[資訊] Iraqi Christians' long history

[simmon989 (勁舞飛揚)]

Iraqi Christians' long history
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11669994

1 November 2010

Christians have inhabited what is modern day Iraq for about 2,000 years,
tracing their ancestry to ancient Mesopotamia and surrounding lands.

Theirs is a long and complex history.

Before the Gulf War in 1991, they numbered about one million. By the time of
the US-led invasion in 2003 that figure fell to about 800,000.

Since then the numbers are thought to have fallen dramatically.

Under Saddam Hussein, in overwhelmingly Muslim Iraq, some Christians rose to
the top, notably Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, and the Baathist regime
kept a lid on anti-Christian violence.

But this started to change after the removal of Saddam Hussein and the US-led
occupation of Iraq.

Attacks

A spate of attacks on Christian targets in Mosul, Baghdad and elsewhere in
2004 and 2005 accompanied a more general breakdown in security in Iraq. It is
thought that proportionally more Christians - who were sometimes accused by
extremists of collaborating with the "crusading" US forces - left.

Clerics and members of their congregations who have stayed have continued to
face the threat of kidnapping by some extremist Muslim groups as well as
targeted attacks.

In March 2010, hundreds of Iraqi Christians demonstrated in a town near Mosul
and in Baghdad, calling for government action after a spate of killings.

The killings of eight Christians also prompted an appeal by Pope Benedict for
Iraqi authorities to protect vulnerable religious minorities.

Two years earlier, the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, Paulos Faraj
Rahho, was kidnapped and murdered.

Biblical city

In the wake of the 1991 Gulf War and the imposition of sanctions, many Iraqi
Christians, who had lived in relative harmony with their Muslim neighbours
for decades, left to join family in the West.

The secular government of Saddam Hussein did not persecute Christians in the
way it did the Kurds and some Shia areas, but it did subject some Christian
communities to its "relocation programmes".


For Christians, this was particularly marked in the oil-rich areas, where the
authorities tried to create Sunni Arab majorities near the strategic
oilfields.

Christians live in the capital, Baghdad, and are also concentrated in the
northern cities of Kirkuk, Irbil and Mosul - once a major Mesopotamian
trading hub known as Nineveh in the Bible.

Most Iraqi Christians are Chaldeans, Eastern-rite Catholics who are
autonomous from Rome but who recognise the Pope's authority.

Chaldeans are an ancient people, some of whom still speak Aramaic, the
language of Jesus.

Monasteries

The other significant community are Assyrians, the descendants of the ancient
empires of Assyria and Babylonia.

After their empires collapsed in the 6th and 7th Centuries BC, the Assyrians
scattered across the Middle East.

They embraced Christianity in the 1st Century AD, with their Ancient Church
of the East believed to be the oldest in Iraq.

Assyrians also belong to the Syrian Orthodox Church, the Chaldean Church, and
various Protestant denominations.

When Iraq became independent in 1932, the Iraqi military carried out
large-scale massacres of Assyrians in retaliation for their collaboration
with Britain, the former colonial power.

Villages were destroyed, and churches and monasteries torn down.

In recent years, however, some places of worship were rebuilt.

Other ancient Churches include Syrian Catholics, Armenian Orthodox and
Armenian Catholic Christians, who fled from massacres in Turkey in the early
20th Century.

There are also small Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic communities, as well
as Anglicans and Evangelicals.



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