Iraq: “Dialogue does not stop the extremists”
Such was the title Help to the Church in Distress (Aide à l’Eglise en Détresse – AED) gave to the interview granted by the Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignatius Youssef III Younan the day after the UN’s 27th Council for Human Rights, held on September 16, 2014, in Geneva. A resident of Bayreuth (Lebanon), Bishop Younan did not hesitate to declare: “we bishops are neither soldiers nor politicians, but one thing is clear: the IS (Islamic State) must be stopped, no matter what it takes. Dialogue does not stop the extremists. Violence is needed, I just don’t know what kind of violence.”
And he explained that in the regions conquered by the IS in Iraq, this extremism is being taught in the schools, where “Islam is presented to the children and adolescents as the superior religion to which all others must bow down.” Indeed, Christian religious education and the teaching of the Syriac language and culture have been abolished from the school programs in order to erase any trace of cultural and religious pluralism and to transform the schools into instruments of propaganda of the jihadist ideology for the young generations, declared local sources contacted by the Arab information website ankawa.com. The directives imposed by the militia of the so-called “Islamic State” also include the obligation to rename schools that had Christian names, now known under such names as “Battle of Mosul” and other propagandist phrases of the new caliphate regime.
In an interview with Aleteia, Francis Ballanche, a geographer and specialist on Syria, explained that “the IS is simply the authentic wahhabism advocated by Saudi Arabia, whose ideological cement is wahhabism. The population, as early as their school days, is strongly islamized and ‘wahhabized’. (…) We observe today in the Saudi Arabian population, he continued, but also in many other Muslim populations, a real appreciation for the IS. Of course it is not the whole population, but it is an important percentage, that ever since their childhood at school have bathed in the caliphate myth, in the ideology of the golden age of Islam, that must absolutely be restored. We find everything the caliphate says in the school textbooks. Dhimmitude, that is, the marginalization of Christians and Jews, is generally accepted by the Muslim populations. That is why they remain unmoved while the Christians are reduced to a minority or expelled.”
The Chaldean patriarch Louis Raphael Ist Sako, a resident of Bagdad, declared to the agency Reuters, concerning the American air raids: “They need to send men onto the field; bombing is not a solution.” During a conference on the situation of the Christians in the Middle East, organized with the help of the AED as a non-official part of the UN’s Human Rights Council, Bishop Sako explained: “In the framework of a global political solution, the liberation not only of the Plain of Nineveh, but also of Mosul. An international coalition with a mandate from the United Nations will be needed to protect and defend the rights of thousands of defenseless fugitives in this region. The air raids will only kill innocent people. Ground forces must absolutely be put to work, and why not from the Arabian countries as well? A professional formation and real and sufficientarms for the Central Iraqi Army are needed – as well as arms for the Kurd peshmergas.”
On September 21, bishop Sako addressed a call to order to the priests and religious who have left Iraq without asking and receiving their superiors’ permission: “We must live and die in the place to which God calls us,” insisted the patriarch who ordered all priests and religious who have left Iraq to return to their country and place themselves at the service of those who need it most. He granted them one month to declare their situation to their superiors, warning that disciplinary measures will be taken for all those who do not answer this call.
The IS now controls about 25% of Syria and 40% of Iraq, which represents practically the same surface as the United Kingdom (237,000 sq. km).
(sources: apic/fides/aed/aleteia – DICI 302 dated Oct. 10, 2014)
Read also :
Iraq and Syria: Living “in terror of the islamist groups”
Iraq: Militants of the “Islamic State” impose rule of terror
Iraq: The Christian exodus
Iraq: Islamic Militias Take Over the North of the Country
Iraq: Until the “grace of martyrdom”
Syria: Facing the country’s destruction
Syria: Jihadist militants turn against non-Islamic rebels
Syria: Will Christianity be forced to disappear?
