Why the Question of Christian vs. Muslim Refugees Has Become So Incredibly Divisive

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

Christians make up a tiny percentage of the Syrian refugees the United States has resettled. Is that wrong?

The topic is raging this week, with multiple governors and GOP presidential candidates saying Syrian refugees should be shut out after the Paris attacks by Muslim radicals. President Obama then said it was "shameful" to have a religious test for refugees of war. "That's not American. That's not who we are. We don't have religious tests to our compassion," he said.

In fact, the role of religion in how refugees are considered and how the United States looks at persecution is more complicated. Religion is considered by both the United Nations and the State Department, which defines a refugee as "someone who has fled from his or her home country and cannot return because he or she has a well-founded fear of persecution based on religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group."

A torrent of other issues also come when refugee status is considered. How severely persecuted is the group? Is their religion the primary factor or are there other issues, such as political or ethnic affiliations that are equally or more significant? Does the group have other options, anywhere to else to go?

Whether the United States works too hard or not hard enough for persecuted Christians overseas has become increasingly explosive in the last decade. In that period, conditions for religious minorities in the Middle East have seriously deteriorated. And in the United States, some religious Americans see hostility in President Obama's liberalizing policies about birth control and gay rights. Among many of these people, and others, anti-Muslim sentiment is on the rise. Some 30 percent of Americans wrongly believe Obama is Muslim.

Advocates for Middle Eastern Christians note that this group is disappearing from the region of Jesus's birth in the rubble of government chaos in Iraq, Syria and Egypt.

This week such Americans were jarred by a Yahoo News report that the State Department is about to designate the Islamic State's assault on the small population of Yazidis in Iraq genocide -- a very rare move that could have implications for the United States to hold perpetrators accountable. While other religious minorities from the region, including Christians, are described as severely persecuted for their faith, the Yazidis are described as under a particular kind of siege.

The report suggests the government is influenced by a Nov. 12 paper by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide. That paper said the Islamic State "is carrying out a widespread, systematic, and deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity" against Yazidis, Christians, Turkmen, Shabak and other minority groups. Of that group, only the Yazidis faced genocide because "the attacks on them were to make sure no future Yazidis would be born. To end them as a people altogether," Naomi Kikoker, deputy director of the center, told The Post. She cited interviews with residents and said Christians "faced slightly different treatment" if "horrific," being forced to leave, pay a tax or convert.

That was the first time the museum had declared anything a genocide since 2004, when it used the term for the Darfur region of Sudan.

But the possibility of a State Department proclamation led prominent advocates for Middle Eastern Christians to say it showed bias.

"If true, it would reflect a familiar pattern within the administration of a politically correct bias that views Christians -- even non-Western congregations such as those in Iraq and Syria -- never as victims but always as Inquisition-style oppressors," wrote Nina Shea in National Review Nov. 13.

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Why the Question of Christian vs. Muslim Refugees Has Become So Incredibly Divisive

Concerning Other Little-known Religious Genocides on the Edge of the News

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

Pope Francis infuriated the government of Turkey by using the word "genocide" leading up to April 24, the 100th anniversary of the start of the mass murder of as many as 1.5 million Armenians in what was then the Ottoman Empire. That atrocity, amid the chaos and rivalries of World War One, is often regarded as the forerunner and inspiration for Nazi efforts to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

In the April 15 issue of The Christian Century, Baylor University historian Philip Jenkins reports on another 2015 centennial that major media have ignored -- the "Sayfo" ("sword" year) memorialized by Christian Assyrians. Among other events, historians will examine this at the Free University of Berlin June 24-28. During that dying era of the empire with its historic Muslim Caliphate, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Greeks were also killed during the "Pontic" ethnic cleansing.

The hatred toward all three Christian groups a century ago finds unnerving echoes in current attacks by Muslim fanatics in the Mideast and Africa, most recently the video beheadings of Ethiopian Christians in Libya. Assyrians are also victimized once again, now by ISIS under its purported restoration of the Caliphate in Syria and Iraq. The Assyrians' story is part of the over-all emptying out of Christianity across the Mideast.

Assyrians have three sectors that differ doctrinally on the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ. The "uniate" Chaldean Catholics loyal to the Pope follow the definition from the A.D. 451 Council of Chalcedon. Two groups do not, the "Nestorians" in the Church of the East, and the monophysite "Oriental Orthodox" (distinct from Eastern Orthodoxy, which adheres to Chalcedon).

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Concerning Other Little-known Religious Genocides on the Edge of the News

Christians in the Middle East May Be Getting More International Support - Aleteia

The following excerpts are from aleteia.org:

A flurry of international advocacy for Christians under siege in the Middle East has been complemented this week by intensified prayer on their behalf, as Syria marks four years of civil war and a Vatican official spoke in support of the use of force in the region.

Aid to the Church in Need asked Pope Francis to extend his 24 hours of worldwide Eucharistic Adoration on March 13-14 by one day — to March 15 — to pray with the Christians of Syria and the Middle East for an end to violence and war in the region.

On Wednesday, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on the international coalition to do more to prevent abductions of minorities, such as the hostage-taking of hundreds of Assyrian Christians in northeastern Syria. The resolution also supported the concept of a safe haven for Christians and others at risk in parts of Iraq.

And on Friday, the Holy See, together with the Russian Federation and Lebanon, presented a declaration in support of Christians and members of other communities in the Middle East. The statement from the Holy See’s Permanent Observer to the United Nations in Geneva was presented during the assembly of the 28th Session of the UN’s Human Rights Council, reported Vatican Radio.

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s representative in Geneva, in an interview with Crux's John Allen after the presentation, called for a coordinated international force to stop the “so-called Islamic State” in Syria and Iraq from further assaults on Christians and other minority groups.

