Minorities or citizens in the Middle East? Locating the ‘minority question’ in the intersecting histories of collective national belonging and state-building

By Wiley Online Library

Elizabeth Monier

Abstract

This article contributes to the growing scholarship on minority politics in the Middle East by arguing that if minorities are socially or politically constructed then the meaning and implications of minority terminology requires greater historical contextualisation. Focusing on the experience of minority-ness rather than the deployment of the terminology, which only became prevalent after World War I, this article offers additional insights into the historical roots of contemporary minority politics, as well as the (un)making of national minorities. It explores how debates and reforms pertaining to inclusion/exclusion in the period preceding and during the shift from empire to nation-state directly contributed to the reception and understanding of who is a minority in the modern Middle East. This is particularly examined through the cases of Chaldean Christians in Iraq and Coptic Christians in Egypt. Many of the leaders of these communities publicly reject minority identification and instead favour locating their communities in the nation-state through the notion of inclusive citizenship (al-Mowāṭana). According to this narrative, belonging as citizens erases the meaning of minority. The article suggests that the framing of citizen and minority as mutually exclusive notions is one contemporary expression of an enduring tension around constructing belonging in political communities.

1 INTRODUCTION 

The motivation for investigating the notion of minority in the Middle East grew from a series of semi-structured and open-ended interviews undertaken over a period of years, mainly with prominent figures from the religious leaderships of different Christian denominations. In discussing the concerns of these communities, their relations with the state and status in society, the ‘minority question’ is a common theme. Identification as a minority was acknowledged as a reality of everyday life but perceived negatively to varying degrees and was frequently countered by the concept of citizenship as the preferable discourse of identity and inclusion. (1)

This narrative often dominates the official line of Christian communities voiced by their religious leaders, who often play a role in representing the community publicly and politically (McCallum, 2007; Rowe, 2009). The same response was also repeatedly noted in interviews conducted by the author with lay activists involved in advocacy or the media and known for speaking about the status of non-Muslim citizens.(2)

While this rejection of minority identification is certainly not a unanimous position, and is particularly contested in the diaspora, it is frequently voiced in public statements and media articles issued by many prominent community representatives.

For example, in 2013, the leaders of both the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt and the Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq (the largest Christian denominations in their respective countries) made similar statements that objected to being identified as a minority community: You are not a minority in this country, you have been here for two thousand years and are at the origin of this country.(3)

We are a part of the soil of this nation and an extension of the pharaohs and their age before Christ. Yes, we are a minority in the numerical sense, but we are not a minority when it comes to value, history, interaction and love for our nation. (4)

Instead, the leaders of both the communities mentioned focus on inclusive citizenship (al-muwāṭana), not only as a set of legal rights and duties but also as an expression of the belonging, indigeneity and contribution that, they argue, the notion of minority undermines (Iskander, 2012, pp. 34–35). According to Kristian Girling (2018, p. 428), ‘few Christians would consider themselves minorities, outside of the numerical sense of the term. The consistent Christian contributions to societies in the region and to civilisational development more widely prohibit them from being considered a minor influence’. According to the community figures interviewed by the author, while the reality of being a numerical minority is acknowledged, they argue the term does not apply because they are not a cultural or national minority. (5) Although this tension around the meaning of minority and its political consequences have been noted in scholarship on Eastern Christians, particularly Chaldean Christians in Iraq and Coptic Orthodox Christians in Egypt (Tadros, 2013, pp. 105–109; Monier, 2020; Girling, 2017), there is a gap in the exploration of the historical roots of the apparent tension between notions of citizenship and minority status exhibited today. This article sets out to explore this dialectic and particularly to excavate the historical roots and processes of conceptualising the minority term and why it matters for analysing the challenges facing Christians in Iraq and Egypt and the Middle East more broadly. To support this aim, I examined archival documents for discussions on the identity and status of non-Muslims during this period of focus held in the British National Archives, the League of Nations Archives, Qatar Digital Archive, Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt and national archives of Egypt and Iraq. I also used digital archives of Egyptian and Iraqi newspapers and the records of debates undertaken by the constitution drafting committees in Egypt and Iraq in the years shortly after World War I. The article locates this material and the evolution of the minority question within broader intellectual and political trends pertaining to Muslim–non-Muslim relations and notions of minorities and belonging that have been identified in secondary literature on the period of the late 19th century and early 20th century. Therefore, the main focus is to historicise the implicit assumptions visible in the post-war constitutional debates within the identity politics that existed prior to the war.

The analysis demonstrates how a divide between Muslim and non-Muslim citizens has formed a significant aspect of conceptualisations of minorities and the ‘minority question’; a finding that will be unpacked and explored in the article concentrating on the Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq and the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt as the largest and most influential churches in their respective states. The Chaldean Church is an Eastern Catholic rite in communion with Rome and led by Cardinal Louis Raphael I Sako since 2013. It represents over 70% of Iraqi Christians and the Chaldean patriarch has tended to have the most influence of the Christians religious figures since the foundation of the modern state of Iraq until the present (Kruczek, 2021; Monier, 2020). In Egypt, the Coptic Orthodox Church is an apostolic church in the oriental orthodox tradition. Pope Tawadros II has been the patriarch since 2012. The Coptic church is widely perceived to be a national church. Representing over 90% of Egyptian Christians, it has consistently played a significant role in Egyptian national political life (Guirguis, 2016; Tadros, 2013).

Through these cases, this article suggests that the contemporary framing of citizen and minority as mutually antagonistic notions is one expression of an enduring tension around conceptions of belonging in political communities formed from religiously plural societies. Specifically, it locates the construction of the modern experience of minoritisation first and foremost in the process of reconfigurations of collective identity. This process often accompanied state-building but was not limited to it. In this way, the question of who is a minority and what, if anything, are the socio-political consequences of this status, is a pre-existing challenge facing state-building rather than one produced by states ex nihilo. Indeed, the minority debate was one thread in the ‘transfers and entanglements’ (Pernau, 2012, p. 1) that contributed to constituting and defining post-war states and societies. This discussion thereby adds to scholarship exploring minorities as a socially constructed notion (Burguière & Grew, 2001) and argues that the pivotal process in the trajectory of the minority notion in society is the interaction between the pre-existing construction of collective identity and national communities with the state-building process of formalising a polity. In other words, the crux of the minority question is the point at which ideas of collective identity meet the institutionalising process of state-building.

The first part of this article focuses on the way that the reconfiguration of notions of collective belonging was approached in the late 19th century. A specific concern was how to represent non-Muslims in an Islamic empire because it was recognised that they experienced various forms of marginalisation and inequalities. It is this context, I argue, that is instrumental in shaping the identification of national minorities. To view the minority question only a western importation of the terminology or a colonial policy is insufficient to explain the contemporary conceptualisation of minority and its connection to notions of belonging. The term minority is almost always perceived to imply the experience of a form of marginalisation or disempowerment (Wilkinson, 2000), and some scholars note that forms of marginalisation normally associated with a minority can actually be experienced by a majority (Dajani, 2015). For this article, I coin the term minority-ness to refer to the experience of exclusion or disempowerment as a product of minoritisation in society, which can be felt regardless of the (non)application of the term minority and even among a numerical majority that experiences marginalisation from power. Employing a concept of minority-ness privileges a focus on the everyday experiences of minority status over terminology and is important for further comparative work between communities that have adopted, or at least accepted, a minority framing of their status with those who have not.

