and continues to the present day and is a humanitarian catastrophe. However at the same time religious minorities have been systematically targeted in Syria and also in Iraq in the aftermath of the U.S. intervention, 

On March 17, 2016 the U.S. State Department finally recognized that religious minorities are being targeted for genocide in Iraq and Syria. Three religious minority groups: Yazidis, Shia Muslims, and Christians have suffered and continue to face systematic ethnic cleansing. The Media Research Center has criticized news media for under reporting this story.

The United Nations issued a report on June 16, 2016 stating that "Islamic State fighters are committing genocide against Yazidis in Syria and Iraq by seeking to destroy the group through murder, sexual slavery, gang rape, torture and humiliation" with the ominous objective to “erase their identity.” 

Heartbreaking destruction of ancient Mar Behnam and Mart Sarah monastery outside of Mosul #OperationReturnToNineveh pic.twitter.com/n9TLw7MddI

— Christians of Iraq (@iraqichristian) November 23, 2016

Christians are also facing genocide in the Middle East and despite the under reporting there is some coverage and CNN on November 21, 2016 reported the following:

ISIS marked Christian houses with the Arabic equivalent of the letter "N" for the derogatory term Nazarene. The militants blared ultimatums from the loudspeakers of Mosul mosques: Leave by July 19 to avoid death or forced conversion to Islam. The terror-driven exodus emptied the city of Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities. A decade ago, 35,000 Christians lived in Mosul. Now maybe 20 or 30 remain.

There is a serious discussion underway that contemplates the possibility of the end of a Christian presence in the Middle East after more than 2,000 years beginning with the ministry of Jesus Christ.

In the midst of all this there is great concern that something unusual is taking place with the pattern of refugees entering the United States not reflecting the population of Syria or those most currently impacted. Judge Daniel Manion of the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in mid-October of his "concern about the apparent lack of Syrian Christians as a part of immigrants from that country" and detailed it in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit appeal:

"It is well‐documented that refugees to the United States are not representative of that war‐torn area of the world. Perhaps 10 percent of the population of Syria is Christian, and yet less than one‐half of one percent of Syrian refugees admitted to the United States this year are Christian. Recognizing the crisis in Syria, the President in 2015 set a goal of resettling 10,000 refugees in the United States. And in August the government reached this laudable goal. And yet, of the nearly 11,000 refugees admitted by mid‐September, only 56 were Christian. To date, there has not been a good explanation for this perplexing discrepancy."  

Elliott Abrams of the Council on Foreign Relations provided some context to the above question in an OpEd in Newsweek:

The BBC says that 10 percent of all Syrians are Christian, which would mean 2.2 million Christians. It is quite obvious, and President Barack Obama and Secretary John Kerry have acknowledged it, that Middle Eastern Christians are an especially persecuted group.So how is it that one-half of 1 percent of the Syrian refugees we’ve admitted are Christian, or 56, instead of about 1,000 out of 10,801—or far more, given that they certainly meet the legal definition?

Abrams concludes that in a de facto manner the United States is barring Christians, not Muslims from the United States and goes on to explain how to solve this problem with some common sense reforms that the current Administration has failed to implement.

However it is not only Christians but also Yazidis, mentioned above, with only 24 granted refuge in the United States in 2016 out of an estimated population of up to 700,000.

Refugees fleeing a war zone should be granted refuge, but refugees targeted by a regime for genocidal extermination should be given priority. The fact that the United States has done the opposite is a shameful failure of historic consequence.

8th Annual Geneva Summit: 10th Anniversary of the United Nations Human Rights Council

Register here to attend the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy. Not able to attend in Geneva? then watch it on live-stream.

Program

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

All sessions to be held at the Geneva International Conference Center (CICG)

9:30   Opening Address: Reflections on the 10^th Anniversary
of the United nations Human Rights Council
Lord David Trimble, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, member of the British House of Lords, former First Minister of Northern Ireland
9:50     The Return of Authoritarianism
Moderator: Christopher Walker, Executive Director, International Forum for Democratic Studies, National Endowment for Democracy

• Svitlana Zalishchuk, Ukrainian MP, Steering Committee of World Movement for Democracy
• Irwin Cotler, Former Canadian Minister of Justice & MP, lawyer for political prisoners, Emeritus McGill University Professor of Law
• Yang Jianli, President of Initiatives for China, former political prisoner
• Joan Hoey, Editor of The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index

