Catholic priest asks Muslim leaders to cease killing Christians in Iraq

Rev. Nazar Simaan, a priest of the Syrian Catholic Church serving in the United Kingdom, called upon Muslim religious leaders on November 11 to issue a ruling known in Arabic as 'fatwa' to prohibit the murder of Christians by Muslims in Iraq. Muslim religious leaders have been known to issue such fatwas against notable opponents of Islamist movements, such as Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, and call for their deaths at the hands of pious Muslims.

However, in this case the priest is asking Muslims to refrain from murdering Christians. Islam recognizes both Christians and Jews as 'People of the Book' out of a recognition of their common claim on the legacy of Abraham of the Bible. However, for centuries Christians and Jews have long been subjected to varying degrees of tolerance and persecution as 'dhimmi" and required to pay onerous taxes and refused permission to build or repair their churches and synagogues.

Iraq has a bloody history of persecution of Christians and Muslims that extends to the very beginnings of Muslim conquest in the region at the end of the 1st millenium after Christ. In June 1941, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem - having collaborated closely with Adolf Hitler's program of exterminating Jews in Europe - proceeded to cause his followers to rape and murder the Jews of Iraq in what has become known as the 'farhud'. Translated as 'violent dispossession,' the farhud of 1940s Iraq virtually eliminated the age-old Jewish presence in Iraq that lasted for thousands of years. Edwin Black, a renowned author and journalist, recounts the terror in his latest book, "The Farhud: Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust." 

As a warning to the world, Father Nazar wrote a letter in the aftermath of the latest Baghdad massacre in which he prayed for those who were martyred. Among the dead were two priests who were shot to death at the onset of the October 31 raid by Islamist terrorists. When Iraqi security forces besieged the church, the terrorists detonated explosive suicide vests and fragmentation bombs rather than surrender themselves and their hostages: a Catholic congregation attending Sunday Mass. In the end, at least 58 people died that day.

Father Nazar wrote:

During Mass on the afternoon of Sunday, 31 October at the Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad and while the devout faithful gathered to pray for love and peace among the peoples of their beloved homeland, a band of evil criminals driven by hatred, desecrated the church. They embarked on a campaign of terror by randomly and consistently shooting the defenceless congregation including children, pregnant women, the old and the young. This massacre that led to the shedding of innocent blood of the faithful must rank amongst the most despicable and cowardly act of recent events in Iraq.

Holy Fathers, brothers and sisters in Christ, let us collectively pray for those who have been martyred and who have earned the honour of eternal glory and are now with the saints and angels in heaven.

The heavenly Lord will welcome all those who paid so dearly with their blood. Their martyrdom will bless this church of Our Lady of Salvation making it stronger bastion for future generations and a bigger thorn in the eyes of evil men who do not truly believe in God.

To all nations, political parties and social organisations that believe in human rights, we appeal for their humanitarian consideration and urgent help in protection Iraq's Christians. Specifically and in the name of the one God we all serve, we also appeal to the Heads of Islamic sects Sunni and Shiite and ask them for their help in achieving a better peaceful co-­existence by issuing a fatwa that prohibits the shedding of the blood of Christians and the desecration of their places of worship.

To the Iraqi government and to all those aspiring for power in Iraq, who seem almost impervious to the needs of theri people I say: "Shame! Not only have you failed to protect your vulnerable minority but you have hardly mentioned this dastardly act or acted upon it."

Furthermore I say: "the blood of all those martyrs is on your hands and you must be seriously contemplating whether you should resign your posts."

We hold you and those around you fully responsible for this heinous act."

For myself and on behalf of my congregation I offer my deepest condolences to his grace Bishop Metti Mattoka and to all those at the Lady of Salvation Church. Our hearts also go out to to the UK-based relatives if those Iraqi Christian martyrs.

Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord and let perpetual light shine upon them, May they rest in peace.