The second part of the article explores how tensions between inclusion and exclusion inherent in the process of nationalising collective identities and belonging pre-World War I formed a dynamic shaping the meanings and implications of minority post-war. This is explored here through the constitution drafting discussions in Egypt and Iraq. The section on the late Ottoman Empire suggests that unmaking non-Muslims as minoritised communities without disrupting existing power relations was central to bolstering the security and stability of the empire. It was also unsuccessful. The section on the nation-state period examines how this dynamic was translated into a concern for securing state sovereignty (Heiskanen, 2019). Although this article focuses particularly on the ‘minority or citizen’ binary of communities that reject minority framing with the goal of redrawing boundaries of minority-ness, it finds that both the acceptance and rejection of minority framing are used to highlight the consequences of invisibilising communities and their heritage within the nation-state (Benjamen, 2022, pp. 200–202; Donabed, 2015, pp. 3–5). It is the experience of inclusion/exclusion in national life and identity that is pivotal, rather than the minority terminology itself. Crucially, this is part of an ongoing process that follows on from the pre-World War I context. Consequently, the article concludes that to understand the contemporary form of the minority question and how it is experienced in the everyday, it is necessary to reorient perspectives on understanding how socio-political identities were reconfigured as national communities and in nationalist thought, first under empire and, only then, in the post-war nation-states.
2 MINORITY-NESS AND THE POLITICS OF BELONGING UNDER EMPIRE
In this section, the article discusses how political and intellectual developments during the late Ottoman period placed emphasis on the need to reformulate Ottoman collective identity by incorporating non-Muslims on a more equal basis. This approach to reframing unity in the imperial framework set the stage for the invisibilisation of minority framing or representation in subsequent nation-state projects, without resolving the experience of minority-ness. This contrasts with the trend in the study of minorities in the Middle East that has focused on analysing minorities in the Middle East as emerging as meaningful only after the process of forming the modern nation-state system in the Middle East, often as a western import or colonial policy (Kedourie, 1984; Robson, 2016, pp. 2–3; White, 2007, 2012). From this perspective, certain communities in the Middle East became minorities as a result of the establishment of nation-states under European rule. Ideas about these minorities and guaranteeing minority protection were subsequently manipulated by colonial powers as part of their policies in the region.

A key text to emerge in this field is Benjamin White's (2012) book on French mandate Syria. He shows that the term minority emerged in the context of the mandate and from French discourse and policies in the country and is based on a legacy of colonial attempts to divide and rule. In general, the post-war period witnessed a significant increase in the terminology of minorities and minority protection in international politics and law (Jackson-Preece, 1998). This had an inevitable impact on the Middle Eastern context, where many of the Arab territories of the Ottoman Empire came under various guises of European rule and influence. However, while it is clear that the terminology of minorities as we recognise it today was shaped and solidified in this milieu and that this colonial context impacted significantly on the minority question, this should not obfuscate other aspects of the issue, particularly the lived experiences that operate behind it. Michael Provence (2017, p. 4) argues that the study of the making of the modern Middle East should start with the last Ottoman generation and I also contend that research on the construction of minorities should ask ‘how did the old things, patterns, habits, cultures, ways of thinking, and possibilities affect what came after’.

A number of neologisms were introduced into the Arabic language during the sattelzeit (saddle period) of the 19th and 20th centuries as part of the Arab Nahḍa (renaissance or revival) movement. These contributed to and were part of the socio-political debates of the period (Abu-'Uksa, 2016, p. 2), including ideas about reformulating notions of collective identity and consciousness. While some of these neologisms denoted new concepts, or new iterations of them, others were terms introduced to describe existing or related ideas within a modern terminological framework during the Sattelzeit (Zemmin, 2018, pp. 40–42). Research into the history of the minority categorisation shed light on how its development interacted with the social and political legacy of the late Ottoman millet system (Sharkey, 2018, pp. 763–764) and the politics of the everyday. This is especially relevant for untangling overlapping structures of Muslim–non-Muslim and minority–majority relations. As Quentin Skinner (2002, p. 4) suggests, in the study of conceptual change and development, concepts are elucidated not only ‘by focusing on the supposed “meanings” of the terms we use to express them, but rather by asking what can be done with them and by examining their relationship to each other and to broader networks of beliefs’. I contend that thinking about the making of minorities through the lens of minority-ness as a lived experience that pre-dated the minority terminology later adopted by or applied to certain communities reorients and contextualises the elucidation of the minority concept in the Middle East today.

Before locating the politics of minority-ness in this intellectual and political context, a brief reflection on the notion of minority itself is instructive for exploring the relationship between concepts and experiences. Inequalities, disempowerment and marginalisation are characteristics that scholarship suggests are integral to applying minority as a social analytical category (e.g., Nibert, 1996; Ramaga, 1992; Smith, 1987). What seems consistent in this literature on the relationship between minorities and the nation-state is the idea that minorities are an ‘other’ that differ from the dominant group in society (Nibert, 1996, p. 126). While minority/majority categories always produce difference, they do not necessarily produce inequality (Guibernau, 1999, p. 134). Similarly, a minority is not necessarily disempowered and there are cases where a minority is dominant. One example is the Sunni ruling elite in Bahrain. However, a minority/majority framework has a tendency to produce inequalities in power relations or a hierarchy of national identities because in modern liberal democracies a majority tends to dominate the political culture of a state (Spinner, 1994, p. 10). In this way, ‘othering’ is achieved through embedding a hierarchy within the narrative of the national culture and community in which some groups are privileged or valued above others.

Although the Ottoman Empire was diverse in its composition, the ruling elite and hegemonic culture was Islamic (Rahme, 1999, p. 161) and religious difference was managed under the millet system (Zurcher, 1993, pp. 12–13). This categorisation of society into recognised religious communities afforded a measure of autonomy over communal affairs within the limits of the socio-political hierarchy (Masters, 2006, pp. 273–275). However, this form of coexistence did not equate to equality between the different religious communities (Joseph, 2000, p. 151). The impact of religious identification was particularly deeply woven into society and this framing of socio-political relations both pre-dated the institution of the formal millet system and found expression in it. As Abraham Marcus (1989, p. 40) notes in his description of 18th-century Aleppo, ‘In this scene of religious pluralism one formal distinction overrode all others-that between Muslims and non-Muslims’. Baskin Oran (2021, p. 13) also makes this broad distinction between Muslims and non-Muslims and the uneven power relations between them, which he frames as the division between the ruled millet (Millet-i Mahkume) and the ruling millet (Millet-i Hakime). The asymmetric power relations expressed in this division pre-dated the 20th century minority/majority terminology (Ghalioun, 2012, p. 23). Yet this set of relations shares many of the characteristic that modern scholars use to describe the minority category.

