March 5 is a historic day for Iraq and its long persecuted Christian community, which faces an existential crisis due to continued pressures including political and cultural oppression and ongoing regional violence.
Pope Francis’s apostolic visit to Iraq began today as he arrived at Baghdad International Airport—a move long awaited by the region’s Christians, who have been violently targeted for decades by Islamist terror groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS, as well as by many previous Iraqi governments.
During his visit, the pope will meet Iraqi President Barham Salih and Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s top Shiite Muslim cleric, among other authorities. “The Pope will meet with Bishops, Priests, Religious, Consecrated Persons, Seminarians and Catechists at the Syro-Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of Salvation in Baghdad,” Vatican News reported.
“The visit of His Holiness to Iraq in these difficult circumstances is a message that carries hope for the Christian people in Iraq,” said Sargis Yokhanna, a Baghdad-based Christian Assyrian political activist and minority rights advocate.
“And it is a step to move the stagnant water and attract the attention of the Iraqi government and the international community to the Christian people in Iraq,” Yokhanna said. “The Pope will meet Christian crowds in churches and in many places, and he will visit Christian villages in the Nineveh Plain. Also, the perception of some fanatical parties towards Christians will change, and there will be a kind of calm and the tension in the region will end because His Holiness the Pope will meet with the Muslim religious authorities in Iraq. The Pope’s visit is a visit that has a humanitarian character that calls for coexistence and reconciliation and carries humanitarian messages. It will be a historic visit, and the Iraqi people are all excited about this visit.”
When many in the West hear the word “Iraq” today, they probably think that it has always been a majority-Muslim region. Yet, Mesopotamia, the area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in modern-day Iraq, has a millennia-long, pre-Islamic history, and is considered by many historians to be the “cradle of civilization.” It is also the ancient land of the indigenous Assyrian people and an immensely significant place for Christianity.
“Baghdad was built on the site of an ancient Mesopotamian settlement and saw a massive scientific contribution from Assyrian and other Christian intellectuals and scholars,” said Nicholas Al-Jeloo, a prominent expert on the history of Assyrians and the Middle East.
Mar Awa Royel, the bishop of California for the Assyrian Church of the East, and the ecumenical officer for the Church, said that “Baghdad is significant for Christian Iraq, and more specifically for the Assyrian Church of the East, because it was the seat of the catholicos-patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East from circa 780 to 1258, when the Abbasid caliphate ended.”
During his visit, Pope Francis is also due to hold an interreligious meeting at the ancient Mesopotamian site of Ur. Bishop Mar Awa Royel noted the area’s theological significance:
“Ur is considered to be the home and place of origin of Abraham, who is our father in faith, and acknowledged as the common father of faith for all three of the major monotheistic religions,” he said. “According to the biblical account of Genesis, Abraham was called by God out of his father’s house in Mesopotamia—Ur—in order to go to the land which the Lord had promised him. Regarding Christianity, Abraham is the major progenitor of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose lineage from the Blessed Virgin Mary is traced back to Abraham himself.”
Professor Al-Jeloo pointed out the Assyrian connection with the site. “The Ur III Dynasty ruled over Assyria in the early period and the Akkadian language was written using the cuneiform writing system developed there and in other Sumerian cities. As such, the ancient Assyrians saw their civilization as a continuation of that of Ur and the Sumerians.”
Iraq’s Christians are descendants and carriers of a deeply rooted Christian legacy. Yet, they have been severely persecuted by both regional governments and several Islamist terror groups.
The modern Iraqi state was founded in 1932. In August 1933, the Iraqi Army systematically targeted the indigenous Assyrian population in northern Iraq—in a campaign known as the Simele Massacre—murdering the inhabitants of over one hundred Assyrian villages across Dohuk and Mosul. At least 6,000 innocent Assyrians were massacred, and tens of thousands had to leave their homeland. The Iraqi government has still not recognized this state-sanctioned massacre.
Simele was not the first massacre against the community. As the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Department of the University of Minnesota notes:
The Assyrians are not strangers to persecution and mass violence, and have previously been the targets of genocide by the Ottoman Empire during World War I, Arabization by Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime, and Kurdification by Kurds. One of the deadliest massacres against Christians in Iraq occurred in 2010, when Islamic State of Iraq militants raided Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad, opening fire on almost 100 worshippers, killing fifty-eight.
The traditional Assyrian homeland includes parts of Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and Syria. The demographic structures of the region, however, have drastically been altered since the rise of Islam in the seventh century. The largest assault against the Assyrian people took place during the 1915-1923 genocide (known as “seyfo”, meaning “sword” in Assyrian) by Ottoman Turkey, which is the reason why the Assyrian community in Turkey has almost completely collapsed.