11:00   Presentation of Geneva Summit 2016 Women’s Rights Award
Presenter: Anne Brasseur, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, former Minister of Education of Luxembourg
Moderator: Sohrab Ahmari, Journalist, The Wall Street Journal

• Vian Dakhil, Yazidi Member of Iraqi Parliament
• Jan Ilhan Kizilhan, German psychologist who created a clinic in northern Iraq for women victimized by ISIS

12:00 Flogged for Blogging: The Case of Raif Badawi

• Ensaf Haidar, wife of Raif Badawi, Saudi blogger currently in jail, 2015 Laureate of the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, interviewed by journalist Tom Gross

12:30   Networking Lunch
14:00   Presentation of Geneva Summit 2016 Courage Award
Moderator: Javier El-Hage, General Counsel, Human Rights Foundation

• Mitzy Capriles, wife of Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma who is currently in jail on politically-motivated charges

14:20   Is China Upholding Its Duties as a UN Human Rights Council Member?
Moderator: Yang Jianli, President of Initiatives for China, ex-political prisoner

• Anastasia Lin, Human rights advocate on China, 2015 Miss World Canada
• Jigme Golog, Tibetan monk, recently released from jail

15:00   Fighting Oppression, Defending Human Rights
Moderator: Irwin Cotler, Former Canadian Minister of Justice & MP, advocate for political prisoners, Emeritus McGill University Professor of Law

• Mohamed Fahmy, Al Jazeera journalist, recently released from Egyptian prison, now launching his own press freedom foundation
• Darya Safaei, Campaigns for right of Iranian women to enter sports stadiums
• Orhan Kemal Cengiz, Turkish human rights lawyer, columnist for Today’s Zaman and Özgür Düşünce

16:00   Voices for the Voiceless
Moderator: Philippe Robinet, CEO Editions Kero

• Daniel Mekonnen, Exiled Eritrean human rights lawyer and scholar
• Lee Young-guk, Former bodyguard of Kim Jong-il, arrested and tortured for trying to defect, eventually escaped to South Korea
• Rosa Maria Paya, Cuban human rights activist, daughter of late dissident Oswaldo Paya

17:15   Beyond Geneva: Advancing Human Rights in 2016
Ambassador Alfred H. Moses, Chair of UN Watch

17:30   End of Summit

World War III, Syrian Refugees and Prudence

"Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director and regulator, the standard of them all." - Edmund Burke

Christians are being targeted for genocide but U.S. State Department silent

Pope Francis on September 13, 2014 declared that World War III was already underway and that it was "one fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres, destruction." His Holiness also declared the November 13, 2015 attacks in Paris a part of this war.

The United States is already engaged in this war with troops on the ground in Syria that predate the November 13th attacks and that will now be intensified. Patrick J. Buchanan in an important column outlines what has been going on in the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS):

The President’s strategy is to contain, degrade and defeat ISIS. While no one has provided the troops to defeat ISIS, the U.S. is using Kurdish and Yazidi forces, backed by U.S. air power, to degrade it. And recent months have seen measured success. The Kurds have run ISIS out of Kobani, captured much of the Turkish-Syrian border, and moved to within 30 miles of Raqqa, the ISIS capital. Yazidis and Kurds last week recaptured Sinjar in Iraq and cut the highway between Mosul and Raqqa. The terrorist attacks in Paris, the downing of the Russian airliner in Sinai, the ISIS bomb that exploded in the Shiite sector of Beirut, are ISIS’s payback. But they could also be signs that the ISIS caliphate, imperiled in its base, is growing desperate and lashing out.

Now there is a debate raging in the United States concerning what to do about Syrian refugees fleeing from the Islamic State. This requires both courage, prudence and a recognition of the realities on the ground over there and over here.

First, the United States does not have its borders under control and terrorist cells are probably already in the United States. At the same time American intelligence services have, following the September 11, 2001 debacle, had a decent record in stopping terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

Secondly, ISIS has been engaged in all out genocide against religious minorities in the territory it occupies targeting Yazidis, Christians, and Turkmen. Christians in the Middle East, especially with the start of the second Iraq war have been victims of ethnic cleansing and genocide, but this has been ignored by both the Bush and Obama administrations. This could be the end of Christianity in the Middle East and the U.S. State Department refuses to recognize this ongoing situation.

