The Christians of Iraq are going through hell on earth

Imagine that you wake up in your home, in your block, in your town thinking you are as safe as you used to be. When you suddenly get a visit from armed gang telling you that you should change everything that you believe in and become something else. Forget that you believe in Jesus and get your energy from the Bible and now you should salute Mohamed and start to read the Qur´an. This is something unbelievable for many strong conservative Christians in modern Iraq. When the family refuse to convert into Islam the armed hooligans start to take money by force from the family, they would call it Djizia, the extra tax that non Muslims should pay under Sharia rule. A week after the same terrorists comes back but this time they are more secure. They bring with them new fake IDs showing that this particular Christian family has now become Muslim. Something the family get very upset about but no matter how much they call for help from the authorities the situation stays as it is.

A week later the same gang comes back and claim that they want the elder daughter in the house to become their wife. Those gang members have mostly many temporary wife’s.

When the father refuse he get beat up and threatened, many times they take the daughter by force and many times they give them some day to say yes and bring her to her new man or else some killings will occur. During that day the family pack their clothes and sometimes without clothes they leave their homes, blocks and towns as fast as they can. What happened to them later is many times not better than back home and sometimes little better but still far from acceptable from a human rights view.

Imagine that your father gets kidnapped and the kidnappers demands more money than the whole family can bring. You sell the car, you take your salary in advance, you take loans, you sell as much as you can and you pay those terrorists the amount they request.

They get the money and promise you to let your father go within 24 hours.

You wait 24 hours with your heart pumping faster than ever and you get into the second day without hearing anything from neither your father nor the terrorists. 3 days pass and you loose all your nerves. You are now without your father who was the main family protector and income provider. You probably lost your job or about to do, you lost your properties and possessions. On the forth day some villager find a body and the whole village gather around it. You arrive and take a look at it thinking egoistic because you are hoping in your heart that it isn’t your father. When you take a good look at it you can confirm in your mind that this strange dead body actually isn’t just a body, it is your father. Just when you are in your deepest sorrow they start to come back for your family members, your brothers, your sisters, your mother and even you. Once again the regular Christian citizen find himself forced to leave whatever he has left and walk toward new unknown goals and destinations.

Some of the Christian Iraqis end up in northern Iraq where discrimination awaits them in every aspect of their new life’s.

Some cross the border and gets to Syria where lawlessness waits and hard weekdays become harder and tougher than they ever could imagine.

Some of the Christian refugees end up in Lebanon. A hard reality waits for them too because it is hard for most of them to get legal papers and suddenly becomes prisoners in churches and in friends homes afraid of being caught by local police.

We have to ring the alarm bell and turn on the red lights.

The situation for the Iraqi Christians is worse than ever. All other religious and ethnical groups are well armed and supported by some foreign powers. All but the Christians in their different directions.

Yet the Christians have not taken to violence and are believers that violence could be confronted by prays and peaceful actions. Let the world wake up by those pictures and support the group that embody the peace and forgiveness ideology. Don’t let all martyrs be just new numbers in the dead list and in the media statistics.

 Support the Christians of Iraq and you will be supporting an entire people to stay in its motherland.

Just like people support the rain forests to stay in their roots we can support the Christians to stay in their Iraqi roots.

Just like we support endangered animals to become strong again and be able to survive as an unique species we should support the Iraqi Christians to flourish once again and survive this disaster reality they face every day and night.

Christianity in Iraq is unique and should belong to the world people heritage.

In case they empty Iraq soon, do never forget that heritage.