Today, the majority of the Assyrians still living in their ancient homeland are found in Iraq. Yet, 91 years after the Assyrian genocide by Ottoman Turkey, the Assyrians were exposed to yet another genocide in 2014—this time in Iraq and at the hands of the Islamic State, or ISIS.
Assyrian rights advocates are thus concerned the Assyrian and other Christian populations in Iraq might go extinct if precautions are not taken by the Iraqi government and international observers. The population decline of Christians in Iraq is alarming: Before the 2003 US invasion, around 1.4 million Christians lived in the country. Today, fewer than 175,000 remain—an 80 percent drop in less than two decades. The Assyrian Confederation of Europe reported in 2018:
Though they have lived in the region for centuries, Iraqi Assyrians have regularly struggled with persecution and violence, especially during the 20th century. From horrific events like the Simile Massacre in 1933 to regular cultural suppression and forced displacement, the community has endured countless assaults on its very existence. In recent decades, some of the worst incidents of cruelty in modern history have been perpetrated against Iraqi Assyrians, namely in the chaos during the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent rise of Daesh (ISIS) in 2014. As a result, more and more Assyrians have fled from Iraq, fearing for their lives and livelihoods.
Vulnerable Assyrian communities are increasingly marginalized and disenfranchised. They are being slowly smothered by repressive systems. This is remarkably tragic in Iraq, where Christianity has long been a vital aspect of Iraqi culture and history and has been practiced by Assyrians for millennia. If Assyrians are to be wiped out in Iraq, it will mean the end of this ancient and venerated practice in the country.
Even after the defeat of ISIS, Christians in Iraq are still exposed to murderous violence for their faith and ethnicity. On March 8, 2018, for instance, three members of an Assyrian Christian family—Dr. Hisham Maskoni, his wife, Dr. Shadha Malik Dano, and her elderly mother—were stabbed to death in their home in Baghdad. The two doctors, who had left Iraq, the country of their birth, in 2003, returned five years ago to work at St. Raphael Hospital in the capital. The victims, who lived in a neighborhood controlled by a Shiite militia, had been tortured, according to Ashur Sargon Eskrya, president of the Assyrian Aid Society-Iraq.
According to the Open Doors organization, which monitors Christian persecution worldwide, Iraq ranks number 11 in the World Watch List and the persecution level there is “extreme”:
After years of violence, an uncertain peace has come to Iraq—but 2020 saw recurrent violent protests and the instability in Iraq is a catalyst for the ongoing persecution of Christians.
Christians from a Muslim background often keep their faith a secret, because of the pressure and threats they are likely to receive from extended family members, clan leaders and the wider society. Christian converts risk losing inheritance rights or the right to marry—and they are not allowed to marry Christians, as the law still considers them Muslim.
Islamic extremists remain active in Iraq, attacking and kidnapping Christians. The government also discriminates against Christians in various contexts, from the workplace to check points. Blasphemy laws can also be used against those who try to spread the gospel.
It is believed that after Israel, Iraq has the most biblical history of any other country in the world.
“The Garden of Eden is believed to have been in Iraq, through which flow two of the rivers of paradise—the Tigris and Euphrates,” Al-Jeloo said. “Noah is believed to have lived in southern Mesopotamia, since his story is mentioned in the ancient Sumerian Gilgamesh Epic, which predates the Bible. Nimrod is supposed to have built the Tower of Babel, where God confused people’s languages, at Babylon. Abraham came out of Ur. The Assyrians of northern Iraq were the object of the prophet Jonah’s reluctant mission to save their capital Nineveh from God’s wrath, and their righteousness is something even mentioned by Jesus in the New Testament.”
Much else in the Bible took place in or refers to Iraq, in both testaments. Iraq contains the tombs of some of the prophets, including Ezekiel at al-Kifl, Ezra at al-‘Uzayr, Daniel at Kirkuk, Jonah at Nineveh, and Nahum at Alqosh.
“Psalm 137 and the book of Daniel are also set there, including the narratives of the youths in the fiery furnace, the lions’ den, Nebuchadnezzar’s madness and the writing on the wall,” Al-Jeloo said. “Nebuchadnezzar’s general Holofernes, who was beheaded by Judith, was an Assyrian. Moreover, the books of Daniel and Ezra are largely written in Aramaic, which was the official language of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires.”
Al-Jeloo also said that Assyria is named by the prophet Isaiah as “the rod of God’s anger” and the “work of God’s hands,” and one of the nations that will be a blessing to the earth in the end times, along with Israel and Egypt.
“Finally, in the New Testament, we see that people from Mesopotamia were present at the first Pentecost, as narrated in the Acts of the Apostles, and the Apostle Peter wrote his first letter from Babylon, where he says he established his chosen Church,” he said. “No other country in the Middle East, apart from Israel and Egypt, have been so significant to the Biblical narrative.”
Iraq is home to diverse ethnic Christian groups such as Assyrians, Armenians, and Kurdish and Arab converts to Christianity.