Back in April 2015, I met with the president of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council, Juliana Taimoorazy, and blogged about this issue which predates the Iraq war with the Armenian genocide that began a hundred years ago in 1915 that ended in 1923 targeting Christians.
 
In the 1930s the failure of Western Democracies to take in Jewish refugees highlighted in the disgraceful episode of the SS St. Louis Voyage of the Damned in 1939 sent a signal to the Nazis that they could do what they wanted with the Jewish population in Europe without any consequences.

Christians, Yazidis and Turkmen are being targeted for extermination and need to be given refuge. This should be done in a prudent manner, taking safeguards, but remembering that the lesson of the Good Samaritan in the Bible calls out to us to protect and assist refugees. Father Longenecker offers the following counsel, although his scope is narrower than mine:

..."Christian charity demands that we welcome the stranger and give solace to the homeless where we are able. We are the richest and most prosperous and bountiful country in history. We can, and should make room for the homeless and those displaced by war–especially as our own involvement in the Middle East has contributed to the mess. We have meddled in the countries of the Middle East–in their politics, their economics, their wars and their military coups. We’ve propped and then toppled their dictators. We’ve invaded their countries and bombed their people. Of course we should take in their homeless refugees. On the other hand, when you see the hordes of fit young men streaming across the European borders you can’t help but suspect that these are not refugees but an invading army. Should we open the borders to just anyone? Of course not. Why can’t anyone use common sense? ... Furthermore, why not be even more selective and take only family groups with husband, wife and children or one parent and their children or family groups with extended family members like grandparents? Are there single people who need help? Accept women and their children. Accept old people. Accept the disabled, the poor and blind. In that way we offer loving Christian charity to those in need while excluding those who might be a risk."

Christians, Yazidis and Turkmen should be provided refuge and measures set up to avoid taking in terrorists disguised as refugees. Senator Cruz's call to give a priority to Christian refugees entering the United States should be rooted in the recognition that they are the largest group in the area targeted for genocide. Shiite Muslims have Iran as a nearby sanctuary. At the same time it is imperative to get the borders and ports of the United States under greater control to prevent the incursion of more terrorists.

It is also important to remember that not all Christians and Yazidis are leaving, some have stayed to fight and take their last stand against ISIS. A friend of mine Jordan Allot, who made a documentary on Cuban prisoner of conscience Oscar Elías Bicet in 2010, traveled to Iraq and Syria with an Assyrian-American school teacher from New York to raise awareness about the plight of the Christian communities there and made the documentary Our Last Stand.

The threat of terrorism remains and we are in the midst of a terrible global conflict but we should not lose our humanity in confronting it or showing solidarity with its victims, but we must do so prudently in order not to compound the present evils.

The Christian Genocide in the Middle East and the Silent Complicity of the West

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions while the road to Heaven with good works

 American policy in the Middle East is accelerating the extinction of the oldest Christian communities in the world in what today can legitimately be described as a genocide. It would not be the first one in this part of the world that has targeted Christians.  Earlier this month Pope Francis observed the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against Christians. Today at St. Gregory the Great Catholic Church in Fort Lauderdale listened to the powerful testimony of Juliana Taimoorazy, founder and president of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council on the plight of Christians in Iraq over the past 1,400 years and the present crisis with the rise of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). Christians are being slaughtered, Church's burned and destroyed, and entire communities displaced. In a decade there may be no Christians left in Iraq. Western governments have, for the most part, been indifferent to their plight. This is a humanitarian crisis that you can do your part to remedy with solidarity. What do Assyrian Christians want?

• Urgent and continuous prayer
• Urgent and direct humanitarian aid 
• International protection for Assyrian and others in the Nineveh Plain 
• Establishment of local protection units with help from International community

During her presentation, Juliana, screened the short film, Sing a Little Louder, that reenacts what happened when a train shipping human beings to the death camps in Nazi, Germany stops near a Church while Mass is being held and the cries from the cattle cars are ignored as the pastor calls on those attending mass to sing louder to drown out the cries of help and how decades later, an old man remains haunted by the indifference shown that day to human suffering. A powerful film that is extremely relevant with past and ongoing genocides.On this same day videos were released showing two groups of Ethiopian Christians were executed in Libya by ISIS.

