Iraq - arcoftheuniverse

April 6, 2018April 6, 2018

The Christian Response to Persecution of Archbishop Bashar Warda

In the aftermath of the defeat of ISIS in Iraq, what is the future of the Christian church there? Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the population of Christians in Iraq has plummeted from 1.6 million to just under 400,000 in 2016 (estimates vary). Will they continue to exit? Return? Rebuild as a smaller church?

One of the leaders in answering these questions and shepherding the church in Iraq is Archbishop Bashar Warda of the Chaldean Church, based in Irbil, Iraq. Warda has been an international voice for the church, has provided pastoral care and facilitated relief services for 20,000 people, supported refugees, promoted inter-religious dialogue, and inaugurated a Catholic university in 2015.

Earlier this semester, the Under Caesar’s Sword project here at Notre Dame hosted Archbishop Warda with the support and sponsorship of the Center for Ethics and Culture. Warda spoke in several venues in the United States, including Georgetown University, where he was hosted by the Religious Freedom Research Project, partner in Under Caesar’s Sword. Warda exemplifies what Under Caesar’s Sword is all about: the response of Christians to persecution. He exemplifies one of the most salient findings of the project, namely that Christians respond to persecution even under the most difficult of circumstances through constructive efforts to build ties with other communities and contribute to the common good, thereby strengthening their freedom and position in society. Outsiders who understand this response can better assist Christians living under persecution.

Warda’s talk at Notre Dame was well attended and well received. Several students afterwards asked how they could be involved in helping persecuted Christians. One student, Zach Pearson, wrote up the talk in Notre Dame’s renowned student publication, The Irish Rover. As Pearson describes, Warda’s first point was a challenge to Muslims:

He stated that “if there is to be any future for Christians and other religious minorities … in the Middle East, there must be a change and correction within Islam.”

He was predominantly concerned with the ideology of political Islam, including the enshrining of sharia as state law, which causes non-Muslims to effectively become second class citizens. He called it a “ruling system that preaches inequality and justified persecution,” which therefore needs to be stopped in order for Christians to survive. This realization has been made by leading Muslim minds in Asia, but has not yet found its way to the Middle East, the archbishop noted.

In reference to ISIS, the archbishop said that “while the fighting force of Daesh [ISIS] may have been defeated … the idea of the reestablishment of the caliphate has been firmly implanted in many minds throughout the Muslim world.” He made the point that it is a change in ideology along with a prevention of violence that is key to saving the Christian presence in the Middle East.

His second point was about how the West could help Christians survive in Iraq:

He highlighted a few main points: the importance of prayer; efforts from Western leaders to support equality for minorities in countries where persecution is taking place; and material and intellectual support focused on helping create sustainable Christian communities, specifically in the realms of education and healthcare. Additionally, the archbishop cited the importance of not allowing a sense of “historical relativism” to cloud the reality of persecution.

When asked what college students can do to actively contribute to helping persecuted Christians, he said that “praying for us is important.” He spoke to the importance of social media to raise awareness for persecuted Christians, who, he reminded the audience, are “the most persecuted religion today.” He referred to students who have come to help teach in schools and volunteer in these communities for anywhere from a one month to a whole year. Finally, he called students to speak out publicly on campus, asking rhetorically, “when the next wave of violence begins to hit us, will anyone on your campus here hold demonstrations and carry signs that [say] ‘We are all Christians’?”

To me, one of the most remarkable of Warda’s points was a response to persecution that he recounted Christians in Iraq exercising: forgiveness. Christians have forgiven and continue to forgive their persecutors. This does not preclude at all their efforts to secure help, bolster their position, or defeat ISIS decisively. It is one response of Christians, though, that amounts to a distinctly Christian response.

September 12, 2014September 18, 2014

Soft Power Needed, Too

Not just the hard power of military force but also the soft power of building coalitions with moderate Muslims is needed to defeat Islamic militants in Syria and Iraq, Christian leaders argued at the In Defense of Christians summit that concluded today in Washington, D.C., according to Mark Stricherz over at Aleteia.

The summit was an effort to advocate for and show solidarity with Christian communities in the Middle East who have suffered dramatically in recent decades and are now remnants of what they once were. Hosted by a group whose name is also In Defense of Christians, the summit assembled a remarkable cast of Christian leaders from across the region.

Hard power-ites might be skeptical — not of the summit or its cause but of the claim that anything but bombs will drive out the Islamic State. It was no less a realist than General David Petraeus, though, who understood the importance of reconciliation with moderate Muslims in his leadership of the successful “surge” of 2007-2008 that allowed the U.S. to exit from Iraq without ignominy in 2011. I’ve been reading about it in Surge, written by Peter Mansoor, Petraeus’ right-hand man during the operation. Through the U.S. army’s reconciliation with Sunnis and through its encouraging the new national government to include Sunnis and Kurds in important positions, Sunnis were peeled away from their alliance with Al Qaeda, leaving Al Qaeda isolated and vulnerable. None of this is to deny the thorough and brave counterterrorist operations that hunted down and rooted out Al Qaeda, but these alone could not have done the job, Mansoor argues.

Since the U.S. departure, it has been a lack of reconciliation among Iraqis that has allowed the Islamic State to rise as far as it has. Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s failure to include Sunnis and Kurds in important parts of the national government allowed the Islamic State, despite its horrific tactics, to ally with Sunnis against the government – and has left the U.S. in the position of now having to send its (air) forces back in.

As I argued in an earlier post, reconciliation must go deeper than even Petraeus’ alliance-building. In coming posts, I will offer concrete ideas of what this could involve. One dimension, though, is alliances among religious leaders, whose spiritual and moral authority is a critical asset for building ties across factions. We can be grateful for In Defense of Christians for bringing this to our attention.

September 8, 2014September 8, 2014

David Brooks Resounds John Owen

David Brooks’s column in the New York Times this past Thursday resounds John Owen’s post of August 30th arguing that ISIS cannot be understood apart from its religious ideas. Brooks’ conclusion:

If ISIS is to be stopped, there will probably have to be some sort of political and military coalition. But, ultimately, the Islamists are a spiritual movement that will have to be surmounted by a superior version of Islam.

The truest version of each Abrahamic faith revels in the genuine goodness of creation. These are faiths that love the material world, especially the body. They’re faiths that understand that the high and the low yearn for each other, and that every human body has some piece of the eternal, even if you’re fighting against him.