David QuinnAt last, the world is beginning to wake up and respond to a ferocious persecution campaign that has been launched against the Christian and Yazidi minorities of northern Iraq and Syria. The Americans have organised airstrikes against the armies attacking them and food drops to refugees.
The Churches are stepping up their act as well. Last Sunday the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, asked that the persecuted minorities of Iraq be included in the Prayer of the Faithful at Masses. But this should only be a first step.
All around the country a collection should be organised of the kind organised at Masses during other humanitarian disasters.
Priests also need to start preaching about this in their sermons. Christians here need to come to a much better understanding of what is happening in Iraq because from that will come sympathy and a willingness to do more.
What could a priest say in a sermon about the situation in Iraq, especially as to date he has been starved of proper information by the Irish media?
For starters he could describe the Christian community of northern Iraq. They are Chaldean Christians and they have been in communion with the Catholic Church since the 17th Century. So they are Catholics.
But they have been in Iraq almost since the start of Christianity and they are descendants of the pre-Arabic people of Iraq, that is, the Assyrians who are mentioned in the Old Testament.
In fact, they have been Christians longer than the Irish have been Christians despite wave after wave of persecution and invasion upon invasion, everyone from the Mongols to the Ottoman Turks.
We went through the penal laws once. They have been through the equivalent of the penal laws many times and it is happening again now. Imagine Oliver Cromwell and his armies giving Irish Catholics the choice of hell or Connaught and you have a good idea of what is happening to them now.
Any description of the situation in Iraq would also have to include a description of their oppressors, that is to say, ISIS, or just IS.
‘ISIS’ stands for the ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and ‘IS’ for the ‘Islamic State’.
Its origins lie in the Syrian civil war. It is one of the rebel groups seeking to overthrow the Assad regime in Damascus. But its form of Islam and its tactics are so extreme that even Al Qaeda has disassociated itself from it.
Beheadings
It has engaged in beheadings and crucifixions of its enemies. Its enemies include not only Christians and other non-Muslims, but fellow Muslims who are either politically opposed to it or are deemed to be insufficiently zealous in their faith.
It has gained an extremely strong hold in northern Syria which it used in June as a platform to invade western and northern Iraq.
In those parts of Iraq the demoralised, disunited and poorly led Iraqi army simply melted away putting up no fight at all.
Its biggest prize to date has been the capture of Mosul in northern Iraq, which is Iraq’s second biggest city.
Thousands of Christians had already left Mosul because Iraqi Christians have been persecuted by Islamists ever since the American invasion. It is estimated that the Christian population of Iraq has plunged over the last 10 years or so from about 1.5 million to about half a million.
There were 3,000 or so Christians hanging on in Mosul but when ISIS took it over they were given three choices; convert to Islam, pay a huge religious tax, or leave. If they did none of those things they would be killed.
They all left, according to reports. But in the last few days things have taken an even bigger turn for the worse. ISIS captured Qaraqosh, which is just south of Mosul and is Iraq’s biggest Christian city, or at least it was.
The arrival of ISIS meant 100,000 Christians from the city and the surrounding areas were forced to flee or be killed.
Meanwhile, further West, the town of Sinjar fell to ISIS. Sinjar is the main city of Iraq’s Yazidi community, which is a few hundred thousand strong and whose religion pre-dates both Christianity and Islam.
Because ISIS regards them as pagans, they have even fewer rights in their eyes than Christians and so can be killed with impunity. Tens of thousands of Yazidis fled to the slopes of a nearby mountain where many have already died of exposure and dehydration. Only American-dropped aid is saving them.
But interestingly, America only intervened after the Yazidis were forced to flee and after ISIS advanced on the Kurdish city of Erbil where the American embassy and American oil companies are situated.
Nothing was done after Christians were forced to flee Mosul and the international media took almost no interest in the story.
Influence
That more or less brings us up to date. The situation in northern Syria and Iraq could hardly be more dire. ISIS is establishing a barbaric theocracy in the huge area now under its control and wants to spread its influence further. It is as unambiguously evil as Nazism.
It is our duty to do what we can to help our fellow Christians and the Yazidis in the areas attacked by ISIS and one place we can learn more about their plight is in our churches at Mass on Sunday. Since our media are not keeping us properly informed about what is happening, our priests will have to do so instead.