Iraqi Christians rebuilding lives under threat
Barnabas Fund, 26 June 2018
Christians in northern Iraq live with the daily threat of Muslim violence.
Shaqlawa was a Christian-majority town until the 1960s. Today, there are 200 Christian families and 10,000 Muslim ones.
Violence against Christians began years before the rise of Islamic State. In 1997, a Christian man and his father were tortured and murdered by a mob of Muslim Kurds, their bodies cut into pieces and thrown into the garden of a Christian family. The murders were never investigated.
Islamic State desecrated and destroyed Christian homes and churches in northern Iraq.
“Today there are some peaceful interactions between Christians and Muslims. Face to face all is good, but if an Imam calls a person an infidel, it all changes.”
According to sharia, “People of the Book” (i.e. Christians and Jews) are permitted to practise their faith in areas under Muslim rule on condition they submit to a second-class status in society, keeping many humiliating rules and recognising that they have been subjugated by the Muslims.