http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070506/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_threatened_christians;_ylt=Apt8ldbh54ip8CJByh3GShFvaA8F
Iraqi Christians attend a church service in Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday,
May 6, 2007. In recent weeks, Islamic extremists have increasingly
targeted Christians, throwing many out of their houses or demanding
they convert or pay a special tax traditionally levied on
non-Muslims. (AP Photo/Hadi MIzban)
Iraq's Christian minority flees violence
By RAVI NESSMAN, Associated Press Writer
Sun May 6, 4:18 PM ET
BAGHDAD - Despite the chaos and sectarian violence raging across
Baghdad, Farouq Mansour felt relatively safe as a Christian living
in a multiethnic neighborhood in the capital.
Then, two months ago, al-Qaida gunmen kidnapped him and demanded
that his family convert to Islam or pay a $30,000 ransom. Two weeks
later, he paid up, was released and immediately fled to Syria,
joining a mass exodus of Iraq's increasingly threatened Christian
minority.
"There is no future for us in Iraq," Mansour said.
Although Islamic extremists have targeted Iraqi Christians before,
bombing churches and threatening religious leaders, the latest
attacks have taken on a far more personal tone. Many Christians are
being expelled from their homes and forced to leave their
possessions behind, police, human rights groups and residents
said.
The Christian community here, about 3 percent of the country's 26
million people, has little political or military clout to defend
itself, and some Islamic insurgents call Christians "crusaders"
whose real loyalty lies with U.S. troops.
Many churches are now nearly empty, with many of their faithful
either gone or too scared to attend. Only about 30 people attended
this Sunday's mass at St. Joseph's Catholic Church in the
relatively safe Baghdad neighborhood of Karradah, and only two
dozen took communion in the barren St. Mary's Church in the
northern city of Kirkuk on Sunday.
As many as 50 percent of Iraq's Christians may already have left
the country, according to a report issued Wednesday by the U.S.
Commission on International Religious Freedom, a federal monitoring
and advisory group in Washington D.C.
"These groups face widespread violence from Sunni insurgents and
foreign jihadis, and they also suffer pervasive discrimination and
marginalization at the hands of the national government, regional
governments, and para-state militias," said the report.
Islamic extremists have also targeted liquor stores, hair salons
and other Christian-owned businesses, saying they violate Islam,
the report said.
"This is not the culture of Iraqis or the nature of Iraqis. We have
lived during centuries together in a respectful attitude and
friendship," said Luwis Zarco, the Catholic archbishop of
Kirkuk.
In much of the Middle East, Christians are a largely tolerated
minority that have achieved a measure of business and professional
success, but they are sometimes viewed with suspicion by their
Muslim neighbors.
In Saddam-era Iraq, the country's 800,000 Christians many of them
Chaldean-Assyrians and Armenians, with small numbers of Roman
Catholics were generally left alone. Many, such as Saddam
Hussein's foreign minister and deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz,
reached the highest levels of power.
But after U.S. forces toppled Saddam, insurgents launched a
coordinated bombing campaign in the summer of 2004 against Baghdad
churches, sending some Christians fleeing in fear.
A second wave of anti-Christian attacks hit last September after
Pope Benedict XVI made comments perceived to be anti-Islam. Church
bombings spiked and a priest in the northern city of Mosul was
kidnapped and later found beheaded.
In the recent violence, residents of the Baghdad neighborhood of
Dora said gunmen knocked on the doors of Christian families,
demanding they either pay jizya a special tax traditionally
levied on non-Muslims or leave. The jizya has not been imposed in
Muslim nations in about 100 years.
One man, Arakan Admon, was wounded in a drive-by shooting last week
when his family ignored the threats, relatives said.
In response to the threats, about 70 percent of Dora's Christians
have fled, police said.
"The terrorists want to turn Dora into a base to attack other
Baghdad neighborhoods," said Christian lawmaker Younadam Kana.
"Criminal gangs made use of the situation and they started to
kidnap Christians and demand ransom. It is a coalition between
terrorists and criminals."
The southern neighborhood is a Sunni insurgent stronghold that has
seen frequent U.S. shelling under a security crackdown against the
sectarian violence.
In the northern city of Mosul, men began knocking on doors last
month, demanding that Christian families pay a $3,000 tax that
would be used to fight the U.S.-led forces, local residents said.
Some paid; others fled.
Mansour, a 63-year-old retiree, said that while many other
Christians left, he chose to stay in his Amariyah neighborhood in
western Baghdad. He was hoping that the Baghdad security plan,
which U.S.-led forces launched on Feb. 14, would improve the
situation.
"But the opposite happened," he said.
Mansour was kidnapped March 11 by gunmen who identified themselves
as al-Qaida. After 15 days in captivity, his family paid the ransom
and fled the country, leaving their home and electric appliance
store behind, Mansour said in a telephone interview from
Syria.