Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the rare but shocking
headlines about the plight of Iraq’s Christian community have brought to the
attention of the west that Iraq and the Middle East is not a homogenous Muslim
region. To many Westerners, it comes as
a surprise to learn that Iraq not only has a Christian population, but that
this community is one of the oldest Christian communities in the world.Christianity
in Iraq was not the result of European missionaries evangelizing in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but, rather, has a presence which reaches
back almost two thousand years. The
origins of Christianity in Iraq are ancient and its biblical history is even
older. After Israel, Iraq is the most mentioned
land in the Bible, though it is called by its historic names such as Babylon,
Assyria, Land of Shinar, and Mesopotamia.
Also, besides Israel, no other nation has more history and prophecy
associated with it than Iraq. The widely
known story from the Old Testament about Jonah and the whale takes place in
Iraq, with God commanding Jonah to go to Ninevah (in Northern Iraq) to tell the
people to “turn away from their wickedness”.
In light of the current situation, it is also interesting to note that
Abraham, the father of all three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity
and Islam, was born in Ur, a city in present-day southern Iraq.
Soon after the death of Jesus, the Apostle
Thomas traveled to the land of Mesopotamia to share the Gospel and thus, by the
end of the first century, Christianity had established its roots in Iraq. Christian culture flourished in Mesopotamia
until the Arab conquest in the early seventh century. Though the prominence of Christian culture
began to decline, Iraqi Christian scholars, doctors and scientists played a
major role in the emergence of the Arab Abbasid civilization. Christians played a major role especially in
the field of medicine and in translations from Greek and Syriac to Arabic. Christian scholars translated a great number
of scientific and philosophical texts into Arabic and the content of such texts
led to the Arab cultural awakening and the emergence of an Arab
civilization. The work of these
Christian translators was also of great significance for Western civilization,
since Greek works reached Europe via the Arabs in Spain (Samir, 512).
Though
the Iraqi Christian population has declined dramatically over the centuries,
and especiallysince the U.S. invasion in 2003, the community still has the
potential to play a significant role in the future of Iraq. Iraqi Christians, and all Christians in the
Middle East, are some of the best-educated and most politically-moderate people
in the region. They are the people who
Iraq can least afford to lose in the process of building a free, democratic and
peaceful society. Christians in the
Middle East have ended up in a very unique position on the world stage as they
stand on a sort of middle ground between the Christian West and the Muslims of
the East. Christians in Iraq and the
Middle East could potentially act as a vital link between the East and West
preventing total polarization between the two regions. Since the invasion in 2003, persecution and
intimidation has led to the acceleration of the already-existing out-migration
of Christians from Iraq.Over the past eight years, the number of Iraqi
Christians has fallen from around 800,000 to 300-400,000. After two millennia of unbroken existence,
the indigenous Christian community of Iraq, alone in carrying the sacred
language and traditions of one of the oldest churches in the world, risks
extinction in the ancient land of Mesopotamia.