This broad religious categorisation and organisation of Ottoman subjects did not remain static. Although it was problematised, it was not fully resolved in the Ottoman context. In the 19th century the process of change accelerated alongside the process of modernisation led to substantial change in thought about coexistence (Makdisi, 2019). The Ottoman elite recognised the need to reformulate relations between citizens and between citizens and government and consequently initiated a series of reforms, initiating the Tanzimat (reorganising) period of 1839–1876. The two main rescripts issued during this period, the Hatt-ı Şerif of Gülhane in 1839 Hatt-ı Hümayun in 1856, appeared to introduce notions of the equal application of law to Muslims and non-Muslims. This was more explicit in the latter rescript (Anscombe, 2010, p. 187). However, this text was also received more negatively because it was perceived as granting concessions to Christian Ottomans, such as guarantees of equal treatment and opportunity in education and appointments to administrative posts, only under pressure from European powers (Davison, 1954, pp. 847–863). In this respect, the rescripts objective of securing Ottoman cultural and territorial sovereignty and unity through promoting and Ottoman solidarity among Muslim and non-Muslim subjects was undermined rather than advanced. Mardin (2000, p. 18) cites Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, a Tanzimat figure, as stating that after the proclamation of the Hatt-ı Hümayun of 1956, ‘we lost our sacred national rights which our ancestors gained with their blood. While the Islamic nation used to be the ruling nation, it is now bereft of this sacred right. This is a day of tears and mourning for the Moslem brethren’.

Such negative reactions to the Hatt-ı Hümayun did not lead to the end of intellectual debates on the reconfiguration of collective identity and solidarity under the Ottoman banner. Instead, it was refreshed in the wake of the 1856 decree, largely by a group of Ottoman intellectuals and bureaucrats known collectively as the Young Ottomans. It was argued that the unity of the empire depended on creating a sense of universal Ottoman identification (Kayali, 1997, p. 24) that incorporated all subjects to resist movements towards secessionist ethnonationalism. At the same time, this should not undermine the cultural identity of the empire. Namik Kemal, one of the key figures in the Young Ottoman movement wrote in the journal Ibret in 1872 that ‘The Ottoman state is based on religious principles, and if these principles are violated the political existence of the state will be in danger’ (cited in Rahme, 1999, p. 32). The failure to attract the loyalty of the non-Muslims and persuade them to assimilate into this collective Ottoman identity thereby represented a threat to the viability and unity of the empire. Non-Muslims were then at once central to building a successful Ottomanist polity and a threat to it. One way that the tension was illustrated was through the central question of representation. Ali Pasha, a key figure in the drafting of the 1856 rescript, was wary of the impact of introducing greater inclusion and representation on Ottoman governance. He is noted as stating, ‘The Ottoman Empire numbers twelve or fourteen nationalities …. If the representatives which they would nominate by way of elections were to be brought together today, such a national assembly would instantly give rise to all scandals imaginable’ (cited in Mardin, 2000, p. 19).

Indeed, issues of representation soon emerged as problematic. The 1864 Provincial Reform Law obliged governors to consult with local councils that incorporated ‘representation for all recognized religious communities of a certain size’ (Rogan, 1999, p. 182). Such reforms embedded the practice of electoral quotas to ensure the different communities were able to participate in Ottoman life in a way that was proportionate to their demographic size and distribution. This institutionalised the practice of fixing the extent of recognition and therefore influence based on each identity community's size. Hartmann's study of Armenian participation in the first Ottoman parliament in 1877 gives a further example of the challenge related to mobilising representation in the spirit of reducing barriers to power among ‘minoritised’ elements of the empire. She concludes that ‘religious affiliation played a role in their [non-Muslim] nomination and election because quotas for Muslims and non-Muslims were established’ (Hartmann, 2010, p. 187) as a result of a lack of faith in Ottomanism among the elite and the Ottoman government. She further notes that the regulations distinguished only between Muslims and non-Muslims, ignoring differences within each group and also ethnic or linguistic communities.

The generalised and entrenched nature of this Muslim/non-Muslim boundary is crucial to note for its role in later perceptions of minorities and majorities, which will be explored in the next section as part of the backdrop to nation-state building post-war (Kasbarian, 2016). I agree with John Joseph (2000, p. 166) and Oran (2021) that the historical subordination of non-Muslim communities often became enmeshed in the new vocabulary of minorities. In this sense, the political history of minority-ness as the everyday experience of marginalisation or subordination, as well as its association with threats to collective identity and political power, begins prior to World War I. It is the potential continuation of such marginalisation and insecurity, as well as the loss of any progress made towards recognising marginalised groups under the Ottoman reforms, that was rejected rather than being a minority per se. For some, marginalisation was an inevitable consequence of becoming a numerical minority in the nation-state framework. For others it was hoped that engagement in the state-building process would support developing discursive and institutional spaces for equal inclusion in a nationalised community as citizens, particularly in the wake of the upheaval brought by the First World War. The tension between notions of minority and citizen is rooted here.

3 MINORITIES AND NATIONALISM AND STATE-BUILDING IN EGYPT AND IRAQ
The rupture caused by the outbreak of World War I, the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the scramble to establish new nation-states meant that a shift in the framing of belonging and political authority was inevitable. But this did not take place in a vacuum and the pre-war context intersected with the new reality and its priorities. The rapid rise of the international nation-state system and the entrenchment of European colonial rule refocused the cause of creating a unified polity upon a territorially bounded state rather than a culturally defined community, regardless of the artificiality in the drawing of their boundaries. The structures of inclusion/exclusion or communal subordination that existed pre-war became entangled in the reconfiguration of identity and sovereignty, a process through which the dominant communities were privileged in imagining the national (Kymlicka, 1999, p. 231; Wimmer, 2002). This national then became the raison d'être for, and hegemonic expression of, the state (cf. Smith, 1981). Therefore, this section argues that minority-ness was not just a product of these developments in the post-War state-(re)building process nor marginal to them. Rather, it was a central to the broader process of recasting ‘the mosaic of diverse peoples within the boundaries of the state (or polity) into a uniform and unified national whole’ (Fox & Miller-Idriss, 2008, p. 537). This is at least partially due to the residual impact of the Ottoman approach to the management of religious difference and collective identity (Bryant, 2016, pp. 4–5) and the ways this was both problematised and addressed.

Communities that had a history of autonomy were particularly concerned with the redrawing of borders and the new power structures that would undermine their traditional independence, as White (2012, p. 55) has shown regarding the Druze and Alawi communities, who utililised minority terminology to support continued autonomy in subregions where they formed local majorities. Other more ‘scattered’ minorities (Hourani, 1947), who did not form a significant local majority in subregions of new states looked at other ways to claim an integral role in the meaning-making of the national community in the new states. Given this context, the minority question had to be addressed by the new states of the Middle East. Christian and Jewish communities had already contributed substantially to the debates about collective identity, building on the ideas of Ottomanism, Arabism and Patriotism that emerged in the 19th century in order to develop agency and participate in formulating new forms of inclusion and collective identity. Much has been written on the pioneering role of non-Muslim writers and intellectuals in the Arabism of the Nahda (renaissance) (Hourani, 2011; Philipp, 2014; Zachs, 2012). Non-Muslims were often at the forefront of publishing and of reformist thought on the revival of culture and society in the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire. A full discussion of the Nahda is outside the scope of this article though it is crucial to note it in order to form a full picture of the narratives and spaces that non-Muslims increasingly made use of through the 19th century to participate in the reconfiguration of civic status and belonging. Drawing on this historical and intellectual context, it is clear to see why the issue of representation and quotas that had challenged the Ottoman efforts at reformulating socio-political communities, became a central debate in the discussions on constitutional and electoral provisions in Egypt and Iraq. This section will highlight the key outcomes of discussions pertaining to minority/majority framing, first in Iraq and then Egypt.