“The largest Christian ethnic group in Iraq are the Assyrians (or Assyro-Chaldeans), who belong to a plethora of different apostolic, uniate, and protestant Churches which largely employ Syriac as a liturgical language,” Al-Jeloo said. The majority of these speak Aramaic.
After Assyrians, the largest Iraqi Christian population is the Armenians, who are also divided between apostolic, uniate, and protestant Churches that speak Armenian.
“Currently there is also a growing number of Kurdish converts to protestant and charismatic Churches through Western missionary work in northern Iraq,” Al-Jeloo said. “There are also small numbers of Arab converts to Christianity—again mostly to protestant or charismatic Churches. There are less of these, however, since conversions have not been legally allowed by the central government in Baghdad and, generally, this is something that is taboo or frowned upon in Islam.”
According to Al-Jeloo, there are also Christian expatriates living in Iraq, some of whom have become Iraqi citizens.
“These include Egyptian Copts, Levantine Christians including Antiochian Orthodox and Melkite Catholics and those with European descent, who comprise the majority of Iraq’s Latin Catholics and Anglicans,” he said.
In a country which is still largely unsafe and unstable for Christians, the upcoming meeting of Pope Francis and Ali Al-Sistani, Iraq’s leading Shiite authority, on March 6 in the province of Najaf is considered by observers to be remarkable. Bishop Mar Awa Royel commented on the significance of the meeting:
One important issue that the Pope should/might bring up would be the reconciliation between Sunni and Shiite Iraqis, and cease all factionalism and polemics between them, at least on a practical level if not institutional. The country has been victim since 2003 to the ongoing strife and violence between these two components of Iraq, and unless there is an agreement to cease all acts of violence between them, the other non-Muslim components of the country (particularly the Christians) cannot feel that they are secure and safe in their homeland. The religious leaders of both groups need to foster dialogue and a degree of tolerance for the sake of Iraq’s security and peace.
Bishop Rovel said he hoped such a dialogue between the major Muslim denominations of Iraq could help the Iraq’s Muslims better tolerate the Christians, Yezidis, Shabaks, and other non-Muslim populations. This would include, he said, doing away with militia and paramilitary entities from both sides to strengthen the central government.
Bishop Royel stated that the main responsibility for providing equal rights and safety for Iraqi Christians and other vulnerable communities lies with the Iraqi government, which has yet to do enough to guarantee their security and livelihood.
“It has been our hope since the intervention of the coalition forces in Iraq in 2003 that toppled the last regime, that Christians and other so-called ‘religious minorities’ would be protected by both the letter of the law and practically,” he said. “The religious and civil rights and liberties of all the components of Iraq—especially freedom of conscience and of religion—need to be more firmly expressed and enshrined in the Iraqi Constitution. The sources of the legal system should be secular rather than religious legal sources, and in this way strongly indicate that the country is indeed a secular state.”
David Fischler, an American Protestant pastor and and the chairman of the board of directors of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council (ICRC), said he “has mixed feelings about the Pope’s visit to Iraq.” He said he thinks the pope should, regardless of his audience, keep the primacy of Christian truth and the well-being of Christians of all denominations in mind.
“On the one hand, the Pope occupies the world’s most important spiritual office, and therefore has the opportunity to influence events for good for religious minorities in Iraq,” Fischler said. “Certainly, the presence of the world’s best-known Christian in the Muslim-dominated region can serve as an encouragement for those who have suffered so much for their faith.”
But there is a second hand. Fischler believes the pope also embodies two worrisome trends from the Vatican in recent years.
“First, the willingness to compromise Christian truth for the sake of better relations with non-Christians, especially Muslims; and second, the unwillingness to speak out on behalf of those who are experiencing religious persecution in order to protect institutional prerogatives and placate authorities (this has been the case in dealing with the Chinese government for years)” he said.
Fischler said he would like the pope to encourage the Iraqi government to honor its pledge to create an autonomous homeland for religious minorities in the Nineveh Plain. He believes it would be a powerful message that could move that effort forward if the pope and Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani both spoke to that issue.
“I certainly hope that the Pope would speak of the need for protection of the rights of religious minorities with the governments in both Baghdad and Erbil,” he said.
For Fischler, the papal visit presents an opportunity for Christian unity in Iraq, if the pope will meet with, along with Chaldean Catholics, leaders of the Assyrian Church of the East, the Syrian Orthodox, and the small Protestant community.
“If he would encourage them to see themselves not as separate communities, but as one Assyrian people in different churches,” he said, “it would go a ways toward bringing needed unity to a people who desperately need to unite in the face of persecution and oppression.”
Juliana Taimoorazy is the founding president of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council (ICRC).
Uzay Bulut is a Turkish journalist and political analyst formerly based in Ankara.
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