Iraq has always been a hotbed of persecution, massacres and invasion. In 1987, the last Iraqi census counted 1.4 million Christians. They were tolerated under the secular regime of Saddam Hussein, who even made one of them, Tariq Aziz, his deputy. When Islam took hold around 634 C.E., the people of Mesopotamia were predominately Christian and paid the “non-Muslim” tax. Slowly, through intermarriage and conversion (some genuine but mostly coerced) Islam prevailed. Over a century after the initial invasion of Islam (762 C.E.) Baghdad became the official capital of the region. HOWEVER, persecution by Saddam Hussein continued against the Christians on an ethnic, cultural and racial level, as the vast majority are Mesopotamian Aramaic speaking Ethnic Assyrians (a.k.a. Chaldo-Assyrians). The Assyrian-Aramaic language and written script was REPRESSED, the giving of Syriac Christian names or Akkadian/Assyro-Babylonian names FORBIDDEN (Tariq Aziz real name is Mikhail Yuhanna, for example), and Saddam EXPLOITED religious differences between Assyrian denominations such as the Chaldean Church, Assyrian of the East, Orthodox and Ancient Church of the East. Over 2,000 Assyrians were ETHNICALLY CLEANSED from their towns and villages under the al Anfal Campaign of 1988. Prior to the Gulf War in 1991, Christians numbered one million in Iraq. The Baathist rule under Saddam Hussein kept anti-Christian violence under control, BUT subjected some to relocation programmes. This was particularly marked in the oil-rich areas, where the authorities tried to create Sunni Arab majorities near the strategic oilfields. Under this regime, the mostly ethnic and linguistically distinct Assyrians were pressured to IDENTIFY AS ARABS. The Christian population fell to an estimated 800,000 during the 2003 Iraq War. https://youtube/watch?v=x6-pthlj7Ts
Posted on: Sun, 17 Aug 2014 02:20:41 +0000