Iraq's Christian community flees violence - Thousands flee terror

[Barrett808]

Iraq's Christian community flees violence
Thousands flee terror; ‘We cannot live in this country anymore’
By Ned Colt
Correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 12:45 p.m. ET Nov. 16, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Father Daniel Hani silently prayed in the front pew at Saint Joseph's Cathedral in downtown Baghdad. These are particularly trying times for Christians in Iraq, and Hani knows that more than most.

He's aware of the empty pews behind him, pews that would have been filled just two years ago. Attendance is visibly down, even though most churches have reduced the number of weekly services.

"It's a matter of fear," he said, referring to the two-third drop in attendance at St. Joseph's. "A lot of Christians are trying to get out of the country."

Fear is forcing many Iraqis — of all backgrounds — to flee. Every morning a heaving crowd pushes toward the front window of the Baghdad passport office. It seems like anyone who can afford it is applying for a passport and trying to leave. A half million passports have been issued since June.

(more)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6501943/

[Inland]

1. Old news.

Christians have been targets since Saddam fell. Most common desitination of Christian refugees---Syria, since someone forgot to tell them that Syria is still in the Axis of Evil and the U.S. of Iraq is not.

[Roland99]

2. Saddam kept the militant Muslim extremists under a heavy thumb...

Remove that control and it's open-season on infidels.

[makhno]

3. But Saddam gassed his own people!

Don't try to tell me that life in liberated Iraq now sucks more than it ever did under the tyranny!

:puke:

[DireStrike]

4. Flee terror? But we're KILLING TERRORISTS! nt

[Nicholas_J]

5. Yes Saddam kept such persecution to a minimum

I have a friend whose father left Iraq under the monarchy pre Baathist, and as a Christian, he had to get out when he could because of the increase of the anti-Christian persecutions that started soon after the British pulled out of the region. It was brutal from the stories I heard his dad tell. Hussein was very good at suppressing such "pogroms". Also under Hussein women actually fared better in the professions than they do in the U.S. Half of the graduates from universities in Iraq in fields that are largely male in the U.S. were women under Hussein. It is not strange that the people who headed Husseins biological warfare programs were women. THis is something that is more unusual in the U.S. than it was in Iraq under Hussein.

I find it amusing when i hear Bush supporters talking about how women in Iraq can now get an education and now can stop wearing veild, when Iraqi women were actually more liberated publically in Iraq than they are allowed to be in the U.S.