Tag: Iraq

Anniversary of Yazidi Genocide

Anniversary of Yazidi GenocideI enjoy the algorithm-generated post Facebook hits me with each morning — recycled digital memories of happy times with people I love. It’s my daily scrapbook moment, like pulling the photo album off the shelf for a quick peek at the past.

A memory popped up recently from five years ago. It shows our family gathered to celebrate my youngest daughter’s high school graduation. An assortment of aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents gleefully surrounds my daughter, clothed in cap and gown and a broad smile. It was a good day, a milestone day.

A grimmer memory from five years ago also popped up — this one on my news feeds. It was not a good day, but it was a milestone. August 3rd marks the 5th anniversary of the Yazidi Genocide in Syria and Northern Iraq. Continue reading “Anniversary of Yazidi Genocide”

BOOK REVIEW: Is Jesus Worth It? A Review of ‘The Insanity of God: A True Story of Faith Resurrected’

“The Insanity of God” is an intense book depicting the struggles, heartbreak and power of God evident in the lives of Nik and Ruth Ripken.

(This article originally appeared at The Philos Project)

As midlife crises go, Nik Ripken’s was a whopper. After years of blood, sweat and toil, his life’s work lay in ruins. His enterprise had failed, he was forced to flee his home, and he buried his beloved son, all in the span of a few months. Not surprisingly, Ripken was left with hard questions – just not the questions one might expect.

Ripken is a missionary. He and his wife Ruth followed their hearts to Africa in the mid-1980s, serving first in Malawi and then in South Africa. In 1991, with a young family in tow, they traveled to Somaliland, a region in northwestern Somalia devastated by drought and civil war. In the face of total societal collapse, the Ripkens aimed to bring humanitarian relief to a desperate people, and in so doing, demonstrate the love of God to an un-churched people.

Continue reading “BOOK REVIEW: Is Jesus Worth It? A Review of ‘The Insanity of God: A True Story of Faith Resurrected’”

BOOK REVIEW: Christianity on the Brink: They Say We are Infidels

Mindy Belz chronicles the persecution of Iraq’s indigenous Christian community in her newly released, first-hand account, They Say We Are Infidels.

(This article originally appeared at The Philos Project)

The door for Christians in Iraq is closing. That is the grim message received from Knox Thames, U.S. Department of State’s Special Advisor for Religious Minorities in the Near East and South Central Asia, speaking on the systematic campaign by ISIS militants to eliminate ethnic and religious minorities in the Middle East. A new urgency may be attached to this headline, but persecution of Iraq’s indigenous Christian community has been building for more than a decade. Mindy Belz chronicles this in her newly released, first-hand account, They Say We Are Infidels: On the Run from ISIS with Persecuted Christians in the Middle East.

A seasoned war reporter and editor of World magazine, Belz provides more than a sterile accounting of the atrocities meted out against the Christian community in Iraq and Syria after more than a decade of war. They Say We Are Infidels introduces the real faces of conflict, the human predicament attached to a region afflicted by deeply rooted sectarian hatred and violence.

Continue reading “BOOK REVIEW: Christianity on the Brink: They Say We are Infidels”

ARTICLE: No Church Bells Rang: Ancient Communities Under Attack

sister-diana-momeka
Sister Diana Momeka

(This article originally appeared in The Philos Project)

For the first time since the seventh century, there are no church bells ringing across the Nineveh Plain in northern Iraq. The region has been emptied of Christians and other religious minorities, forced to flee from the ravages of Islamic State loyalists who overran cities and villages last summer.

This week, Sister Diana Momeka of the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena in Mosul, Iraq – herself a victim of ISIS – traveled to the United States to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and bear witness to the atrocities of ISIS. She spoke softly, but her words resonated with power and truth. She has given a voice to the persecuted church.

Momeka described the impossible choices ISIS demanded of the Christians of Mosul, Qaraqosh and the surrounding towns: either convert to Islam, pay a tax (jizya) to ISIS or leave their ancestral homeland with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. By Momeka’s estimates, more than 120,000 Christians escaped to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, where they languish even now in small, prefabricated containers and makeshift shelters. “This uprooting – this theft of everything that the Christians owned – displaced them body and soul, stripping away their humanity and dignity,” she said.

Continue reading “ARTICLE: No Church Bells Rang: Ancient Communities Under Attack”

ARTICLE: A Mother’s Heart: Remembering Iraq’s Persecuted on Mother’s Day

(This article originally appeared at The Philos Project)

Sunday is Mother’s Day in the United States and many other countries around the world. It is a happy time to celebrate motherhood and the nurturing role that mothers play in shaping our families and our culture.

When my girls were small, they delighted in showering me with gifts: breakfast in bed, flower bouquets plucked from our garden, handcrafted trinkets fashioned from Popsicle sticks, string and glitter. Of course, the greatest gift was the joy these precious children infused into my life: their giggles, their hugs and their endless questions. My dearest desire and most fervent prayers have been for their health and safety and for the fulfillment of their dreams.

It is as a mother, therefore, that my heart breaks for my counterparts in the Middle East who are overwhelmed by unprecedented persecution simply because of their Christian beliefs. What of their dreams? What of their prayers? Here in the West, we worry whether our children are doing well in school, whether they have friends and if they are being treated fairly on the soccer field. The worries of mothers who have escaped places like Mosul, Qaraqosh and the villages near Sinjar Mountain are of the existential variety: Can I feed my babies today? Will they have a place to sleep? Will my children be kidnapped in the dark of night?

Continue reading “ARTICLE: A Mother’s Heart: Remembering Iraq’s Persecuted on Mother’s Day”