'Religicide' in Iraq
But an evangelical church that has distributed food monthly to 700 families in Amman for the past four years said it recently had to drastically limit its outreach. Because funding has run dry, the church can now offer aid to just 20 of the neediest families.
Education has been another obstacle for the refugees, who until recently were barred from attending public schools in Jordan. Some refugee children struggle to fit into similar age classes because of gaps in their school attendance. Others have been traumatized by events that took place at their schools in Iraq.
One father said his 7-year-old son's Baghdad school came under a grenade attack that killed two of his classmates. Though safely in Amman now, the son tells his father he refuses to attend school: "No, Daddy. I can't because it will be bombed." The man, a Christian convert from Islam who asked not to be identified, said his son has nightmares, unable to forget the blood he has seen.
Most if not all Christian refugees believe returning to their ancestral homeland is impossible and see no other option than to resettle in the West. For the most part, Christians are not given preferential treatment by countries taking in Iraqi refugees.
Two exceptions have been France and Germany. France received some 730 Christians following the death of Archbishop Rahho and scores more following the church attack in October 2010. Numbers for Germany are unavailable.
And at least one Iraqi Christian has vowed to stay and fight on. "These attacks express the contempt and hatred of terrorist organizations for Christians," said Yonadam Kanna, one of a handful of Christian lawmakers in Iraq's 325-member parliament. "Iraq is our country, and we won't leave."
Dale Gavlak is a journalist based in Jordan. John Stott Ministries has given a grant to Christianity Today to support reporting on international issues.
Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
Related Elsewhere:
CT also posted a story on Iraqi Christians struggling to find refuge in Europe.
Previous stories related to Iraq and persecution include:
The United States Needs an Ambassador for Religious Freedom Now | The Obama administration must send a clear signal to Egypt and the Middle East that they must embrace religious freedom in full. (February 8, 2011)
Recovering Church History: Exile from Babylon | The Iraqi Christian community, now nearly gone, was the church's center for a millennium. (December 31, 2008)
Sins and Sorrows Grow in Mosul | For Iraq's Christians, a fearful Christmas amid shootings and a worsening humanitarian crisis. (December 15, 2008)
A Fractured and Beautiful Faith
Streaming This Weekend, May 24, 2013
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John Flanagan
I have always felt that the United States should never have invaded Iraq, nor should we have sent troops to Afghanistan or any other Muslim country. I believe the pretext was terrorists and weapons of mass destruction, but the reality was oil. Had our nation developed our own vast oil resources or other energy, we wouldn't have been in the mess we are today.
TheAssyrian TheAssyrian
I am an Assyrian whom still live in Iraq, all what you read above is true, and believe it or not, the fact is more dangerous than this, yeah, I have witnessed when the terrorists (some people who lived in our neighborhood who were with Saddam's party then after the islamic terrorism they become with al-qaeda) knocked my door, and said, you either pay money, convert or get out of here, we got out of our house for sure. Only the thing you said at Saddam's time was wrong, Saddam (when lost his control in 1990) he started to plant extrem religion in muslims, the "hijab" became more than before, they even tried to teach us "Islamic religion" in schools, also separated boys from girls starting from elementary schools, also tried to prevent us from speaking our own language. Iraq was closed at saddam's time, even if you got out, there was no UN refugee center that will accept you, that thing kept christians inside. Please tell UN to make it easy for us to have refuge, don't make us wait years
Johann Conrad
Um, in the first place, most "evangelicals" were stupidly and rabidly in favor of this war which unleashed a fanatical Islamic terrorist movement on Iraq. In the second place, this kind of religicide is exactly what Protestants did to Catholics in Northern Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. I would think you people would support it.