Showing posts with label christians in Middle East. Show all posts
Showing posts with label christians in Middle East. Show all posts

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Iran mullahs seek Islamic unity against enemies of Islam

Iranian WS: Mullahs' envoy to Lebanon here Wednesday considered a need of the Islamic World unity more than ever. Mohammad-Reza Sheibani made the comment in a meeting with a visiting delegation from Iran's World Forum for Proximity of Islamic Schools of Thought, inclusive of prominent Iranian Shi'a and Sunni Alims. He added, "Under such conditions that the enemies of Islam have begun a massive campaign against the Islamic nations in the region and seem to be determined to annihilate their Islamic identity, the most important factor that can annul that plot, as the Supreme Leader of Islamic Revolution has noted, is restoration of Islamic unity.


International Affairs Deputy of the World Assembly for Proximity of Islamic Schools of Thought, mullah Hamed Allamolhoda, too, during the meeting emphasized the need of Islamic World Alims' endeavors aimed at restoration of Islamic unity and solidarity. He added, "Today the enemies of the world Muslims have intensified their campaign against us, sowing the seeds of discord between the followers of various Islamic Schools of Thought".

I wonder when our church leaders and Pope are going to ask for Christian unity against Christians enemies? I urge you to read the following link to find out what I'm talking about: "The way things are, soon there will not be a single Christian living in the land of Jesus,"

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Saturday, May 12, 2007

IRAQ: ARMED GROUPS TARGET CHRISTIANS IN BAGHDAD

Baghdad, 10 May (AKI) - An armed Iraqi group has in recent days begun targeting Christians in the residential al-Doura neighbourhood of Baghdad, according to an interior ministry source quoted by the pan Arab daily al-Sharq al-Awsat. Information obtained during probes and the interrogation of various terror suspects arrested last week indicate that this group is linked to al-Qaeda and is made up of 200 militiamen, most of them foreigners. [...]

"Thousands of Christian families are being told to leave the country or convert to Islam or pay the jizyah (a tax traditionally imposed on non-Muslim men in Islamic states)," said the parliamentarian, Romeo Hakkari, an ethnic Assyrian of the Chaldean Church - a Roman Catholic oriental rite denomination.According to Hakkari, who heads the House of the Two Rivers Democratic Party, which promotes the rights of Assyrian-Chaldeans, many Christians living in Mosul and Baghdad have fled those cities and sought refuge either in remote parts of Iraqi Kurdistan or abroad after receiving threats from Islamists.

He cited the example of pamphlets, purportedly distributed by the al-Qaeda-linked "Islamic State of Iraq" group that threatened to kill Christians if they did not abandon the city.

The Muslim extremists have also tried to revive the jizyah practice, which forced non-Muslism people "of the Book" (Christians and Jews) to buy protection from the authorities by paying the tax.
[...]
Iraq's Christian community was estimated to number nearly half a million or about 5 percent of the country’s population on the eve of the 2003 US-led war that toppled Saddam.

Thousands of Iraqi Christians who comprise a variety of churches - Assyrian Orthodox and Assyrian Catholic; Syrian Orthodox and Syrian Catholic; Armenian Orthodox and Armenian Catholic; Greek Orthodox, Latin Catholic, and Protestant denominations - have since fled the strife-torn country.

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