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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 24-Apr-2011
24-Apr-11 News -- In Easter TV Q&A, Pope asks Iraqi Christians not to emigrate

Web Log - April, 2011

24-Apr-11 News -- In Easter TV Q&A, Pope asks Iraqi Christians not to emigrate

Iraqi history is full of migrations.

In Easter TV Q&A, Pope asks Iraqi Christians not to emigrate

In an event apparently designed to bring the Vatican into the 21st century, Pope Benedict XVI answered questions from Roman Catholic bloggers and Facebook users last week, according to the Telegraph.

Pope Benedict XVI answering questions from Facebook users (Telegraph)

Pope Benedict XVI answering questions from Facebook users (Telegraph)

During the Q&A, a group of Christian students in Iraq told the Pope: “We Christians in Baghdad are persecuted like Jesus," and they asked for advice on emigration. The Pope urged Christians in Iraq "to resist the temptation to emigrate, which is very understandable in the conditions they are living in."

In fact, thousands of Christians have been emigrating from Iraq, to escape violence such as last October's massacre at a Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad. As reported by Reuters, "Fifty-two hostages and police were killed when an attempt by Iraqi security forces to free more than 100 Catholics held in a Baghdad church by al Qaeda-linked gunmen turned into a bloodbath."

According to the Financial Times (Access), most Christians blame such as the fault of the Americans and British, because of the Iraq war:

"We are in a new era of persecution of Christians," says Rifa’t Bader, a Jordanian Catholic priest whose congregation is now mainly made up of refugees from jihadist savagery in Iraq. "We are victims of things we are not responsible for, whether the Israeli occupation [of Palestinian land] or American policy in the Middle East, especially [the occupation of] Iraq."
Iraq is a case apart. Following the Anglo-American invasion of 2003, indigenous Assyrian Christians, mostly Chaldean, have endured a backlash that has reduced their numbers from close to 1m to about 400,000. One refugee in Amman, a 66-year-old chemistry professor who gives his name as Abu Sinan, says: "In my country, 1,400 years of co-existence and common endeavour with Muslims disintegrated in just five years." To Arab Christians around the region, this was a tragedy foretold.
Riah Abu el-Assal, a Palestinian and former Anglican bishop of Jerusalem, says one month before the invasion he personally warned Tony Blair, British prime minister of the time, that "you will be responsible for emptying Iraq, the homeland of Abraham, of Christians." After almost 2,000 years, Iraqi Christians now openly contemplate extinction. Some of their prelates even counsel flight.

I'm always bemused by this sort of stuff, because it has absolutely no basis in history. Is it really true that, as Abu Sinan say, "In my country, 1,400 years of co-existence and common endeavour with Muslims disintegrated in just five years"?

History of Iraq

When doing a Generational Dynamics analysis of something like this, a good starting place to look for answers to questions like these is to look back at a similar generational era. Iraq's last generational Crisis war was the Iran/Iraq war that climaxed in 1988, so Iraq is in a generational Awakening era today. So let's go back to the Awakening era that followed Iraq's previous crisis war, the Great Iraqi Revolution of 1920.

Here's a description from the Library of Congress history of Iraq that describes what happened in the 1930s and 1940s, with regard to the Assyrian Christians:

"On October 13, 1932, Iraq became a sovereign state, and it was admitted to the League of Nations. Iraq still was beset by a complex web of social, economic, ethnic, religious, and ideological conflicts, all of which retarded the process of state formation. The declaration of statehood and the imposition of fixed boundaries triggered an intense competition for power in the new entity. Sunnis and Shias, cities and tribes, shaykhs and tribesmen, Assyrians and Kurds, pan-Arabists and Iraqi nationalists--all fought vigorously for places in the emerging state structure. ...
From the start, the relationship of the Iraqi government with the Assyrians was openly hostile. Britain had resettled 20,000 Assyrians in northern Iraq around Zakhu and Dahuk after Turkey violently quelled a British-inspired Assyrian rebellion in 1918. As a result, approximately three-fourths of the Assyrians who had sided with the British during World War I now found themselves citizens of Iraq. The Assyrians found this situation both objectionable and dangerous. Thousands of Assyrians had been incorporated into the Iraqi Levies, a British-paid and British-officered force separate from the regular Iraqi army. They had been encouraged by the British to consider themselves superior to the majority of Arab Iraqis by virtue of their profession of Christianity. The British also had used them for retaliatory operations against the Kurds, in whose lands most of the Assyrians had settled. Pro-British, they had been apprehensive of Iraqi independence.
The Assyrians had hoped to form a nation-state in a region of their own. When no unoccupied area sufficiently large could be found, the Assyrians continued to insist that, at the very least, their patriarch, the Mar Shamun, be given some temporal authority. This demand was flatly refused by both the British and the Iraqis."

And so, what Abu Sinan said about 1400 years of peaceful coexistence isn't really true. Actually, it bears no resemblance to the truth whatsoever. Actually, what appears in Financial Times is complete crap. Today's Iraqis are repeating the same sorts of things that their parents and grandparents told them about, and are exhibiting the same sort of venom and xenophobia that they learned as children.

By the way, this is one of those rare years when Western Easter and Orthodox Easter coincide. Happy Easter everyone!

(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 24-Apr-11 News -- In Easter TV Q&A, Pope asks Iraqi Christians not to emigrate thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be posted anonymously.) (24-Apr-2011) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 24-Apr-2011 24-Apr-11 News -- In Easter TV Q&A, Pope asks Iraqi Christians not to emigrate

In Easter TV Q&A, Pope asks Iraqi Christians not to emigrate

History of Iraq

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 24-Apr-2011
24-Apr-11 News -- In Easter TV Q&A, Pope asks Iraqi Christians not to emigrate