3.1 Iraq
The state of Iraq was established in 1921 and defining a united national community within the new state borders was both crucial and contested. Some communities resisted their incorporation, while others claimed the right to shape its meaning. Among Christians in Iraq there were positions vis-à-vis the Iraqi state that shifted across chronological, geographical and denominational terrain. However, one can argue that the ‘minority question’ and avoiding minority-ness was central regardless of whether the solution pursued was secession or integration. 

One example was the formation of an inter-denominational alliance known as the Assyro-Chaldean delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and which included members from the four main denominations in Iraq; the Chaldean Catholic Church, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Syriac Catholic Church. The delegates also represented the different geographical locations of the community (Donef, 2018, pp. 218–220). It was established to present the case for an independent Assyrian nation in a region now straddling northern Iraq, eastern Syria, southern Turkey and eastern Iran at the post-war peace negotiations discussing the future of the former Ottoman territories. The union between Assyrians and Chaldeans was formed out of a feared loss of autonomy and invisibilisation through their incorporation into a centralised national Iraqi polity as a nondominant party.

I use the term Assyrian here to refer to an ethno-national designation as much as, or more than, a religious one. Sargon Donabed divides Assyrians into two groups on a social and geographical basis which is largely but not always congruent with an ecclesiastical division between the Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholics who broke away from the Church of the East to come into communion with Rome. Although Assyrians and Chaldeans have ‘a notion of shared ancestry’ (Donabed, 2015, p. 54), the Chaldeans, which today represents the largest Christian denomination among Iraqis, tended to be more urbanised and assimilated into the Arabic language and society by virtue of their geo-spatial location. Whereas the dynamics of the relationship between Assyrian Christians, many of whom had been displaced from the Hakkari mountains region into Iraq by World War I, and the central Iraqi government were different for historical, political and geographical reasons (Benjamen, 2018). Those Christians, mainly drawn from the Assyrian Christians, who sought to establish a state separate to Iraq submitted a series of petitions to the great powers at the post-war negotiations, which are held in collections at the British National Archives and League of Nations Archive. The petitions cited concerns that being appended to either an Arab Iraqi state or to a Turkish state was to recreate the Assyrians as a minority in their ancestral homelands. In a 1922 letter signed by the secretary general of the committee of Assyro-Chaldean delegates to the post-war peace conferences and held in the British National Archives, it is argued that neither the Turks nor the Arabs have a claim to this territory because ‘the majority of inhabitants are Assyrian’.(6)

The demand for an Assyrian state was denied, even though representatives of the community continued to petition the international community throughout the post-War peace negotiations and beyond. After the end of the British mandate in Iraq in 1932, the Assyrian leadership made multiple appeals to the League of Nations for resettlement outside of Iraq thereby demonstrating the ongoing fear of minoritisation and insecurity more than a decade after the establishment of Iraq. These are held in multiple files in the League of Nations Archive in Geneva.(7) However, resisting expected minoritisation in a new national community by petitioning for a separate nation-state was not the only approach taken by non-Muslims in Iraq. An alternative approach taken by a number of prominent Christian and Jewish figures was to encourage engagement with the idea of the Iraqi nation. For example, the Chaldean patriarch Emmanuel Thomas sought to leverage Chaldean status as an historic community in the Mesopotamia region with the right to form an integral aspect of any Iraqi state and its national identity. A letter held in the British National Archives dated 6 March 1920 written to British Foreign Minister Lord Curzon by the Chaldean patriarch (8) called for Chaldean inclusion in the constitution drafting committee and other institutions of state because the Chaldeans are one of the largest and significant ‘nations’ in the makeup of the national community of Iraq. The Chaldean Patriarch was offered a seat in the Iraqi senate in 1926 and apparently played an active role in this forum, according to the memoirs of his assistant (Haddad, 2006).

In fact, for those non-Muslims residing in the urban areas of Mesopotamia, the sense of belonging to a wider cosmopolitan society had become means for renegotiation marginalisation in the decades preceding the war and establishment of Iraq. Jews and Christians had participated in local political structures under the Ottoman system (Naji, 2015) and contributed to cultural and intellectual life (Afas, 2010). They had also contributed to the Arabism movement pre-war in similar ways to their counterparts in Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. Territory-focused patriotisms, such as notions of Egyptian and Syrian patriotisms, alongside the growing salience of Arab identity as a basis for solidarity, were expressed alongside Ottomanism. However, they were seen as broadly compatible with the Ottoman framework and complementary to the development of a nationalised type of Ottoman identity (Khalidi et al., 1991). Nonetheless, engagement in this Arabist discourse facilitated an increasing ability to contribute to the formulation of collective identity and society, particularly through Arabic language and publishing leading to an established intellectual elite among the non-Muslims of Mesopotamia who were then in place to contribute to the early state-building process. For example, the first Arabic language political newspaper in Mosul was published by Dawoud Sliwa in 1909. He sought to use the growing space of the press to push back against the Turkification policies of the Ottoman authorities (Batti, 2012, pp. 11–12). The Carmelite monk Anastas al-Karmali is also considered a pioneering figure in the renaissance of the Arabic language, for example through his journal Lughat al-'Arab (the Language of the Arabs) first published in 1911. Iraqi Jews also actively promoted engagement in Arabic language and patriotic narratives through the founding of Arabic journals. This Arabism trend seized on the potential inclusiveness of the Nahda spirit (Schlaepfer, 2011) and contributed to developing an Arab and later Iraqi Jewish identity (Levy, 2008, p. 467).

These non-Muslims subsequently became invested in the idea of the Iraqi state and the potential for de-marginalisation through formulating a new collective national identity. Many Jewish and Christian figures went on to play significant roles in the establishment of modern Iraqi politics and culture as a result (Salloum, 2013, p. 59). Building on this pre-existing public and intellectual engagement, Jews and Christians were the most visible non-Muslim presence in the constituent assembly formed in 1924. The assembly was an indirectly elected body of 100 members that gave four guaranteed seats to Jews and four to Christians. According to my examination of the original minutes of the sessions in 1924, (9) the debates on the constitution draft show that there is no question about the right of belonging of minorities in the Iraqi state. In accordance with the Lausanne Treaty, normal residents of the former Ottoman lands that then came under Iraqi jurisdiction were to be considered Iraqi subjects, without discrimination on the basis of religion or race. However, the minutes do contain a dispute about minority terminology and its applicability in the Iraqi context. The first and overriding sentiment is that minority is a European term. Abdul Razzak Monir, member for Baghdad, states that, ‘I find it strange that we use the term minorities while civilised states no longer use it because it creates controversies’. (10) Similarly, Dawud al-Jalabi, member for Mosul argued that there is no place for the term minorities in the political dictionary and that is a product of European imperialism. (11)

