A building destroyed in Qaraqosh, which was the last Christian majority town in IraqAid to the Church in Need/Jaco Klamer
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Ruth Gledhill ,
09 May 2017
A
former Archbishop of Canterbury has warned that Christians face extinction in
the Middle East and urged Theresa May to make their protection a priority.
Lord
Carey of Clifton said he recently saw images of Qaraqosh, in the Nineveh Plains
near Mosul, taken by ISIS in 2014. Most of its 50,000 Christians fled or were
murdered in the ravages of Islamic State and the once thriving city is now a
wasteland.
However,
surviving Christians who are still in the Middle East are starting to trickle
back and it is believed thousands more are still alive and could be persuaded
to return.
Aid
to the Church in Need recently held its first 'Olive Tree' ceremony in Qaraqosh to
mark the start of a programme to rebuild at least 12,000 homes.
Carey, writing in the Telegraph,
says: 'I have always felt a particular connection with Iraq having spent my
national service as a wireless operator in Basra and when I was there the
Christian community was a sizeable proportion of the population – living
happily and peacefully alongside Shia and Sunni Muslims.
'But
successive waves of persecution and violence are threatening to
"cleanse" Christianity not just from its heartlands in Iraq, Lebanon,
Syria, Israel, Israel and Palestinian areas, but from the whole of the Middle
East.'
He
notes that it is only just over 100 years since the often forgotten Armenian
genocide by the Ottomans wiped out millions of Middle-Eastern Christians.
The
world has been standing by while it happens again at the hands of ISIS and
other groups linked to Al-Qaeda, he says, warning: 'The situation is similarly
parlous in Northern Nigeria where Boko Haram – notorious for abducting 296
Chibok schoolgirls – has been conducting a systematic reign of terror and
killing of Christian communities.'
Dozens
of surviving Chibok girls were recently released from their prolonged
captivity.
Carey
calls for the next UK government to cut its aid to countries where the
persecution of Christians is aided and abetted by civil authorities.
He
says: 'The British government cannot stop religious persecution on its own, but
it can provide leadership to the world by using the fullest extent of its
diplomatic and economic power.'
He
concludes: 'If, as the polls suggest, the Conservatives are likely to get a
huge majority, I urge Theresa May to transcend the parochialism of narrow
politics and regain a broad compassionate vision of working for minorities in
parts of the world where radical Islam is so destructive.'
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