NYT: Iraq’s Christian Minority Flees as Extremist Threat Worsens

[Rose Siding]

BAGHDAD, Oct. 16 — The blackened shells of five cars still sit in front of the Church of the Virgin Mary here, stark reminders of a bomb blast that killed two people after a recent Sunday Mass.

In the northern city of Mosul, a priest from the Syriac Orthodox Church was kidnapped last week. His church complied with his captors’ demands and put up posters denouncing recent comments made by the pope about Islam, but he was killed anyway. The police found his beheaded body on Wednesday.

...But under Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s million or so Christians for the most part coexisted peacefully with Muslims, both the dominant Sunnis and the majority Shiites.

But since Mr. Hussein’s ouster, their status here has become increasingly uncertain...

Over the past three and a half years, Christians have been subjected to a steady stream of church bombings, assassinations, kidnappings and threatening letters slipped under their doors.

Estimates of the resulting Christian exodus vary from the tens of thousands to more than 100,000, with most heading for Syria, Jordan and Turkey.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/world/middleeast/17christians.html?hp&ex=1161057600&en=7dfb45891a4ea744&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[yellowcanine]

1. Anyone think Falwell, Dobson, et al give a tinker's damn about Iraqi

Christians? They don't even speak English.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Plus they're Eastern Orthodox, and therefore not

"real" Christians, according to the fundies, even though the churches in that region have existed from within a couple of centuries of Christ himself.