As Christians throughout the World get ready to celebrate the birth of Christ, it’s hard to imagine that there are Christians being persecuted, solely because of their faith. The Christian Post reported that the lives of Iraqi Christians have not been easy since a siege directed against them in Baghdad killed 52 people in October 2010. The situation for the followers of Christ in an overwhelmingly Muslim nation has grown worse.
About 500,000 Christians remain in Iraq, down from an estimated 800,000 to 1.4 million in 2003, according to a report by Minority Rights Group International, a research body. Persecution makes the Christian community smaller each year, with churches as well as households being targeted and causing worshippers to flee.
The Christmas holiday season has rarely been a happy one for Christians in the Middle East, where they are often not allowed to raise church buildings and house churches often experience raids and harassment. Experts on the region say the Christmas season is a particularly dangerous period for the Christian minority, when numerous acts of violence and vandalism take place.
The most recent of such attacks in Iraq occurred on Dec. 2, when at least 25 people, many of them Christian, were wounded in an attack carried out by a group of Kurds in the Dohuk Governate in the north of the country.
Wall Street Journal’s Sam Dagher wrote, “With the Arab Spring now bringing political turbulence to many other countries in the region, Christians throughout the Middle East are worried that what happened in Iraq may be a harbinger of misfortune to come in their own communities. While many remain supporters of the uprisings, others fear that the toppling of their autocratic rulers could uncork sectarian violence against Christians and other minority groups in their own nations,”
To read the Christian Post report, visit Christianpost.com
To watch CNN’s report on this growing problem in Iraq, click here.