Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin – No. 297 – Wed 10 Nov 2004

——————————————– IRAQ: CHURCHES BOMBED, CHRISTIANS THREATENED ——————————————–

On Monday evening 8 November, car bombs exploded almost simultaneously at two churches in the Doura neighbourhood of southwest Baghdad. Three people were killed and some 50 wounded, mostly nearby residents. The dead and injured were rushed to the local Yarmuk Hospital, whose emergency department was then attacked by a suicide car bomber, killing five Iraqi police.

Only a few months ago at least eleven people were killed and dozens more wounded when bombers hit four Christian churches in Baghdad and one in Mosul during Sunday evening worship on 1 August. Five churches were then bombed and burned in Baghdad on 16 October, the second day of Ramadan.

Barnabas Fund, an organisation that supports the persecuted Church, released an urgent appeal on 3 November calling for protection for Iraq’s Christian minority. Barnabas Fund reports that Islamic militants have issued threats against three senior bishops in Mosul whom they accuse of being CIA agents. Church leaders in Mosul have reportedly received letters ordering them to permit the marriage of Christian women to Muslim men (a process which involves the woman’s conversion to Islam), and threatening to kill one member of each Christian household as punishment for women not wearing the Islamic veil. Barnabas reports that an estimated 1,500 Christian women have stopped attending classes at Mosul university due to threats and harassment over their non-observance of Islamic dress codes. Christians across the country are facing increasing levels of extortion and terrorism. The Islamists’ aim is to drive Christians out of Iraq and totally subdue the remnant. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Iraqi Christians have fled the land that has been their homeland for millennia.

On 18 October, US President George Bush said that he would accept an Islamic fundamentalist government in Iraq, if the Iraqi people voted to create one in free elections. ‘I would be disappointed, but democracy is democracy,’ he said (Reuters 19 October). Democracy literally means ‘people power’. Yet Western democracy’s valued principles of equality and justice arise from its Judeo- Christian foundations. That is why prayer and mission are still the most powerful nation-transforming weapons the Christian possesses. A hostile Islamic Iraq would be devastating to Iraq’s Christian minority. An Iraq that cannot rein in the terrorists in its midst would be even worse.

PLEASE PRAY SPECIFICALLY THAT:

* God in his great mercy and compassion will regard the plight of Iraq’s Christians and rise up on their behalf. May God deliver, protect, sustain, and refine them, and draw them closer to himself.

* the present crisis will (1) dissolve ethnic barriers and generate solidarity and unity amongst the Christians in Iraq, and (2) fire up a burden for the spiritual transformation of the nation.

* God will be pleased to use the grace, righteousness and testimony of Iraq’s minority Christians to lead many other Iraqis to personal transformation through the Holy Spirit, and to surprising joy through faith in Jesus Christ and a personal relationship with the Father.

* God will bring peace to Iraq, ‘silence the shouting of the nations’ (Psalm 65:5-8), and make peace, tolerance, peaceful co-existence and civic development to be burning desires in the hearts of the Iraqi people.

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SUMMARY TO USE IN BULLETINS UNABLE TO RUN THE WHOLE ARTICLE: ————————————————————

CHURCHES BOMBED, CHRISTIANS THREATENED IN IRAQ

On 1 August, eleven people were killed and dozens more injured when four churches were bombed in Baghdad and one in Mosul during Sunday worship. Five more churches were bombed in Baghdad on 16 October, the second day of Ramadan. On Monday evening 8 November, two churches in the Doura neighbourhood of southwest Baghdad were bombed almost simultaneously. The three dead and some 50 wounded were taken to the local Yarmuk Hospital, whose emergency department was then attacked by a suicide car bomber, killing five Iraqi police. Church leaders are receiving threatening letters from Islamic militants, and believers are facing increasing levels of harassment, extortion and terrorism. Many Christians are fleeing Iraq while others are forced to withdraw from society for their own protection. Please pray for the suffering Church in Iraq, and for the nation’s peace.

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Please praise God that REV. RINALDY DAMINIK’s pending early release from Palu Prison in Central Sulawesi (see RLP 296) is now a reality, in answer to the prayers of many.

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The WEA Religious Liberty Commission sponsors this RL Prayer List to help individuals and groups pray specifically and regularly for religious liberty issues, and in particular to uphold the Church where it is suffering persecution.

RL Prayer is moderated by Ron Clough, a commissioner of the WEA RLC and convenor of the Australian EA RLC. Elizabeth Kendal researched and authored this message.