Out of the frying pan and into the fire?
From AFP:
ISTANBUL (AFP) – Terrorised by mounting extremist attacks, more and more Iraqi Christians are fleeing in panic to neighbouring Muslim-majority Turkey, among them lone minors sent away by desperate parents.Turkey is, also, less than two percent Christian. Out of the frying pan and into the fire? Yes, it would seem so.
In Istanbul, a tiny Chaldean Catholic community has embraced the refugees, serving as their first point of shelter before the United Nations or local civic groups extend a helping hand.
The number of arrivals, available statistics show, has sharply increased since October 31 when gunmen stormed a Baghdad church, killing 44 worshippers, two priests and seven security guards, in an attack claimed by Al-Qaeda's local affiliate.
"We saw many newcomers after the attack. We saw they had made no preparation and had no savings," said Gizem Demirci, an activist at the Association for Solidarity with Asylum-Seekers and Migrants.
"Moreover, we began to receive minors... whose families are still in Iraq but had just enough money to send away a son or a daughter," she added without offering any specific figures.
The violence prompted an emergency summit by Iraq's top Muslim clergy in Copenhagen this week that issued a fatwa Friday that "condemns all atrocities against the Christians," said Andrew White, a participant and British vicar at St. George's Church in Baghdad.
The Shiite and Sunni religious leaders, who gathered at Denmark's initiative, urged Baghdad to criminalise inciting religious hatred and to "put the issue on the agenda of the next Arab Summit" to be held in the Iraqi capital in March, White told AFP in Copenhagen.
In Istanbul, among the newest refugees is 21-year-old Sandra, whose family fled Baghdad in mid-November, alarmed by the church carnage and ensuing threats by Islamist extremists. Christians represent less than two percent of the population in Muslim-majority Iraq.
3 comments:
This is not the only place Christians are under assault. Coptic Christians in southern Egypt have rioted twice now due to attacks, the last one where a Muslim policeman shot and killed a Christian woman. But instead of running, they are rioting-which seems to be something Muslims understand. The Copts are one of the oldest Christian sects and it is believed they control the remains of the Ark of the Covenant on their island church. The Iraqi Christians as well rank as some of the oldest of the faithful in the world. It is an abomination that they are being targeted here as well as in Indonesia. Yet the UN does nothing. Had the roles been reversed I wonder how silent they would be.
You're right, Ellen. We've been reporting on it almost everyday for the past month.
I started blogging over anti-Semitism in Europe and the Muslim world, but I have become convinced that anti-Christianism is just as bad.
We are living in a world which hates good, and loves evil.
Where Christians are oppressed violently they will have to either fight or flee. Where would they go in not to America or Israel, perhaps to Australia,(but not to Sweden)?
The weaker party is foolish to attend to offence. The weaker party, in this case, Christians in dar al Islam, would be smart to find a defensible place to fight from. Where? Who will have such an exodus of people?
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