At the same time, there is a discussion about who is meant by the term minority and the discussion reveals that the term is understood as applicable only to non-Muslims. Amjad al-Omri states that, ‘Muslims are the majority and Jews, Christians Mandeans and Yezidis are indeed minorities’. (12) Yussef Ghanima, who was the most prominent Christian member of the drafting committee and well known in political and press circles, submitted a report in which he agrees that there is no minority and majority in Iraq but he has noticed in other countries that minorities do not get elected, leading to exclusion from power. (13) Echoing the circumstances and debates of the pre-war Ottoman era, concerns over the term minority relate to the potentially divisive nature of such framing for the national project. Discomfort with dividing society into Muslim majority and non-Muslim minority and recognition of the potential weakness that this could impose on the national project, alongside the acknowledgement of the potential for transposing marginalisation into the nation-state along Muslim/non-Muslim lines, is clear. There is the acknowledgement of what minority implies, which is the potential for marginalisation of certain non-Muslim communities. This acknowledgement leads to an attempt to balance the dilemma by including an article in the constitution that guarantees that ‘non-Islamic minorities’ will be accorded a quota to ensure representation. (14) In a series of votes, the suggestion to remove term non-Muslim minorities in relation to electoral laws from Article 37 was rejected by majority vote. During the debate on Article 37, the complexity regarding forms of equal inclusion of non-Muslims extends from the pre-war thought on nationalism and collective identity under empire into the post-war nation-state period. 

Vivere insieme: la lezione della pandemia

By Baghdadhope* - Patriarcato caldeo

Louis Raphael Sako

Foto Patriarcato caldeo

Ecco il testo pubblicato dal sito del patriarcato dell'intervento del patriarca di Baghdad dei caldei, Cardinale Louis Raphael Sako, al convegno organizzato a Roma dalla Comunità di Sant'Egidio "Il grido della pace" iniziato il 23 ottobre e che terminerà oggi.   

Permettetemi di ringraziare la comunità di sant’Egidio per questo incontro per la pace dal titolo “Il grido della pace” è un grido di speranza dell’umanità intera, soprattutto in una situazione mondiale come quella attuale che è fonte di grande preoccupazione.
Si prenda, ad esempio, la guerra fra Russia ed Ucraina, e le forti tensioni e i caotici conflitti che viviamo in Medio oriente, che sono anch’essi terrificanti. Il numero di morti e feriti è alto, molte scuole e università sono chiuse, la vita dei cittadini innocenti è quasi paralizzata. Vivono nel panico e non sanno quale sarà il domani.
È terribile!
Per costruire la pace dobbiamo promuovere la diversità culturale e religiosa, la vicinanza, la solidarietà e gli sforzi di tutti i paesi e le religioni per fermare il pericolo immediato della pandemia! Questa unione internazionale che abbiamo imparato durante la pandemia dobbiamo farla per finire la guerra assurda fra la Russia e l’Ucraina ma anche altre guerre. Dobbiamo scegliere il dialogo diplomatico e la pace per risolvere i problemi e non usare le armi. La pace non può essere raggiunta senza il rispetto, l’amore e la fratellanza, la solidarietà di tutti gli individui e i popoli, lavorando per la sicurezza ed il benessere comune di tutti. La pace, infatti, è un processo di formazione. Per raggiungerla bisogna formarsi, bisogna lavorare su se stessi. Certo, la pace è anche una sfida, ma le nostre differenze, gli elementi che sembrano dividerci ci permettono in realtà di essere complementari. Ciascuno di noi e dei nostri Paesi ha un talento da offrire alla società nel suo insieme. Viviamo in un mondo nuovo che richiede di sottolineare l’importanza della diversità, che è in linea con l’approccio globale che aspira alla parità dei diritti umani, del rispetto della libertà e dignità di tutti. Da queste differenze, da queste complementarietà, dipendiamo naturalmente gli uni dagli altri: quando so di aver bisogno del mio prossimo, gli mostro ancora più attenzione per vivere in pace con lui. Oggi è necessario uscire da noi stessi per lavorare in modo semplice e concreto, con amicizia, per costruire la pace: “Beati gli artigiani della pace!” dice Gesù (Mt 5,8). 

Per costruire la pace nelle nostre società, lo sviluppo di una vera cittadinanza è una condizione necessaria per una convivenza armoniosa. Coloro che lasciano i loro paesi per venire in Occidente cercano diritti e dignità. La convivenza si articola su più livelli: 

Religiosamente, tutti noi crediamo in un solo Dio, anche se le nostre espressioni sono diverse. 

Socialmente, siamo tutti fratelli sotto l’ombrello dell’umanità. Politicamente siamo tutti cittadini dello stesso pianeta. Tuttavia, l’estremismo religioso ha distorto la convivenza, il settarismo politicizzato ha demolito il mosaico umano e la corruzione ha distrutto la società… Ci vuole una solida formazione alla diversità, come ricchezza. Non c’è problema ad “essere chi sei”, ma ciò che conta è vivere in pace e collaborare con gli altri, rispettare e onorare il bene comune. Soprattutto, il ruolo delle istituzioni educative non è solo quello di fornire insegnamenti perché possano trovare un lavoro, quanto piuttosto di formare le nuove generazioni all’apertura, al rispetto delle diversità, al pluralismo, e al consolidamento della solidarietà e della convivenza attraverso lo sviluppo delle capacità degli studenti attraverso il dialogo onesto e l’amicizia. Il rafforzamento della riconciliazione e della solidarietà tra popoli, religioni e culture diverse, per raggiungere la pace e la prosperità per tutti i cittadini, come ha ribadito Papa Francesco durante la sua visita in Iraq nel marzo 2021. Tale educazione è la base per la convivenza, poiché i conflitti, le divisioni e i blocchi esistenti sono il risultato dell’ignoranza, di una cultura uniforme, dell’egoismo e degli interessi personali. Da questo punto di vista, invito tutti gli occidentali e orientali a rivedere le tradizioni ereditate con una razionalità aperta, per CAMBIARLE e rimuovere tutte le espressioni di fondamentalismo, odio e mancanza di rispetto, per adattarsi alla realtà attuale e alla diversità sociale. 

Inoltre, occorre lavorare sodo per costruire un modello civile e democratico fondato sulla cittadinanza e non su un sistema settario che “divide”. 

Per costruire la pace nelle nostre società, lo sviluppo di una vera cittadinanza è una condizione necessaria per il futuro. 

A Marian shrine for persecuted Christians to open in Massachusetts

By Catholic News Agency

Joe Bukuras 

More people need to pray for the millions of Christians who are being persecuted because of their faith. 

 That’s the idea behind the new Shrine of Mary, Mother of Persecuted Christians opening in Clinton, Massachusetts, on Friday. 

The shrine, which will be the third of its kind in the world, is the brainchild of Father Benedict Kiely, who in 2016 founded Nasarean.org, a nonprofit organization and ministry that advocates for persecuted Christians with a focus on the Middle East. The installation at St. John the Guardian of Our Lady Parish in the Diocese of Worcester will be followed by the world premiere of the “Mass for Persecuted Christians,” a sung Mass setting written by Catholic composer Paul Jernberg.