“We have to stop this kind of genocide,” said Archbishop Tomasi. “Otherwise we’ll be crying out in the future about why we didn’t so something, why we allowed such a terrible tragedy to happen.”

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Christians in the Middle East May Be Getting More International Support - Aleteia

A Letter to Obama From an Assyrian American Student

Assyrians in Chicago rally in support of Assyrians in Syria and Iraq.

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

(AINA) -- Assyrians held a rally in Chicago yesterday to call attention to the plight of Assyrians in Syria and Iraq. In Iraq ISIS destroyed a third Assyrian archaeological site, the city of Khorsabad, more than 2700 years old. This comes on the heels of ISIS destroying the city of Nimrud, the Museum of Mosul, and the walls of the city of Nineveh.

In Syria, ISIS is still holding over 300 Assyrians who were captured in the first attacks on the Assyrian villages on February 23, which drove 3,000 Assyrians away, never to return. 6 months before that ISIS drove 200,000 Assyrians out of their homes in the Nineveh Plain in north Iraq, and they still have not returned, and most likely never will.

As they were being released, ISIS told the Assyrians from Syria to never return to their villages, else they would be killed. They are in Hasaka with only the clothes on their backs, all of their possessions lost forever, unreachable in their ISIS occupied village.

But the destruction of ancient Assyrian cities and artifacts in Iraq and Syria is the most devastating -- because of its symbolism. In destroying Assyrian archaeological and historical sites, ISIS is striking at the very root of Assyrian civilization, erasing all traces of their heritage and extirpating them from their lands.

Reine Hanna, an Assyrian college student in Chicago, penned the following letter to President Obama:

Dear Mr. President:

I woke this morning to find that your appearance on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" was trending on every major social media platform. I watched the clip of the "Mean Tweets" segment - something I have seen previously featuring the likes of Snooki, Lil Wayne, and Justin Bieber. My initial reaction to the clip was in distaste, simply because I find it odd that the President of the United States would level himself with such celebrities. But I get it, I do: Mr. Kimmel even prefaced the clip by reminding us you are human, after all. With this in mind, I don't see any issues with you as our President golfing, submitting an NCAA bracket, or visiting late-night TV shows. I can also see why many Americans may have found your appearance last night so funny.

But you should know, Mr. President, that there are Americans that haven't laughed in weeks. Not since the attacks launched on the Assyrian towns in Syria on February 23, 2015. Actually, we haven't really had the heart to laugh since ISIL invaded the Nineveh Plain in the summer of 2014. After all, how can we? How can we laugh without knowing the fate of the nearly three-hundred innocent Assyrian men, women, and children that were taken hostage? After watching our ancient reliefs reduced to dust? How can we laugh after seeing that terrible image released just yesterday of a woman hanging dead from a log, dangling alongside her two young sons?

Mr. Kimmel is right, Mr. President - you are human. But as a human, how can you laugh, sir? While girls as young as your beautiful daughters are taken captive and sold as slaves? As a husband and a father, how can you allow such atrocities to occur to innocent women and children knowing you have the power to stop them?

During your interview, the recent events in Ferguson were addressed, at which point you stated, "What had been happening in Ferguson was oppressive and objectionable and was worthy of protest..." As an American of Assyrian background, I - like many others - feel that what has been happening to Assyrians in Iraq and Syria is beyond oppressive, undoubtedly objectionable, and most certainly worthy of protest. Even so, you have yet to make a direct statement related to the ongoing plight of Assyrians in the Middle East, and instead, have chosen to mask it, which consequently belittles our suffering. Please understand why we would be insulted by your inaction, capped with your appearance on Mr. Kimmel's show last night.

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A Letter to Obama From an Assyrian American Student

Assyrians Face Genocide in Iraq

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

For ethnic Assyrians, who are being attacked by genocidal forces in the Middle East, these are surely the worst of times.

But it was not always so. Long ago, Assyria was a mighty kingdom based in Mesopotamia. And the story of Assyria, recounted in the Bible, is a colourful thread in the tapestry of world history.

The Assyrian empire, like all empires, crumbled and disappeared into the mists of time. But the descendants of the empire have cleaved to their ethnic identity and somehow managed to survive multiple attempts to wipe them out.

Many Assyrians have fled persecution in the Middle East, finding safe haven in North America and Europe. However, the hearts of many Assyrians remain in the Middle East. And Iraq holds particular meaning for most.

Although Iraq is a Muslim-majority country, it is the ancestral home of the Assyrian nation, which existed long before Islam was established. The vast majority of Iraqi Christians are of Assyrian ethnicity.

The Assyrians were among the first people to embrace Christianity, and they continue to speak a form of Aramaic, one of the languages likely spoken by Jesus Christ.

Many ethnic Assyrians identify themselves by religious denomination, Chaldean Catholic. According to CNEWA-Canada, a Catholic nongovernmental organization (NGO), approximately 66% of Assyrian Christians belong to the Chaldean Catholic Church. The rest of the Assyrian community belong to other denominations.

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Assyrians Face Genocide in Iraq

Chaldean Patriarch Calls on Muslims to Denounce Violence Against Christians

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

"We Iraqi Christians are a genuine and essential component in Iraq; we would like to stay with you as partners and work together as a team for the progress of our country and the good of our people," Patriarch Louis Sako said in a message to Muslims for Eid al-Adha.

The Islamic State "has displaced us of our towns and even in Baghdad the pressures are exerted on us, but we tell you that we love you because Jesus Christ commanded us to love everyone," he continued. "We believe that all Muslims do not approve the actions of ISIS and there are some of Muslims who are good and considered as a blessing like Dr. Mohammed Al-Asali, who was killed in defense of Christians in Mosul."

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Chaldean Patriarch Calls on Muslims to Denounce Violence Against Christians