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Iraq Sees Christian Exodus
Moderate Minority’s Fearful Flight Augurs More-Extremist Politics
BAGHDAD, Iraq — For decades, Iraqi Christian Salim Hasan Michael outran his country’s tortured and bloody history, raising three children and enjoying mild prosperity as a television-news producer.
Today, he fears history is beginning to catch up to him. When a massive car bomb outside a nearby police station shattered the windows of his house early this year, Mr. Hasan decided Iraq was too dangerous for his two older sons and sent them to Syria. When four young Christians were gunned down as they waited for a ride to work earlier this summer, he and his wife began talking of joining them abroad. And when militants chased a young Christian girl into her garden a few weeks ago and shot her to death, Mr. Hasan and his wife decided to leave the country as soon as they could.
In a demographic change with enormous political and cultural repercussions, Iraq’s Christian community is steadily dissipating, driven out by a campaign of violence and intimidation targeting their homes, offices and places of worship. Precise numbers aren’t available, but Iraqi government and church officials estimate as many as 30,000 Christians have left Iraq since a string of church bombings in August, with hundreds more families leaving every week. Iraq’s Christian population is estimated at about 850,000, a sharp drop from the one million it numbered before the war and the 1.4 million recorded in a 1987 census.
The mass exodus, the largest of its kind since Iraq’s Jewish community fled the country in the 1950s and 1960s, is robbing Iraq of a politically moderate, socially liberal, and largely pro-Western population at a crucial juncture: With elections just months away, the diminution of the Christian community raises the risk that Iraq’s next government will be dominated by fundamentalist political parties that support policies — from the imposition of Islamic law to the continued existence of well-armed sectarian militias — that could be a recipe for further violence and political instability.
“There are two competing visions in Iraq, and Christians are on the side that believes in equality regardless of ethnic or religious background and laws that are as secular as they are in any other country,” says William Wardu, a senior official in the Assyrian Democratic Movement, the country’s largest Christian political organization. “There’s another group that doesn’t want to see any of that, and they’re trying to drive us out so they can pull Iraq back to a darker age.”
The campaign to uproot the country’s Christians has ranged from car bombings and grenade attacks targeting the country’s churches to smaller-scale — but far more routine — violence such as the killings of dozens of Christian beauty-shop, liquor-store and video-store owners or their relatives. Mr. Wardu has a cluttered folder on his desk full of photographs of many attacks, including a gruesome series of pictures taken just moments after gunmen burst into the home of a Christian family and shot 14-year-old Raneen Azzo and her five-year-old brother, Aziz, in the head at close range because their father sold alcohol.
Other Christians complain of daily harassment designed to intimidate them into fleeing. The backsides of the prescription slips issued by a prominent Muslim optometrist in the upscale Mansur district, for instance, deride Jesus as an alcoholic and encourage Christians to convert or leave Iraq. Many Christian families say they have had letters slipped under their doors threatening to kill them if they remain in the country.
The August church bombings quickly were condemned by most mainstream Iraqi clerics and groups — the country’s most revered Shiite Muslim leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called them “criminal” — but the clerics and political groups largely have refused to criticize the killings of Christians who work for the U.S. or sell alcohol.
Many ordinary Muslims say they hope the Christians remain in Iraq because they see them as an integral part of the country. But they often add that the Christians bear some responsibility for the unrest because of their vocal support for the occupation and willingness to work for the U.S. in large numbers.
The drive against Iraq’s Christians is having its desired effect. During a recent meeting at the U.S. Embassy, a delegation of Catholic priests told American officials that emigration poses a significant threat to the community’s future in the country. Father Peter Hadad, the prelate of the Our Lady of the Rosary church in Baghdad’s Karrada neighborhood, says his Sunday services attract fewer than 100 worshipers, down from 500 before the August bombings. He points to a framed picture on his mantle of the church’s choir, which he recently had to disband because members were too afraid to come to practice.
But the departures also could have a far-reaching impact on Iraq’s political and cultural future, because their absence vastly could complicate the U.S. effort to build a Western-style democracy that isn’t dominated by Islamic parties and clerics.
During the formal American occupation that ended in June, the sole Christian member of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council, Yonadam Kanna, battled to expand women’s political power and ensure that the laws of the new Iraq had a strict separation of mosque and state. When the council passed a controversial measure replacing long-held women’s rights in marriage and divorce with Islamic law, Christian political parties and women’s organizations helped lead a successful public campaign to overturn it.
Since the handover of sovereignty, Christian parties have pushed for the formation of a government free of sectarian divisions and willing to enshrine a raft of Western freedoms into the country’s permanent constitution. Christian politicians and clerics also have denounced the violence against Americans and the country’s interim government, lauded the prospect of a democratic state in a region run by authoritarian Arab rulers, and warned that a theocratic Iraq ultimately would repress both its Muslim and Christian citizens.
“Fundamentalism is very dangerous for everybody in Iraq, including the Muslims, because it takes away people’s freedom to choose how to live their lives and instead says that everything must be decided by religion,” says Archbishop Jean Benjamin Sleiman, the senior Catholic prelate in Iraq.
Mr. Sleiman says he encourages his parishioners to remain in the country, but has been powerless to stop many from leaving. Early last month, gunmen shot up the house of a fellow prelate, the Chaldean archbishop of Mosul, and left fliers at the scene promising to kill him if he didn’t convert or leave Iraq.
Indeed, many Christians increasingly spend their free time trying to navigate past the bureaucratic roadblocks barring them from leaving the country. Mr. Hasan, for instance, spent a recent sweltering morning shuttling between four government offices in search of a passport and visa, but ultimately realized they would be difficult to obtain legally. An employee at one office quietly told him he could provide the documents in exchange for a large bribe, and Mr. Hasan is scrambling to find the money to pay it.
“We have a proverb, ‘After Saturday comes Sunday,’ which means that countries that kick out their Jews eventually come after their Christians, too,” he says. “I worry that Iraq’s Sunday has already begun.”
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