Kiely, an English Catholic priest in the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, said that the Mass is “singable” for most “fairly good” choirs. The English priest, who has spent years ministering to persecuted Christians in the Middle East, said that Scripture says to pray for one another.
 “So we need to actually believe that prayer is powerful and that it can help,” he said. Kiely said that when speaking to persecuted Christians in places like Syria, Lebanon, Nigeria, and Iraq, the first thing they ask him is for prayers.
He added: “So if they are asking for it, how can we not do it?”
Kiely said that it is insufficient to only pray for persecuted Christians at Mass. “We’ve got to have a place,” he said. “We need to be praying constantly for our persecuted brethren, and we’ve established a place where we can do that.”
The shrine will be blessed on Friday by Worcester Bishop Robert McManus and will include an icon of the Blessed Mother that will remind Catholics to pray for persecuted Christians across the globe.
The icon was painted by Deacon Ebrahim Lallo, a Syriac Catholic deacon from the town of Bartella, Iraq.
In 2014, Lallo was driven out of his town by ISIS but has since returned. Lallo painted the icon at Kiely’s request. The two have formed a friendship from Kiely’s many visits to the war-torn country. The first shrine of Mary under the same title opened at the Church of St. Michael on West 34th Street in New York City in 2017. Last month Nasarean.org opened the second at the Ordinariate Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and St. Gregory in the district of Soho of London, England. The installation of the shrine at the Massachusetts church will be celebrated with the new fully sung Mass setting, which will feature the composer’s “Chor Unum” choir. The music for the Mass has been released online and can be listened to here.
Kiely told CNA Wednesday that any parish that wishes to celebrate a Mass for persecuted Christians is invited to use the sung Mass. Kiely said he is grateful to Bishop McManus for allowing the shrine to be installed because it shows he feels praying for persecuted Christians is important.
“So I think any bishop who does this is, as it were, identifying with the persecuted Church very powerfully,” he added. Kiely said he encourages any bishops interested in installing a shrine within their dioceses to reach out to his organization. He added that the icon of Mary would be provided at no cost. “It’s going to be really beautiful,” Kiely said of the installation.
Read more about Kiely’s ministry here.

Una statua della Vergine Maria "Signora della pace" inaugurata nella sede del patriarcato caldeo a Baghdad

By Baghdadhope* - Patriarcato caldeo

Inaugurata nel giardino antistante l'edificio che ospita il patriarcato caldeo a Baghdad una statua dedicata alla Vergine Maria . 

La statua in ferro, del peso di 150 kg e di due metri di altezza, è opera di Suor Dina Qais Aziz, della congregazione delle Figlie del Sacro Cuore di Gesù, ed è stata realizzata in cinque mesi di lavoro come progetto per il conseguimento del diploma presso l'Istituto femminile di Belle Arti.

Il patriarca caldeo, Cardinale Mar Louis Raphael Sako, ha dedicato la statua a Maria, "Signora della pace" invocando pace, sicurezza e stabilità per l'Iraq ed il mondo intero. 

Sfratto per profughi cristiani a Baghdad: l’edificio dove vivono deve diventare un centro commerciale

By Fides - Patriarcato caldeo

15 ottobre 2022

Foto Patriarcato caldeo

Erano dovute fuggire nel 2014 dal Mosul e dalle città della Piana di Ninive, nel nord dell’Iraq. Avevano abbandonato le loro case e tutti i loro beni davanti all’avanzata delle milizie jihadiste del sedicente Stato Islamico (Daesh). Avevano trovato rifugio a Baghdad, dentro e intorno a un edificio nel quartiere di Zayouna, in quello che da quel momento era divenuto noto come il Campo profughi “della Vergine Maria. Ora a sfrattarli dalla loro precaria sistemazione residenziale sono gli appetiti commerciali d imprenditori e i piani di sviluppo urbano della Capitale irachena. Sono più di 120 famiglie cristiane che nei giorni scorsi hanno ricevuto l’ordine di evacuare il complesso che li ospita. L’ordine è stata disposto dalla Direzione degli investimenti di Baghdad. La giustificazione dell’atto fa riferimento al fatto che in quell’area dovrà sorgere un centro commerciale.
Nei giorni scorsi, il Patriarca caldeo Louis Raphael Sako aveva visitato il complesso della Vergine Maria – che sorge su un terreno di proprietà demaniale - per manifestare vicinanza alle famiglie di sfollati e farsi carico delle loro preoccupazioni, ora che l’anno scolastico è iniziato e si avvicina l’inverno. Il Cardinale iracheno – riferiscono le fonti ufficiali del patriarcato caldeo – ha anche preso contatti con le autorità politiche nazionali “per rinviare l'evacuazione di almeno un anno o per trovare un'alternativa adeguata all'accoglienza di queste famiglie”.

Il 13 ottobre, un anno dopo le ultime elezioni politiche, il Parlamento iracheno è riuscito a eleggere il 78enne curdo Abdel Latif Rashid alla carica di Presidente della Repubblica. Rashid ha ottenuto 162 voti contro i 99 andati all’uscente, Barham Saleh. Appena eletto, il neo-Presidente ha incaricato Mohammed Shia’ Soudany di formare il governo. Rashid, candidato dell’Unione Patriottica del Kurdistan, nato a Sulaymaniyya. È stato in passato ministro dell’irrigazione. Il premier da lui incaricato è esponente dell’ala filo iraniana dei Partiti sciiti iracheni. Nella lunga fase di stallo politico seguita alle elezioni, le tensioni tra i seguaci dell’Imam sciita Mouqtada Sadr – a capo della coalizione che si erra assicurata la fetta più consistente di seggi in Parlamento - e i miliziani dei Partiti filo iraniani avevano spinto di nuovo l’Iraq sull’orlo della guerra civil

Comprehensive and Multifaceted Rehabilitation of Christian Iraqi Refugees in Jordan

By Asbarez

Madeleine Mezagopian

In an old, historically rich, area in Amman, Jordan, far from the headquarters of the United Nations in New York where recommendations and resolutions pertinent to refugees are adopted, concrete actions are undertaken to provide comprehensive rehabilitative care for young Iraqi refugees.

Following an influx of Iraqi refugees to Jordan in 2003, further occupation of Iraqi cities by ISIS and the persecution of Christians in 2014 resulted in new waves of Iraqis fleeing Iraq and seeking refuge in Jordan. In September 2014, two thousand visas were issued in coordination between the Royal Court and Caritas for Iraqi Christians fleeing persecution in Mosul. These refugees were provided with necessities including accommodation between September 2014 and January 2015—in most cases for one year, by different churches in cities like Amman, Madaba, and Fuheis with Caritas attending to their needs including, education in private schools and health care in local centers and hospitals.

Once registering at the UNHCR, each Iraqi refugee obtains a document titled “Appointment Slip For POC in UNHCR,” which in itself represents some form of residence and permission, to go to and from places, for Iraqi refugees in Jordan.

