"Harsh Conclusions"

Iraqi Christians are beginning to understand that help isn't coming.

With Christmas fast approaching, Iraqi Christians are coming to the hard realization that there may be a day when there are no more Christians left in their homeland.

“Christians are being extinguished in Iraq, while Iraq remains Muslim,” said Father Georges Jahola, a Syro-Catholic priest from Mosul, Iraq currently studying in Rome.

Those who remain want to leave because they do not feel safe, he said. “They see that there is no longer a place for Christians in Iraq. Even for us as a Church, we cannot deny it.”

It's a wacky thing. The blood of the martyrs is seed. We know this. We also know that, at some point, things will cease to get better. We also know the modern track record for Islam is to exterminate or dhimmify everyone, without leaving anywhere for seed or anything else to grow. Just ask Lebanon. It remains staggering, though, that the birthplace of Christianity is to be without Christians.

It's also amazing that the world can find time to be outraged at threats to burn the Koran whilst carrying what appears to be a complete lack of concern for the current religious persecution against Christians, not just in the Middle East, but worldwide.

Fr. Jahola said that since the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, every effort to protect Christians has failed. He criticized the walled compounds erected by the Iraqi government around church buildings as a sign of the government’s “incapacity” to keep the situation under control.

Meanwhile, the “decimation” of Christians continues, Fr. Jahola said. Their numbers have been more than cut in half from a population that 10 years ago was estimated around 1.5 million.

“It is alarming, that an ethnic people — a people who speak the ancient Aramaic language and have Christian roots — is being made extinct in the world. And no one intervenes,” he said.

And why is this the case? Why is there such concerted internation apathy?

To be continued...