Iraqi Christian remains faithful despite severe religious persecution

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PROVIDENCE — Although he is a victim of religious persecution and extreme hatred, one Iraqi Christian hasn’t stopped thanking God for his blessings. Despite fearing death and other penalties, he manages to keep his Christian faith intact, but wishes to remain anonymous for his family’s protection during a phone interview with Rhode Island Catholic from Dohuk, Iraq.

He survived near-fatal car bombings and other violence, ultimately forcing him and his family to flee Mosul in 2012 and settle in Dohuk, about an hour away in northern Iraq. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a jihadist group formed in 2013, out of al-Qaeda, is murdering and driving all Christians out of Mosul.

“People were being killed by armed people every day,” he said last week. “We didn’t feel like we could stay in the city anymore because we are Christian; we are Assyrian; we are minorities.”

On July 22, the remaining Christians in northern Mosul fled the city, as ISIS threatened that if they didn’t leave, convert to Islam, or pay a tax, they would face death. Two days later, ISIS blew up the Tomb of Saint Jonah the Prophet, situated in Nineveh Province. It contained relics and archaeological items that were nearly 3,000 years old.

During night of August 6 into August 7, about 100,000 Christians fled their villages and headed to the Kurdish cities of Erbil, Soulaymiyia, and Duhuk, as ISIS attacked most of the villages in Niveveh.

ISIS claimed their homes, money, vehicles, and ripped crucifixes from their necks. Other Christians were tortured, as ISIS chopped off peoples’ fingers to gain possession of rings.

Apart from objects, the man said dreams were also stolen.

“Everything changed,” he said, noting that he was born and raised in Mosul, where he lived for about 30 years. “I didn’t feel comfortable in my home. We didn’t trust each other anymore because some of our neighbors became extremists. It was hard to believe that maybe one of my friends from my childhood would be extreme.”

As his one-and-a-half-year-old daughter coos in the background, he said he and his wife worry about the future.

“We are thinking about what will happen to our children, not only about what happened to us in the last few years,” he said, adding that it’s possible he and his loved ones might have to flee again, as they are still surrounded by ISIS.

Yet, he is optimistic. He hopes the United States and the United Nations will soon intervene.

Juliana Taimoorazy, who in 2007 founded the Iraqi Christian Relief Council, a non-profit organization that helps refugees settle in America, and raises funds to deliver food, medicine and other supplies to Iraq, also hopes more countries get involved. She said the U.S. needs to be more aware of the issue, as it doesn’t solely impact people in Iraq.

“It’s not an Islamic issue alone,” Taimoorazy said. “Islam has really penetrated the system and the way of life in the west.”

She finds the situation devastating, and experienced the impacts on a personal level. Growing up in Iran, she often heard Muslim teachers and friends say she would burn in hell for being an Assyrian Catholic.

Due to increasing religious persecution, her parents eventually smuggled 16-year-old Taimoorazy to Switzerland in 1989. There, she spent a week at a monastery in Zurich before heading to Germany, asking for religious asylum at the American embassy. A year later, she received an entry visa for America and became an American citizen in 1996.

These days, she’s horrified by ISIS.

“It gets really frustrating that after all of our advocacy work, after trying to put this on the radar, it’s still getting even worse,” said Taimoorazy.

While not as severe, she acknowledged that Christians in the U.S. are also facing undue pressure to compromise their religious beliefs, as Christian business owners have been forced to attend brainwashing classes or face bankrupting fines for not believing in or cooperating with the secular religion of inclusiveness. Additionally, the HHS mandate that violates religious freedom and fines employers for not providing insurance that covers abortion is similar to the jizya, a per capita tax charged to non-Muslim people of an Islamic state.

“This situation has reached our shores; it has already arrived here in America,” she said. “We, as Catholics in America, really have to wake up and see how this is affecting our way of life and our principles. We have a problem on our hands with the current administration, and have to be conscious of the systematic way people want to change the way of life in America.”

In his closing homily at the 2014 Fortnight for Freedom, Louisville Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), proclaimed that “there are a number of threats to religious freedom in our nation deserving our attention.” He said that “many people are suffering for their faith,” including the Little Sisters of the Poor, an international congregation of Roman Catholic women religious who serve the elderly poor. The organization is involved in a court battle, as it does not wish to comply with the HHS mandate.

“They cannot make a choice either to stop serving those in need or to compromise the faith that is their very reason and power to serve!” he said in his homily. “And we need to protect their ability to serve with love and integrity. We cannot stand by and allow anyone to force us to separate our acts of service from the living faith that motivates these acts, and we cannot allow anyone to force us to facilitate immoral acts that go against our clearly demonstrated living faith.”

Hillary Byrnes, assistant general counsel for the USSCB, agrees.

“It’s unfortunate that it’s gotten to this point in our country that we have to go into court to maintain our abilities to continue serving the public without having to pay enormous fines for having great health care that excludes things that we find morally objectionable,” she said during a phone interview. “Thankfully, we don’t have to worry about being killed for our religious beliefs, but at the same time we want the freedom to be able to practice our faith without serious government intrusion. If they are forced to do this, then what’s next?”

For the man who fled Mosul, he said he is not sure what’s next. But he is grateful for God’s love.

“I thank God because he protects me,” he said. “We don’t have anything to say other than, ‘thank God.’”

To learn more about the Iraqi Christian Relief Council, visit IraqiChristianRelief.org. More information about the USCCB is available at USCCB.org.