In March 2016, 58,000 Iraqis registered at the UNHCR, the year the Iraqi Health attaché informed me that a majority of those who entered Jordan after 2014 were Christians who came with nothing whatsoever, hence the need for more care. While a Caritas representative explained that Iraqi refugees receive low attention by the media, especially with the absence of camps sheltering refugees, and that very few non profit organizations deal with Iraqi refugees, given the difference in size between the Syrian refugees and Iraqi refugees—prioritizing the former.

The general health of Iraqi refugees in Jordan is multifaceted, at the forefront being psychological frustrations, as testified by a Caritas representative. After 2014, the health of Iraqi refugees is worse than that of the Syrians. With this being said, it is relevant to underline the fact that the recent flow of Iraqi refugees arrived with no assets whatsoever, due to ISIS confiscating all their belongings, leading to psychological traumas and accompanying health repercussions. Iraqi refugees are forgotten and marginalized.

In 2016, there was a consensus among those I interviewed, that the Iraqi refugees in Jordan have been marginalized by the international community, despite the continuation of the crisis in Iraq and increase rather than decrease in number of Iraqi refugees fleeing conflict areas.

Reham Fakhoury, a renowned Jordanian journalist tackling refugee issues, stated the following: “The situation of the Iraqis in Jordan regressed after the emergence of the Syrian crisis. At the present, there is no more medical help or food stamps for Iraqis at UNHCR. It is a political decision prioritizing Syrian refugees with not enough support for Iraqi refugees. The international community is indifferent with regard the Iraqi refugees.”

That same year, in 2016—while international and regional organizations with considerable budgets continued attending to the needs of Syrian refugees in Jordan—an effective model, with a modest budget, was created to attend to the needs of Christian Iraqi refugees in Jordan.

Decades before the eruption of the war in Iraq, St. Joseph Pastoral Center was established, in 1971, which included a club for the youth of the parish. In 2016, the Center was expanded to revive the club with the support of the head of the parish, Fr. Wissam Mansour, and under the management of Fr. Mario Cornioli, Country Director of the Habibi Valtiberina Association—an organization that mainly engages with the concerns of Iraqi refugees at the Parish and in Jordan in general.

Fr. Mario initiated the revival of the club with the sponsorship of Franciscan fathers. The club’s existing kitchen was renewed with a new section to prepare pizza and other Italian dishes managed by Iraqis who have been trained by Italian chefs who taught the youth how to bake pizza, make ice-cream, as well as other culinary skills. An Italian man with his own ice-cream recipe and a farmer who is an expert in making homemade cheese arrived in Amman and trained the Iraqi youth in their respective specializations. Thus, Mar Yousef’s Pizza was born in October 2017 within the complex of St. Joseph Pastoral Center.

Through his many contacts with Italian organizations, Fr. Mario contributed in financing other projects. In 2017, a sewing workshop was established at the center on a separate floor sponsored by HVA to train Iraqi women refugees.

Amid the ongoing efforts toward enhancing the skills of the Iraqi youth, the education of Iraqi children who faced difficulty in joining formal schools in Jordan was not neglected. In 2018, Our Lady of Carmel School for Iraqi Children, school to students from 1st grade to 10th and 11th grades, was established. The school was directed by Sana’ Bekki, an Iraqi-British citizen, and supersized by Fr. Wissam Mansour.

Our Lady of Carmel School, an informal school, is part of the circuit of the Latin Patriarch Schools in Jordan and is financed and supported mainly by the Iraqi-English non-governmental organization Iraqi Christians In Need, in addition to the Vatican Embassy in Amman, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, St. Joseph Parish in Amman and HVA. It is located in Hashmi Shamali, a relatively poor area, where most Christian Iraqi refugees reside.

The school accommodates between 200 to 350 Iraqi children, depending on their traveling schedules. The curriculum is the English system of Dar Al-Manhal for the elementary classes and SAT for higher level students. A majority of the teachers are Christian Iraqis, while three instructors are Jordanian. Each student pays the annual symbolic fee of about $35, for them to feel as though they are contributing in some way, though some cannot even afford to pay this fee.

Since the inception of Mar Yousef’s Pizza and the sewing workshop, 100 Iraqis have been trained to work and receive a salary. Currently, 23 young Iraqi men and 13 women are being trained in their respective fields to start working and receive monthly salaries. In addition to acquiring relevant professional skills, which involves human interaction and project management, they are learning English and computer skills.

The following testimonies best reflect the implications and the significance of these modest, however exemplary, projects.

Aydin George Keldan is a Christian Iraqi who arrived in Jordan, with his family, as refugees from Karkouk Governorate which was targeted by ISIS in February 2015—a few months after Christian Iraqis became a target of ISIS. With peaceful and loving approach, Aydin underlined the trauma he and his family experienced when their home was attacked by extremists, forcing them to sell their properties at very low prices and seek refuge in Jordan.

“Our first plan was to go to Mosul. But, because of ISIS attacks, we headed towards Jordan seeking safety, stability, and security. Jordan is [the] closest Arab country to Iraq. All the Iraqis in Jordan consider Jordan [to be the] closest Arab country to them,” Keldan said.

“My 27-year-old sister learned sewing at St. Joseph Parish in 2017-2018. My 22-year-old brother is studying pharmacy at the American University sponsored by the Caritas, by the churches, and the Vatican,” he added. “I am 25-years-old. I joined this Center at its inception in November 2017 and did, and continue to, acquire many skills as a waiter, taking reservations, accounting, and managing. [There’s] Gradual progress of different skills, such as advancing my English— taught by foreign teachers—computer, and social skills.”

Keldan continued: “I earn between JD 25-350 per month. The center provided everything in a new safe environment. It helped me a lot. After leaving everything in Iraq, which caused a lot of pain and depression, the center was a good remedy, [it was] very useful. I learned a lot. I advanced my English through interacting with the visitors and getting involved in managing a restaurant, marketing, and procurement. In addition, psychologically it is very comfortable, because the atmosphere is that of a family—team work. It’s not only a profession. We are acquiring the experience of interacting with people and getting acquainted with the outside world, of several nationalities, which helps a lot when traveling to understand different situations and conditions.”

Discussing the ways in which Fr. Wissam has helped him, Keldan note that, “Fr. Wissam opened his doors for us. I consider this Church my church, my house, my family, my club.”

“Our main ambition is stability. Sustainable stability we seek. I wish Iraq to become safe, which is the wish of all the Iraqis. I want to return to my country but I cannot. My big[gest] sorrow [is] being an Iraqi and not seeing Baghdad. I am an Iraqi who didn’t see Iraq, [that is] so painful,” Keldan concluded.

According to UNHCR data, in December 2019, 67,000 Iraqi refugees were registered in Jordan—including Baboka Kaki and his family. Baboka, a handsome 20-year-old Iraqi refugee with a charming smile, as well as some sadness in his eyes, joined the center five months ago. He didn’t finish his studies in Iraq. He and his family applied for Australian citizenship, which resulted in several rejections. He is happy to be gaining skills as a waiter, practicing English with the visitors of the center, securing a monthly income of up to $490, acquiring food on campus and a training certificate. Baboka’s aim is to become a military officer once he and his family settle down in a foreign country ready to fully receive them.

