Christianity is under siege in the very place where it was born. Hundreds of thousands of Christians have fled Iraq and Syria in the face of Islamic extremism and conflict. After a six-week trip across the Middle East in which I met church leaders and embattled congregations, it is clear to me that Christianity is hanging by a thread, and may not survive in some places. Some Christians said that after the brutality they had suffered and witnessed, they feared that relations with their Muslim neighbours could never be restored.
In Iraq the situation is critical. I visited the monastery of St Matthew, which has occupied a mountain top above the plain of Nineveh, in the north of the country, since the fourth century. Below you can hear artillery blasts and see western airstrikes on Islamic State positions. When Christianity stretched across the Roman empire, 7,000 monks worshipped here: today only six are left, and hardly anyone dares visit the ancient site which could soon become just a relic of Christianity in the region.
Many of the inhabitants of the Christian villages in the valley below the monastery have fled to Irbil, in Kurdistan, where more than a thousand displaced Christian families are camped in a half-built shopping mall. Leila and Imad Aziz fled Mosul last summer when Islamic State occupied the city, and gave Christians the same harsh choices faced by their ancestors under Muslim rulers centuries ago: convert to Islam, leave the city, or pay the jizya – a heavy Christian tax. “We can’t go back to Mosul for fear of being killed, kidnapped or robbed,” Imad told me. Keep reading
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Image: Pixabay, public domain
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