Thursday, July 21, 2005

Iraqi Christians -- Canaries in a coalmine

Before the U.S.-led war, roughly 750,000 Christians lived in Iraq, out of a population of 25 million. Most were Chaldean and Assyrian, but there also were Armenian, Jacobite and Greek Orthodox Christians and a small number of Protestants.

Most of them lived either in Baghdad or in northern Iraq around Mosul.Since then, 15,000 to 20,000 Christians have fled to Syria, according to Christian groups, out of "about 700,000" Iraqis, most of them in flight from the war, according to the U.N. high commissioner for refugees.

Bene Diction points to this piece from ReligionNewsBlog. com. It begs the question: How is Iraq getting better off if Christians are fleeing?

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