New Wave of Attacks on Christians in Baghdad

Ten days after the killing of hostages at the Church of Our Lady of Salvation in Baghdad and only three days after an Iraqi archbishop in Britain urged Iraqi Christians to leave the country, and the day after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki urged them to stay, there has been a new wave of attacks on Christians and Christian targets in Baghdad. As Juan Cole notes, the radical Islamists accuse Christians of collaborating wit the occupier, but in fact many Christians supported Saddam Hussein; they are really collateral damage within the sectarian conflict generally. As Cole alsonotes, the failure to form a new government is in part to blame for the declining security situation.

Christianity reached Mesopotamia early, spreading from the early Christian center of Edessa (now Sanliurfa in eastern Turkey). The liturgy of the Iraqi Church of the East is believed to be the oldest Christian liturgical prayer still in use anywhere, dating from the third century AD. During the centuries when the two river valleys were under Persian rule and not part of the Eastern Roman Empire, the Church of the East (labeled "Nestorian" by Christians to the West; also called the Assyrian Church) became a major source of missions to India and as far afield as China. These ancient churches survived the coming of Islam, the Mongol invasions, and much else. The Assyrians had a difficult 20th century: facing Turkish hostility in World War I. Many did serve with the British Mandate in Iraq and were seen as collaborators; in1932 Iraq became independent, and in 1933 there was a wave of massacres of Assyrians.

Under the secularist Baath the Christians faced no more oppression than their fellow Iraqis; Tariq Aziz, one of Saddam's senior aides (and recently condemned to death) was raised a Chaldean Catholic. Christian Iraqis have been dwindling in numbers since the 1991 Gulf War, with the pace accelerating since the 2003 occupation. Other minority faiths, Yazidis and Mandaeans for example, have also been targeted.

Some reports indicate that those injured today include Muslims who were rushing to the aid of their Christian neighbors. That may be the only good news out of these recent events.

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