Once home to one of the largest Christian communities in the Middle East, Iraq today is in danger of losing Christianity completely. The Islamic State group forced thousands of Christians to flee after it stormed through the Nineveh Plains in 2014. Some have now returned, following IS’s military defeat. But even with IS gone, in many areas of Iraq daily life is governed by Sharia (Islamic law) and Muslims are forbidden to leave Islam.
Visiting a monastery in ISIS territory
An international aid worker has shared his experiences of visiting a monastery in what is technically regarded as IS-held territory within Iraq. His blog, ISIS Territory – Smoke on the Horizon, Song in the Chapel, describes the fear he felt leaving behind the last Kurdish checkpoint and his meetings with […]
UN report focuses on children’s rights
This little girl and her family were forced out of their home in Iraq by the Islamic State.Courtesy Open Doors International States must pay more attention to violations of the rights of children and their parents, particularly minorities and converts, according to the latest report from the United Nations’ […]
Iraqi Christian MPs challenge their constitution
Four Christian members of the Iraqi parliament have called for a change in the law to preserve the religion of dependent children whose fathers convert to Islam, reports Middle East Christian News. As the civil law now stands, children under the age of 18 become Muslim when their father converts. […]
Iraq’s ISIS survivors adjust to life in a refugee camp
As the world attempts to come to terms with the thousands of refugees escaping the horrors of war in Syria and Iraq, World Watch Monitor hears what life is like for the hundreds of families from northern Iraq who fled overnight from an invading ISIS force to settle in a makeshift camp, which has now […]
Recommended reading
has penned that reads, in one sitting, like World Watch Monitor’s past year of coverage of Iraq’s Christians. The 26 July article provides a concise summary of the complex and often contradictory political currents that complicate attempts to preserve a Christian presence in the Middle East. Griswold also relates further […]
Birthday for a missing girl
July 18 is Christina Khader Abada’s birthday. She’s 4. Her family won’t have a party for her. A soldier of the Islamic State took Christina from the arms of her mother nearly a year ago, and nothing has been heard about the girl since. “My biggest joy would be when […]
Forced out by ISIS, Iraq’s Christians start over
World Watch Monitor One year ago, Mosul fell to militants belonging to a Sunni Muslim movement calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. Thousands of Christians and other religious minorities, threatened with execution, fled. These are the stories of two who have found refuge, one in […]
Iraq Christians ‘lost everything’
Iraqi Christians have “lost everything”, according to the so-called ‘Vicar of Baghdad’, Canon Andrew White. “We have been through incredible persecution. So many of our people have been killed,” said the former pastor of St. George’s Church in Baghdad, speaking in London yesterday (19 April). “My people have lost everything. […]
‘Fabric of Iraqi society depends on Christians’
The head of the Catholic Church in Britain said after a weekend visit to the Iraqi city of Erbil that “the presence of the Christian community is essential” for the rebuilding of Iraq’s fractured society, once the Islamic State is overthrown there. But he admitted, “There is no way the […]
ISIS commentators ‘too simplistic’
After ISIS’s arrival in Iraq, Assyrian Christians have been “reduced to 1% or less of the general population”, but many commentators are “far too simplistic” in their explanations, says Jeremy Courtney, an American Christian living in Iraq. Assyrians link back to the ancient Assyrian Kingdom of the Bible, across the […]