Iraq: Are the Christians going to be forced to convert to Islam?

In January 2016, Roberto Simona, head of the French and Italian speaking Swiss section of Aide à l'Église en Détresse (AED), visited Bagdad, the capital of Iraq. In an interview with Apic published on January 28, he described the situation in Bagdad, where "the local Christian community has been reduced to symbolic dimensions." The official numbers claim that 80,000 Christians have remained in the capital, but "there are certainly fewer by half. In Bagdad, everyone wants to leave, Christians and Muslims alike. Insecurity is everywhere, because of the attacks. There is daily pressure for the Christian minorities, especially to find work. The traditional support networks have disappeared. Those who have remained feel isolated, and the Christian families no longer see any future for their children in a more and more intolerant society. In the street, the Christians are called out: why don't you convert, why don't you become Muslim?"

Christians Iraqi Children in the Church of the Virgin Mary to Bartala, east of Mosul (northern Iraq).

An automatic conversion to Islam 

On October 27, 2015, the assembly of Iraqi deputies' vote for a uniform national card aroused indignation among the Christians and other non-Muslim minorities. The law obliges minors to embrace the Muslim religion automatically if one of their parents declares he is converting and becoming a Muslim (art. 26/2). The proposition from the Christians with the support of different coalitions to modify the text was rejected by Parliament with a vote of 137 to 51; they had asked that a paragraph be added stipulating that in the case of the conversion of only one of their parents to Islam, minors can remain in their original religion until the age of 18, when they can make their choice of confession in full freedom of conscience.

On November 10, 2015, a manifestation requested by Patriarch Louis Raphaël I Sako, Chaldean patriarch of Babylon, was held in front of the Chaldean church of St. George in Bagdad to protest against this law, with the intention of appealing to international instances. On November 17, 2015, the Iraqi Parliament voted in a resolution modifying the law on the conversion of minors to Islam as desired by the Christians, with a vote of 140 to 206. The President of the Iraqi Parliament, Salim al-Juburi encouraged this change of direction by declaring his intention to modify the law in order to guarantee full equality of rights for non-Muslim Iraqis, as required by the Constitution.

In early December 2015, Patriarch Sako launched another appeal to the members of the Iraqi Parliament, asking them to stop procrastinating and to modify the law. Indeed, explained the website Baghdadhope, some members of parliament went to the Shiite ayatollah Ali Al Sistani for his advice on the modification of the law, thus paralyzing Parliament. In his letter, the Patriarch of the Chaldeans recalled that Christian, Sabaean, Mandaean and Yezidi children do not wish to become Muslim when one of their parents converts to Islam, and he quoted the articles of the Constitution that state and protect the equality of citizens. He also quoted the recommendation from the Koran that "there exists no obligation in religion."

For Roberto Simona, the leaders and political class in general seem minded to promote such a law. "While the security system is a catastrophe, an important part of the country is occupied by the Daech, war is at the gates of Bagdad, refugees have fled in masses from the zones of conflict, unemployment is soaring and corruption has reached a climax, the fact that the members of parliament are worrying about such things shows the country's situation. It creates a great psychological insecurity among the Christians." And he confided that the persons he met say that before, under Saddam Hussein, when the country counted close to 1.5 million Christians, "it was a dictatorship, but there was only one dictator; now they are everywhere. Chaos and corruption reign at every level. People no longer dare to go out, no longer leave their neighborhood, for fear of attacks and kidnappings."

All the more so since December, when the walls of Bagdad, in the streets adjacent to churches and monasteries and in the sectors where Christian communities are still present, were covered with posters asking Christian women to wear the veil. The Iraqi press indicates that the Christians of Bagdad took these posters as a new intimidation signal added on to the targeted kidnappings and the expropriation of houses and real estate undergone these past few months.

A few days before Christmas, the Patriarchate of the Chaldeans announced that it would not participate in the traditional meetings with the political and religious representatives to exchange Christmas wishes. The Patriarch recalled the situation of the abandoned Christian refugees who fled the plains of Nineveh before the jihadists of the so-called "Islamic State", the absence of any change to the law obliging the children of parents who convert to Islam to become Muslim, and the posters that had recently appeared on the walls of Bagdad asking Christian women to wear the veil.

On January 18, the first day of the Fast of Nineveh (3 days) asked by Patriarch Sako of all the faithful of the Chaldean Church to obtain from God the return of peace in Iraq and the Middle East, the Chaldean Patriarch renewed his appeal to all the Churches and Iraqi Christian communities to create a combined list of Christians apt to run for election, to serve their persecuted brothers and the general interest of the country.

Intervention from Foreign Actors

In a petition addressed to Martin Schultz, president of the European Parliament, at a reunion held in Strasburg on January 20, 2016, and at the conference on the rights of religious minorities in the Muslim world held in Marrakech (Morocco) from January 25 to 27, Patriarch Louis Raphaël Sako asked that "our country and its 'so-called minorities' be helped out of the tunnel they are in." "Everything began in a flash," he denounced, "as if hidden and perverse hands had planned it all, setting up practically organized, manipulated wars with interventions from external actors who took advantage of a weakened State and administration that were cut off from their citizens. Under the pretext of setting up a democracy and more freedom in Iraq, these external interventions have pushed our country and those of the region into chaos and terrorism." What is more, "not content with having destroyed the unity within our communities and the coexistence that characterized them, these foreign hands also took our national natural resources for themselves."

Patriarch Sako deplored the fact that an incapacity to impose the sovereignty of the law has led to "the law of the jungle", the failure of the education system, the accelerated decline of culture, the rise in unemployment and the deterioration of security.

The Vatican agency Fides announced on January 7 the arrest of about thirty teachers in the province of Nineveh under the control of the members of the so-called 'Islamic State', for refusing to follow the new education programs imposed by the jihadists since the taking of Mosul, in which the philosophy, chemistry, biology and math classes are replaced by classes on the Sharia and the Jihad. In the beginning of the 2014-2015 school year, the schools of Mosul and the plain of Nineveh that had Christian names were forced to change them and to remove the Syrian language and culture and the Christian religious education from their program.

Ever since the fall of the old regime in 2003 (led by the United States against Saddam Hussein's regime), continued the Chaldean patriarch, the country has been deliberately led towards radicalism. A radicalism that targets Christians and the other religious minorities, hunting them even in their own homes, on the territory where they have always live. The goal of this large-scale violence is to destroy our common history, our civilization, our values and our ethics. Without excluding the other religious minorities, we must say that a fire of hatred, exclusion and marginalization has been specifically aimed at the Christians."

(sources: apic/fides/aed/ankawa/baghdadhope/œuvre d'orient – DICI no.330 Feb. 12, 2016)

Read also :
When ideologies come in for a landing...
Iraq: Massive destruction by the Jihadists
Iraq: Islamic State uses churches as prisons
Iraq: Militants of the “Islamic State” impose rule of terror
Iraq: Churches attacked with bombs on Christmas Day