Tag: Middle East

INFOGRAPHIC: Who Are the Kurds?

An at-a-glance infographic to offer some clarity about the Kurds, who have introduced both stability and tension to a geopolitically delicate Middle East

(This article originally appeared at Philos Project)

It was three years ago – July 4, 2014 – that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi stood in the pulpit of the Al Nuri Grand Mosque in Mosul to declare the creation of an Islamic State caliphate. What followed has been a brutal campaign of blood and destruction across Iraq and Syria.

Today, the caliphate is crumbling – at least geographically. Iraqi and coalition forces have recaptured Mosul and what is left of the Grand Mosque. In Syria, the United States-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have all but liberated the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa.

To be sure, the victories against ISIS belong to many, but at the heart of some of the fiercest fighting has been one steadfast group: the Kurds, a diverse and dispersed people with no sovereign state but a pervasive presence in the Middle East. In Iraq, the Kurds have functioned as a semi-autonomous state since the end of the first Gulf War. In Turkey, a large Kurdish faction has been branded as terrorists. In Syria, Kurdish militias have been key players in the fight against the Islamic State.

The Kurds have introduced both stability and tension to a geopolitically delicate Middle East.

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ARTICLE: A Light in the Darkness

Passage of the Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act brings promise of hope to a darkening world

(This article originally appeared in The Philos Project)

It is difficult to see past the evil.

In the waning days of 2016, we are reminded of it on a daily basis, particularly (though not exclusively) the evil that is making headlines in the Middle East. Aleppo is drenched in blood. A Christian mother of five languishes in a dank Pakistani prison cell, charged with blasphemy and sentenced to death for drinking a glass of water. Lives have been shattered with the bombing of Egypt’s main Coptic Christian Cathedral during a packed worship service. Iraq’s ancient Christian community is all but extinct, ravaged by genocide and unspeakable atrocities.

Trace the roots of this evil and you will find at its core religious persecution–the attempt by a powerful few to crush the most sacred of human rights: the freedom of conscience. According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, a staggering 75 percent of the world’s 7.2 billion humans live in areas of severe religious persecution. While the study revealed that the highest levels of social hostilities involving religion are found in the Middle East–where Christianity, Judaism and Islam originated–evidence of oppression in other corners of the world is all too prevalent.

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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.

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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.

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ARTICLE: Will Pope Francis Raise Awareness of Today’s Genocide in the Middle East?

(This article originally appeared in The Christian Post)

When Pope Francis arrives in the U.S. this week, there are many who hope he will again speak the word that global leaders have been reluctant to speak: Genocide. In remarks made last June while in Bolivia, the Holy Father proclaimed, “Today we are dismayed to see how the Middle East and elsewhere in the world many of our brothers and sisters are persecuted, tortured and killed for their faith in Jesus…a form of genocide is taking place, and it must end.”
It is hard to ignore the horrifying images of the humanitarian crisis gripping northern Iraq and Syria in recent years: families struggling atop Mount Sinjar in a desperate attempt to flee ISIS death squads…ethnic minorities gunned down en mass for refusing to abandon their faith…the wholesale destruction of historical monuments and holy places.
Yet these images are incongruous with our modern sensibilities. Such barbarous accounts are more consistent with the brutality of the Middle Ages. Surely in the enlightened 21st Century we have learned from past mistakes.

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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.

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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?

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