Revisiting “The Silent Extermination of Iraq’s ‘Christian Dogs’”

iraqi-christiansNearly three-and-a-half years ago, before the “Arab Spring” and the plight of Christians became much of a topic, I wrote a FrontPage article titled “The Silent Extermination of Iraq’s ‘Christian Dogs.’”  Revisiting it is useful, as it highlights some important points.  The article follows below in italics, with new observations interspersed in regular font:

Last week [April, 2011] an Iraqi Muslim scholar issued a fatwa that, among other barbarities, asserts that “it is permissible to spill the blood of Iraqi Christians.”  Inciting as the fatwa is, it is also redundant.  While last October’s Baghdad church attack which killed some sixty Christians is widely known—actually receiving some MSM coverage—the fact is, Christian life in Iraq has been a living hell ever since U.S. forces ousted the late Saddam Hussein in 2003.

The important point here is that the plight of Iraq’s Christians did not just begin under the Islamic State, as many seem to believe, but rather from the very first day the (secular) autocrat was removed.

Among other atrocities, beheading and crucifying Christians are not irregular occurrences; messages saying “you Christian dogs, leave or die,” are typical.  Islamists see the church as an “obscene nest of pagans” and threaten to “exterminate Iraqi Christians.”  John Eibner, CEO of Christian Solidarity International, summarized the situation well in a recent letter to President Obama:

“The threat of extermination is not empty. Since the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, more than half the country’s Christian population has been forced by targeted violence to seek refuge abroad or to live away from their homes as internally displaced people. According to the Hammurabi Human Rights Organization, over 700 Christians, including bishops and priests, have been killed and 61 churches have been bombed. Seven years after the commencement of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Catholic Archbishop Louis Sako of Kirkuk reports: ‘He who is not a Muslim in Iraq is a second-class citizen. Often it is necessary to convert or emigrate, otherwise one risks being killed.’ This anti-Christian violence is sustained by a widespread culture of Muslim supremacism that extends far beyond those who pull the triggers and detonate the bombs.”

Again, more confirmation that the savage persecution of Christians in Iraq—including recent acts of genocide and expulsions—is not a product of the Islamic State, but rather something more homegrown, more—how shall we say?—integral to Muslims unloosed from the grips of secularized dictators?

The grand irony, of course, is that Christian persecution has increased exponentially under U.S. occupation.  As one top Vatican official put it, Christians, “paradoxically, were more protected under the dictatorship” of Saddam Hussein.

What does one make of this—that under Saddam, who was notorious for human rights abuses, Christians were better off than they are under a democratic government sponsored by humanitarian, some would say “Christian,” America?

Although I first suggested over three years ago that Christian minorities are the first to suffer whenever the U.S. intervenes in Islamic nations—evincing the types of people the U.S. ends up empowering—this notion is now an ironclad fact, with other examples to add to Iraq, including Libya, Syria, and Egypt, under Obama allies, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Like a Baghdad caliph, Saddam appears to have made use of the better educated Christians, who posed no risk to his rule, such as his close confidant Tariq Aziz.  Moreover, by keeping a tight lid on the Islamists of his nation—who hated him as a secular apostate no less than the Christians—the latter benefited indirectly.

Conversely, by empowering “the people,” the U.S. has unwittingly undone Iraq’s Christian minority.  Naively projecting Western values on Muslims, U.S. leadership continues to think that “people-power” will naturally culminate into a liberal, egalitarian society—despite all the evidence otherwise.  The fact is, in the Arab/Muslim world, “majority rule” traditionally means domination by the largest tribe or sect; increasingly, it means Islamist domination.

Either which way, the minorities—notably the indigenous Christians—are the first to suffer once the genie of “people-power” is uncorked.  Indeed, evidence indicates that the U.S. backed “democratic” government of Iraq enables and incites the persecution of its Christians.  (All of this raises the pivotal question: Do heavy-handed tyrants—Saddam, Mubarak, Qaddafi, et al—create brutal societies, or do naturally brutal societies create the need for heavy-handed tyrants to keep order?)

Again, a reminder that it is not just the Islamic State that persecutes Christians, but even the U.S. installed government of Iraq. Moreover, a few months after the above was written, the government of “liberated” Afghanistan destroyed the last Christian church—entirely under U.S. auspices.

Another indicator that empowering Muslim masses equates Christian suffering is the fact that, though Iraqi Christians amount to a mere 5% of the population, they make up nearly 40% of the refugees fleeing Iraq.  It is now the same in Egypt: “A growing number of Egypt’s 8-10 million Coptic Christians are looking for a way to get out as Islamists increasingly take advantage of the nationalist revolution that toppled long-standing dictator Hosni Mubarak in February.”

At least Egypt’s problems are homegrown, whereas the persecution of Iraq’s Christians is a direct byproduct of U.S. intervention.  More ironic has been Obama’s approach: Justifying U.S. intervention in Libya largely in humanitarian terms, the president recently declared that, while “it is true that America cannot use our military wherever repression occurs… that cannot be an argument for never acting on behalf of what’s right.”

Indeed, and we have since seen what Obama’s “humanitarian” actions in Libya have led to—the empowerment of Islamists and jihadis, evinced from things like the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the dramatic rise of Christian persecution.  Since Obama “liberated” Libya, Christians—including Americans—have been tortured and killed (including for refusing to convert) and churches bombed. And it’s “open season” on Copts, as jihadis issue a reward to Muslims who find and kill Christians. This was hardly the case under Gaddafi.

True, indeed.  Yet, as Obama “acts on behalf of what’s right” by providing military protection to the al-Qaeda connected Libyan opposition, Iraq’s indigenous Christians continue to be exterminated—right under the U.S. military’s nose in Iraq. You see, in its ongoing bid to win the much coveted but forever elusive “Muslim-hearts-and-minds™”—which Obama has even tasked NASA with—U.S. leadership has opted to ignore the inhumane treatment of Islam’s “Christian dogs,” the mere mention of which tends to upset Muslims.

