Christians in Iraq

I am embarrassed to say that, until recently, I didn't even know there were Christians living in Iraq.  Okay, that is not quite true.  I knew that there were Christians in Erbil because my husband spent a month or so there several years ago training museum conservators, and I remember his talking about the Christmas displays in some of the shops.  But I never thought much about the fact that there were Christians in what we in America tend to think of as a Muslim country.

Did you?  Do you now?  Have you seen the reports of the massacres?  The crucifixions?  The rapes?  Do you know that Christian houses are being marked with the sign of the Nazarene (ن) as a mark of shame?

What do we do about this, we in the West?  Where are the protests against the genocide?  Where is the outrage?  Some of my friends on Facebook changed their profile pictures to the sign, but that's about it.  Only occasionally have we mentioned the Christians being persecuted throughout the world in the prayers at my church (well, okay, I have mentioned them in the prayers that I have written for us), but no one has preached about them.  Do we not care?  Do we not care that thousands have been murdered in just the past several months?  Do we not care that women have been raped with their husbands watching?  Husbands beheaded as their wives watched?  Do we not care that those who confess that Christ is LORD are now being called upon to convert or die?

I blame Walter Scott, specifically The Talisman.

Comments

  1. Thomas William JensenOctober 23, 2014 at 4:38 PM

    I just saw your post from September 21st and I'm baffled. After such an honest and heartfelt appeal to finish by blaming Walter Scott. Really? Don't you think that's more than a tad reductive, particularly for an historian? Perhaps the devilish work of Mark Sykes and Georges Francois Picot deserve some consideration and much else.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thomas William JensenOctober 24, 2014 at 7:58 AM

    In the cool light of morning I realize you must have been ironic, facetiously alluding to Twain perhaps. It was the change in tone that caught me off guard.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Fencing BearOctober 24, 2014 at 9:26 AM

    Yes, you are right to catch the change in tone. I was trying to capture the feeling of disconnect in our lack of attention, but also to pique curiosity--why Walter Scott? I have been having a difficult time recovering my blog voice after the year's break, and was meaning to write another post about Scott. The long answer is in Jonathan Riley-Smith's The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam (2008), where he talks about how Scott's image of Saladin as the courteous nineteenth-century gentleman combined with imperialist use of the crusades to celebrate nineteenth-century European conquests has fed into the narrative that both we in the West and the people attacking Christians in the Middle East use to justify our non-response. Riley-Smith says it better than I can here.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousDecember 23, 2014 at 9:19 AM

    Sorry to intrude. My boys love the fencing bears (they fence too) but we have not been able to reach their maker through the email address you list. I would appreciate if you could let me know if there is any other possible way to reach her. Thanks, S.F.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Fencing BearDecember 31, 2014 at 2:01 PM

      I am sorry, but the only address I have is the one I give on the Adopt-a-Bear page. She tends to come to the national tournaments in California, so she may be at San Jose for Nationals this summer, but I can't recall exactly when I last spoke with her.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my blog post. I look forward to hearing what you think!

F.B.

Popular posts from this blog

Draco Layer Four: The Anagogic or Mystical Sense

Image
Here be dragons. And doves. Human beings long for transcendence. Such longing is, for the world, always out of fashion because, of course, it is not a longing for the world, and the world knows it. We know what the world wants. The world—by which we mean Satan, the Lord of the World—wants above all our obedience, a jewel so precious that he will do anything to get it: lie, steal, murder, bear false witness, pretend to social standing, pretend to insider knowledge to get us to consent to his influence.  “God lied to you. You will not die.” And suddenly we are anxious about having other people dislike us, about losing prestige in our social circles, about other people being more popular or influential or successful, about other people having secret knowledge, about our own influence and fame. “You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” And with that temptation, our first parents fell. The irony is cosmic. There they were in the Garden, privy to conversation with God face-to-face, ...
Keep reading

How to Signal You Are Not a White Supremacist

Image
Professor Kim READ FIRST:  Why Dorothy Kim Hates Me , The Color of the House of the Lord It’s back to class for those of us who teach in medieval studies, and my medievalist colleague Dorothy Kim , Assistant Professor of English at Vassar College ( pictured in 2014 ), wants to make sure you understand the stakes . The medieval western European Christian past is being weaponized by white supremacist/white nationalist/KKK/nazi extremist groups who also frequently happen to be college students.  That does sound bad. But, wait, it gets worse! Don’t think western European medieval studies is exceptional.... ISIS/ISIL also weaponizes the idea of the pure medieval Islamic past in their recruiting rhetoric for young male Muslims. If the medieval past (globally) is being weaponized for the aims of extreme, violent supremacist groups, what are you doing, medievalists, in your classrooms? Because you are the authorities teaching medieval subjects in the classroom, you are, in ...
Keep reading

What's in a name?

I knew it was a mistake involving myself in political commentary*, but having taken the plunge, I guess I have to keep swimming, at least until the election. One of the things that has mystified me for years is how the label "liberal" came to be associated with support for government regulation of business, e.g. environmental and worker protection measures, or even (heaven forbid) financial transactions. I know that my colleagues in political science would have an answer to this, and I suspect it goes back to sometime in the 1980s, when Berke Breathed did all those comics about the General [my bad: the Major; it's been a long time] and Milo hunting liberals in the meadows of Bloom County. But knowing the little that I do about the history of the concept of liberalism as it developed in the 19th century, I must confess myself rather confused. This is the way John Stuart Mill (as Wikipedia puts it, "one of the first champions of modern 'liberalism'") s...
Keep reading

Talking Points: Three Cheers for White Men

Image
1. When white women (see Marie de France and Eleanor of Aquitaine) invented chivalry and courtly love , white men agreed that it was better for knights to spend their time protecting women rather than raping them, and even agreed to write songs for them rather than expecting them to want to have sex with them without being forced. 2. When white men who were celibate (see the canon lawyers and theologians of the twelfth century and thereafter) argued that marriage was a sacrament valid only if both the man and the woman consented , white men exerted themselves to become good husbands rather than expecting women to live as their slaves. 3. When white women (see Christine de Pizan, Mary Wollstonecraft, and the suffragettes) invented feminism , white men supported them (see John Stuart Mill) and even went so far as to vote (because only men could vote at the time) to let them vote, not to mention hiring them as workers and supporting their education. And before you start telling me a...
Keep reading

Make the Middle Ages Dark Again

Image
I miss the good old days. You remember. Back when the only thing people knew about the Middle Ages is that they were Dark and filled with evil barons wresting a living off the back of their serfs, not to mention lecherous clergy imprisoning young maidens so as to rape them and then accuse them of witchcraft. You remember, right? What it was like when the Middle Ages were Dark? The Roman Catholic Church made slaves of everyone, stripped them of their sense of dignity and independence and made social status a matter not of achievement, but birth. The Church hated science and industry and did everything in its power to keep people in chains. It guarded its authority with the sword and the stake, stifled all innovation, and fed the common people lies. And why were these Ages so Dark? There were no universities, no towns, only castles with dungeons. Monks huddled in their cells thinking dark thoughts about sin, while Vikings stormed across the countryside, raping and pillaging and ca...
Keep reading