An important and timely article from Lord Carey on the persecution of Christians published by Christian Global News

“I recently saw images of the hauntingly empty Iraqi town of Qaraqosh, near Mosul, which was taken by ISIS in 2014. It had a population of 50,000 mostly Assyrian Christians, but is now totally abandoned. The militants have used every means to erase the town of its Christian identity defiling and destroying its beautiful church buildings.

In August 2014, the militants swept through towns around Mosul and forced thousands to flee. Qaraqosh’s Christians abandoned their homes and have still not returned, even though the town has now been liberated from IS.

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.

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. 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.”

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