And now the job is largely done, as Christians and other religious minorities are being cleansed from large parts of Iraq, not to mention much of the Islamic world.

  • mollysdad

    The Americans screwed up in Iraq because they had, and stoll do not have, any understanding of the biblical concept of a “herem” war. If they did, they would have responded to the destruction of Iraq’s Christians in the same way the Israelites dealt with the Canaanites. They would have slaughtered Sheikh Al-Khatib Al-Baghdad, who issued the fatwa, together with his entire entourage.

    When you do it against evil spirits, it’s called an exorcism. When you do it against a human enemy, it’s called (in Hebrew) “milkhemet mitzvah”.

  • http://JudeoChristianAmerica.org Alexander Gofen

    “Some would say Christian, America” – What a bitter irony! Just a few decades ago, along the entire political spectrum, everybody at least acknowledged that America is a Judeo-Christian nation. No more so. Our national identity now is denied by nefarious forces both from the left and right. America bombed Christian Serbs under Clinton – yet failed to bomb Mecca and Medina on 9/12/2001 under Bush, who let out the entire family of OBL…

    America has lost its soul at least since 1933 (“American Betrayal”), but the contemporary America behaves as a mad dog incurring a havoc and suffering wherever it intervenes: A failed, null and void nation – http://JudeoChristianAmerica.org

    • Tatiana Covington

      Almost always, INTERFERENCE DOES FAR MORE HARM THAN GOOD.

  • African Child

    It is a difficult time to be a Christian in the Middle East, at least the Christians in Egypt can relax better since the exit of US backed Morsi . The election of Sisi in Egypt is welcome development for Christians in Egypt. America seems to be the number one destroyer of Christians in the ME.

    • IslamDownpressesHumanity

      I’d say you’re wrong — except for the current occupant of the Presidential Palace in D.C.

  • wileyvet

    In both cases, Iraq and Egypt the persecution is still grounded in Islam, and the culture it produces. Muslims do not need any reason other than Islam to do what they do. The Islamic Imperialist conquests separated all non -Muslims for Dhimmi status and all that entails. Islam sanctions all such treatment of Kafir, and it is the price of standing against Islam, contrary to Allah’s will. If you are not Muslim you are nothing. If Islam embraced or produced the thinking of western values, then there would be 56 Muslim countries that are not dysfunctional crapholes, and would be flourishing with healthy societies. But Islam does not, nor cannot produce these things. It is time for the west to understand this. No more apologizing for our superior culture, and no more excuses for Muslims and the abomination called Islam. All Muslims must be forcibly removed from western nations, and dumped back to the Islamic world they so love. Let them fester in the poverty and squalid conditions that Islam produces. Then if so much as one of them tries to enter our countries again, the entire Muslim world is annihilated. There will never be peace on this earth until every last Muslim and vestige of Islam is utterly and completely destroyed.

  • Erudite Mavin

    Over 50,000 Chaldeans live in San Diego.

    Many had a march of support for the Chaldeans suffering in Iraq.

    http://kpbs.media.clients.ellingtoncms.com/img/photos/2014/08/20/MARCH8_t600.jpg?4326734cdb8e39baa3579048ef63ad7b451e7676

  • William 1

    Islam is so stupid. Every time they begin to lose they go back to basics-murder all opposition. We;ll every time Chjristians are persecuted it is seed bed for a larger christian emergence even among thier own people-how stupid. If they left American Christianity alone God would deal with them and they would ot have to lift a finger-look at Nebuchadnazzer and Israel!

  • Tatiana Covington

    We shoulda stood in bed.

  • Laser1

    I love your detailing Raymond
    Ibrahim. You speak the truth
    and Americans are so about their own world that they can’t get a handle about the
    fact that people (Islamic extremist) of another so called religion could be
    killing Christians for what they believe in. They think they are safe in the
    Country, county, city and home until a crazy lunatic walks through their door. Also because of the media we Americans are conditioned
    not to think that it could happen here. We
    have too many other things to do and think about. Am I right on this? Well like an alcoholic that doesn’t
    thing they have a drinking problem, but in their minds they are already planning
    to get a drink somehow, and then to wake up from a stupor, not knowing where
    they are and ask how did they get there. I make my case.

    Thanks
    Raymond for the work you have been doing.

  • Lastango

    I must disagree that the persecution of Christians is a result of the US “naively projecting Western values on Muslims” and “empowering the people”.

    Instead, the Bush and Obama administrations have deliberately reached out to and empowered radical Islamists across North Africa and over to Iraq and Iran. In doing so they have deliberately undercut allies in Morocco, Egypt, Israel, Iraq and elsewhere, while kicking sleeping dogs in Libya.

    Why the US administrations did this is a longer topic. But we can be assured that it was pure calculation — conducted in concert with the Europeans — and had nothing whatever to do with naivete, projecting Western values, incompetence, or any sort of casual or misplaced idealism.

  • IslamDownpressesHumanity

    Tariq Aziz was born a Christian and had a Christian name. Before his rise in Saddam’s regime he took a moslem name. What does that usually imply in the moslem world?

  • IslamDownpressesHumanity

    I used to know an Iraqi Christian woman, both her Christian brothers were murdered in Iraq by moslems and no criminal investigation was made by the all moslem authorities. Christians are going the same way as Iraq’s once plentiful (Baghdad once was had a Jewish majority) and prosperous Jewish population and for exactly the same reasons. Were the moslems who committed the Baghdad Farhud pogrom “radical”? If so, then where were the “moderate” moslems during the course of the pogrom?