Posted on 07/14/2009 9:47:36 AM PDT by NYer
.- More than 40 people were killed or injured in renewed attacks on Christians in Baghdad on Sunday.
Shortly after 7:00 on Sunday evening, a car bomb exploded in front of the gates of St. Mary’s Chaldean Catholic Church in Baghdad. The explosion occurred just as churchgoers left Mass.
Seven were killed and around 30 were injured, with 18 requiring hospital treatment, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) reports.
Bombs reportedly went off at three other Baghdad churches around 4:30 pm, two of which were St. George’s Church in the Al-Ghadier section and St. Joseph’s Church in the Al-Shurta section.
According to ACN, which received its information from a priest working in the Iraqi capital, eight people were wounded in the attacks.
More than 200,000 have fled Iraq because of persecution and violence since the American-led invasion. Upwards of 50,000 have sought refuge in the north of Iraq.
Continued emigration is also depleting the numbers of Iraqi Christians, who have resided in the country since the early centuries of Christianity. While Christians in Iraq numbered about one million in 2003, there are fewer than 400,000 today.
Archbishop of Baghdad Jean Sleiman has said that “very real persecution” is a huge threat for Christians in some areas.
ACN has provided food and medical aid for Iraqi refugees in other Middle Eastern countries. The international pastoral charity has also supported religious sisters who distribute basic food parcels to displaced and impoverished families in the north of Iraq.
An Iraqi police man stands guard outside the Notre Dame church on Palestine Street in the east of the capital Baghdad. Security was ramped up in Christian areas of Baghdad and Mosul on Monday after deadly bombings which dismayed church leaders and prompted an appeal for peace from Pope Benedict XVI.
The left is absolutely delighted.
> The left is absolutely delighted.
I can almost hear the popping of champaigne corks and the crackling of burning dope.
Bush’s fault. Seriously.
“The Religion of Peace” has spoken, it seems.
They still kill for a dead warlord.
The Left believes that. They claim that Saddam kept the terrorists under control. Of course the Left won’t let us use his methods.
The attacks on non-Muslims by Muslims will never end. Islam cannot reform.
This is the Islam invented by Mohammed. They will never change. Mohammed would be proud. And Obama will be pleased.
Yep, and Bozo’s pull out from Iraq is working at intended also. Just killing the Christians Americans won’t!
1. Seeing how Saddam was such a monster, one assumes you wouldn’t want to use his methods.
2. The Chaldean community didn’t exactly come out of nowhere during the iron-fisted Saddam years. It has been there for almost 2,000 years. It’s only now with the Bush-caused destabilization of the entire region that most of Christian Iraq has fled into exile and the rest live in fear for their lives.
3. No one among either liberals or mainstream “conservatives” appears to give a thought to these people. I have never heard of any US policy under any administration intended to protect indigenous Christians of the Middle East. They could all drop dead for all this country cares. Indeed, I can believe our leaders would prefer it that way.
Liberals stood in protest of Christian groups coming to aide (and engage in missionary work with) people in Iraq.
They said it was “imperialist”. Meanwhile the Islamic empire goes unchecked.
Well, I am not a liberal, but I would call it presumptuous at best and more likely cynical. Presumptuous because it is beyond belief that significant numbers of Muslims will be converted to evangelical Christianity. Cynical because there is (was?) already an indigenous Christian Church of apostolic origin in Iraq — which DIY Americans essentially dismissed as not really Christian. Or did they intend to “evangelize” the Christians? Sheep-stealing for Jesus, anyone?
How many of the world’s 1 billion+ muslims live in nation where they even have a choice in that decision?
Some nations prohibit non-Islamic religious texts.
Some impose a tax Jews and Christians as well as giving them fewer protections under the law (unequal treatments for victims/criminals depending on whether they are muslims or kufir).
And some do not tolerate conversion away from Islam.
Our founding fathers’ principle of a freedom of religion does not end at our border. It is a universal concept (we find these truths to be self-evident). Whether we can impose them on another nation is moot.
If the world wanted to shun Saudi Arabia’s apartheid system, it could just as it shunned South Africa’s.
Irrelevant gibberish. We are discussing Iraq. Don’t change the subject just because you’ve lost the argument.>
Yes, Christians have a hard time in the ME. Your friends have made it even harder.
For the record, I do not believe we can impose the “gift of freedom” at gunpoint, notwithstanding how much our politicians babble and tapdance and wave their arms about.
Changing what argument?
You say that it is pointless to try to convert muslims in Iraq and elsewhere.
Religious freedom is an unheard of concept for many millions out of a billion muslims.
Who are my friends?
Do you stand with the liberals who also said (in the wake of the fall of Saddam) that “democracy isn’t (right) for everyone”?
No I didn't. I said you are not going to have significant success importing evangelical protestantism, especially in a land with its own history of a real -- viz., apostolic -- church.
You don't have to be a liberal (quite the opposite, in fact) to believe that democracy as an ideology has fundamental flaws.
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