Ethiopian Christians purportedly executed by ISIS in Ethiopia

 Taking into account the indifference of Western governments and the extreme and genocidal nature of ISIS there is an opportunity to confront this challenge nonviolently ( not to be confused with passivity) and achieve better results against the most ruthless and violent regimes. A systematic study of  nonviolent resistance and its successful application has been provided by scholars such as Gene Sharp and Erica Chenoweth. Chenoweth's quantitative analysis comparing nonviolent action over the past century with violent action against different types of regimes finds that nonviolent resistance is more effective against the most extreme and violent regimes than violent resistance. Furthermore a review of what has led to the present state of affairs in the Middle East finds that the cycle of escalating violence with foreign interventions has led to the present predicament. In extreme situations such as Syria nonviolence was able to frustrate even the most brutal and violent dictators, but violent resistance only empowered them.

Greasing the path to genocide
In early 2003 prior to the start of the Second Persian Gulf War on March 19 of that same year a debate raged over the consequences of invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein's cruel dictatorship. Wayne Allensworth, a contributor to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, outlined the dangers of an American invasion to the Christian communities in Iraq:

Iraq's Christians fear that they will be the first victims of a war that might dismember the country, unleashing ethnic and religious conflicts that Baghdad had previously suppressed. Tariq, a Christian merchant in Baghdad, told the French weekly Marianne that "If the United States goes to war against our country . . . [t]he Wahhabis and other fundamentalists will take advantage of the confusion to throw us out of our homes, destroy us as a community, and declare Iraq an Islamic nation!" If recent history is any indication, Tariq has cause for concern: The Shiite uprising in southern Iraq during the Gulf War-encouraged and then abandoned by Washington-targeted Christians. 

Senator Barack Obama wrote a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on September 11, 2007 expressing concern "for Iraq's Christian and other non-Muslim religious minorities who appear to be targeted by Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish militants." The then Senator from Illinois and future President continued writing: "The severe violations of religious freedom faced by members of these indigenous communities, and their potential  extinction from their ancient homeland, is deeply alarming in light of our mission to bring freedom to the Iraqi people." Under the "democracy" erected by the Bush administration in Iraq, Christians who had been present there since the time of Christ faced extinction.

 On January 11, 2008, Senator Obama received a response from the State Department to the concerns raised in his letter of Christians being targeted in Iraq which downplayed the plight of Christians in Iraq:

Iraqis from all ethnic and religious communities suffer from the sectarian and general violence in Iraq. While it is true that in some cases religious minorities, such as Christians, are targeted due to their religion, the threat to Iraq's religious minorities is not unique to them; Shi'a in Sunni majority areas face much the same situation, and vice versa. In fact, Muslim citizens generally who do not support the actions of militants within their region are subject to similar threats. The assassination in Anbar of Sunni Sheikh Abdul Sattar Bezia al-Rishawi, who rejected extremist ideologies and sectarianism, and the murders of associates of the Shi'a Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani are recent examples of how violence impacts all of Iraq's communities, not just Christians or other non-Muslims.

In the same letter the State Department cited the "difficulty of compiling accurate data in Iraq" as an explanation as to why it could not determine if there was disproportionate violence against a particular population. In 2009 Human Rights Watch provided detailed information on the persecution and murder of Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq.  By 2010 columnist Patrick J. Buchanan, a critic of the Iraq war, in an essay titled "The Murderers of Christianity" provided the following data:

Estimates of the number of Christians in Iraq in 2003 vary from 800,000 to 1.5 million. But hundreds of thousands have fled since the invasion. Seven of the 14 churches in Baghdad have closed, and two-thirds of the city’s 500,000 Christians are gone.

Calls in 2008 for the protection of the Christian remnant in Iraq went unheeded. Unfortunately, President Obama upon entering office in 2009 adopted the Bush administration's inattention to Iraqi Christians.  During the Bush presidency nearly a million Christians fled Iraq. The number under the Obama presidency has risen to more than 1.26 million.

Will you stand up and speak for persecuted Christians?

LEARN MORE

Juliana Taimoorazy, founder and president of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council, will be speaking in South Florida this week:

• Monday, April 20, 11 a.m.-noon, St. Thomas University, O’Mailia Hall 2. Contact: Mary Carter Waren, mwaren@stu.edu, 305-628-6653.

• Tuesday, April 21, 9 a.m.-2 p.m., Msgr. Edward Pace High School, Dante Navarro Chapel. Contact: David Masters, dmasters@pacehs.com, 786-859-2117

• Tuesday, April 21, 4-8 p.m., Barry University. Contact Luis de Prada, ldeprada@barry.edu, 305-510-8945.