Why are we
abandoning the Middle East's Christians to Isis?
If the Christians of
Iraq and Syria are to survive, they may have to do it in Acton
194
Comments 13 December 2014 Douglas Murray
She took the call herself the night the Islamic State came
into Mosul. ‘Convert or leave or you’ll be killed,’ she was told. The callers,
identifying themselves as Isis members, knew the household was Christian
because her husband worked as a priest in the city. They fled that night.
Like many of their Christian neighbours they sought refuge
in the monastery of St Matthew. But ISIS took that over, tore down the Cross,
smashed all Cross-decorated windows, used it for their own prayers and flew
their black flag on top of the church.
Monastery of St Matthew before ISIS invasion
Across what was Nineveh, Iraq’s
Christians spent this year fleeing from village to village, hoping to find
safety somewhere.
This woman’s husband and son continued their ministry among
the scattered congregations of Iraq. But the wife, who took the call, is now in
west London. We spoke there one Sunday morning earlier this year.
To attend the
morning service in a Syriac church and hear the Lord’s Prayer uttered in the
original Aramaic in which Jesus taught it is profoundly moving at any time. But
this year the prayers of this beleaguered congregation of Iraqi Christians in
Acton have taken on a terrible, plaintive urgency.
The Syriac church in London has swelled tragically in recent
years. Perhaps 70 per cent of the present congregation have come to the UK
since 2003. Mainly Iraqi, there are also a couple of Syrian families and some
Lebanese.
Several years ago they raised the money to build what is now called a
cathedral in an unassuming street in this London suburb.
Archbishop Anthansios Toma Dawood of the
Syriac Orthodox Church
based in London
The hymns are in Syriac, the sermon in Arabic. The prayer
for the dead is, like the Lord’s Prayer, in the language of Christ. Towards the
end of the service the Archbishop mentions to his congregation that a visitor
is sitting at the back who would like to speak to recent arrivals. They need
little encouragement. We gather in the church and afterwards in the hall for
tea and biscuits.
Everybody in this London congregation has a story. They tell
of homes taken, of Muslim neighbours using Islamic State’s advance to steal
their houses. ‘You are Christian. Get out,’ one was told. Another found that
Isis had written the letter ‘N’ outside his house, meaning it was a Christian
house. It now belongs to Isis.
Everyone has family last heard of sleeping
rough, trying to find sanctuary. Many support dozens of relatives who are
without homes or jobs. There are tales of the elderly and disabled who could
not leave the city because they could not be carried.
Martyred for her faith in Jesus Christ
Some of their relatives
have been taken to the mosques and forcibly converted to Islam. Others have
been martyred.
All the congregation I spoke to agreed on several things.
One is that although the situation has been bad for years and has peaked before,
there has never been a year as bad as this. A year, as the Archbishop tells me,
that Iraq’s Christian’s faced a genocide.
They do not understand why the world is ignoring them, nor
why a historically Christian country like Britain has been so unmoved by the
near-complete eradication of Christianity in the continent that gave it birth.
As one points out, the Yazidis lived with them for hundreds of years. They were
their neighbours and friends. So why was the world spurred to action by the
effort to commit genocide against the Yazidis and not the genocide against the
Christians?
Their families cannot go to Syria and they are not allowed
into Turkey. The lucky ones are living in tents in the Kurdish areas. The
luckiest — like the lady who took the call from Isis — had a family member in
the UK and a visa which was still valid.
Refugees fleeing from ISIS
All of which naturally brings up the
issue of asylum. Alongside the amazement at the world’s indifference comes a
question: why can’t Iraq’s Christians all get sanctuary in the West? If most EU
countries took in 10,000 Iraqi Christians, they could all live in safety.
Is this not self-defeating, I ask them? Would this not
simply speed up the end of this ancient church and ancient community? A woman
looks at me straight and says simply, ‘It is the end anyway.’
This article first appeared in the print edition of The
Spectator magazine, dated 13 December 2014
Tags: Christians, Iraq, Islamic State, Mosul, refugees, Syriac church, west London
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