On his impression of his experience at St. Joseph Center, Baboka said, “We know each other, the place causes happiness, psychological motivation. My parents, brother and two sisters in Jordan, go to Lady of Carmel School. My mom works as a sewer at Our Lady of Peace Center and my father works at the Center for Caritas. The school is free of charge, mom gets JD 250 and father gets JD 270. We are members of the Catholic Assyrian parish where the church gives us coupons. We won’t survive with these coupons. We are surviving thanks to the support we get from the Latin Church.”

Baboka, who has no complaints whatsoever whether concerning his colleagues or the priests in charge, added that he would love to “return to my homeland but there is no future, no security, and no safety—especially for Christians. All our family is there. But [a] safe future for my family is the reason for our seeking leaving for abroad.”

This psychological and the professional rehabilitation of young Iraqi men and women well prepares them to transition into the next stage in life. Lara Malook, the academic superintendent of the school, emphasized that, “Lady of Carmel School represents solidarity among the Christian Iraqis. Very positive feed backs from the students who already left for Canada and Australia who urge the students to take their studies at school seriously as it helps them to avoid six months studying English as they are well prepared to get integrated in the system abroad.”

The key guardian of the three projects mentioned above, Fr. Wissam Mansour, said, “I appreciate and respect a lot the Iraqi youth who are getting trained at the Center, whom we treat and serve without judgments while adopting humanitarian base as our unifying base given the humanitarian dimension reflects our spirituality. These youth are so polite, kind, very conscious, alert, aware of their condition and capable. They act according to the available potentials and possibilities. They have no complaints. They are clean, modest of high ethics due to their family milieus of same high ethics. The good solid foundation is there to build on it.”

The above testimonies well testify that this multifaceted project well serves in having the Iraqi youth overcome their past traumas and enjoy a safe and caring milieu with their basic needs well met, while simultaneously getting well prepared to peacefully and efficiently integrate in the societies of the states of their next destination.

St. Joseph Pastoral Center serves two integration processes of the Christian Iraqi refugees. First, while they seek refuge in Jordan, and second in the states where they intend to settle down, which usually involves family reunions. In addition, the center provides joy and hope for its visitors of different origins, faith, and cultures who experience a peaceful and productive environment—where refugees learn to help themselves and their families in their current and future stages of life. The project is a pioneering, unparalleled, and exemplary contribution by St. Joseph Pastoral Center, headed by Fr. Wissam Mansour, in serving and enhancing the well-being of overlooked refugees.

Last but not least, given the fact that Christian Iraqi refugees in Jordan are overlooked and receive less support from international and regional organizations, and keeping in mind that more Iraqi refugees are expected—given the recent reemergence of extremist forces in Iraq—will this multifaceted project survive?

According to Fr. Wissam Mansour, “All the organizations provide indirect modest support, including Caritas which provides what is left from the funding for other refugees.”

While Fr. Mario Cornioli, the God Father of this comprehensive and multifaceted rehabilitation project concluded with the following statement: “Only since October 2021 [have] we become self-reliant, which I consider a miracle. We received support from the Vatican, from the French Embassy in Amman who covered the salaries during the closure of the center due to Covid-19, from the Italian Bishop Conference which provided project start up financial support, from UNICEF which provided financial support for the ice-cream project and from USAID which supported the Italian cheese. Our self-reliance hitherto is a miracle. However, with more support I can continue with the ongoing projects and initiate other projects where I can afford to recruit more Iraqis.”

The very modest contributions of different organizations, e.g. the winterization assistance of UNHCR, the modest cash contribution of the Care International which came to a halt as testified by some Iraqis, should not only continue, but surely it must increase and expand to guarantee not only the survival but the expansion of such projects which indeed are necessary to help not only Christian Iraqi refugees, but all refugees at large. They must expand so that these refugees may not only live in peace but with great dignity.

Le parole del patriarca caldeo Cardinale Louis Sako a Bratislava

By Baghdadhope* - Patriarcato caldeo

Foto Patriarcato caldeo

Alla Conferenza internazionale sulla libertà religiosa e sulle sfide politiche contemporanee iniziato oggi a Bratislava (Slovacchia) è intervenuto anche il patriarca della chiesa caldea, Cardinale Louis Raphael Sako, che nel suo discorso ha ricordato come sarebbe auspicabile che la sinodalità invocata da Papa Francesco per la chiesa si applicasse anche a livello civile e politico. 

Introducendo il discorso sulla libertà religiosa il patriarca ha affermato che essa è "legata ai diritti umani fondamentali, alla piena cittadinanza e alla convivenza armoniosa, nonché ai programmi educativi che rafforzano questi poli"

"In Iraq" ha continuato Mar Sako "esiste la libertà religiosa, cioè la libertà delle religioni di praticare i propri riti all'interno degli edifici di culto. A questo proposito l'Iraq è forse in prima linea per quanto riguarda la costruzione di chiese e monasteri, l'apertura di scuole e ospedali e la pubblicazione di libri e riviste religiose."
Il problema però rimane secondo il prelato "la libertà di coscienza" intendendo con ciò "la libertà di scegliere la religione o di cambiare religione. Un musulmano può essere ateo ma non può convertirsi al cristianesimo a causa della legge tradizionale sull'apostasia mentre le persone di altre religioni trovano una buona accoglienza se vogliono convertirsi all'Islam." Una mancanza di giustizia e rispetto per il diritto sacro della liberta personale che il cardinale Sako non ha evitato di sottolineare.
Allo stesso modo il prelato ha citato il problema della cittadinanza. 
Dopo la caduta del regime, ha spiegato, si è affermata una nuova mentalità fatta di settarismo e quote, sono stati eretti muri tra le diverse componenti del paese e si è diffusa la corruzione portando alla divisione  della cittadinanza secondo le diverse appartenenze religiose, settarie ed etniche ed alla creazione di  cittadini di prima, seconda e terza classe. Un grave errore, ha spiegato il cardinale Sako, in un sistema ufficialmente democratico.
"La religione" sono state le sue parole "dovrebbe essere separata dallo stato in quanto rapporto personale tra il credente e il suo Signore mentre lo stato, in quanto entità morale senza religione dovrebbe essere equidistante da ogni cittadino. Gli iracheni dovrebbero essere visti come cittadini e non in base alle loro affiliazioni religiose." 
Da qui la "necessità di promuovere l'armoniosa coesistenza tra loro sulla base del paese in comune, gli stessi diritti e la fratellanza" e quella di " cambiare molte leggi e molti programmi scolastici per consolidare i valori umani e nazionali ed i diritti umani." 
"Ogni essere umano sulla faccia della terra" sono le parole di Mar Sako "ha diritto alla completa libertà, giustizia e uguaglianza. Questi principi fondamentali devono essere applicati in tutti i paesi." 
In conclusione del suo discorso il patriarca ha espresso la sua speranza che l'incontro abbia un seguito pratico e che non si riduca alle mere parole in attesa di un miracolo che "potrebbe non avvenire senza gli sforzi di tutti per un cambiamento positivo."

‘ISIS brides’ will return to Sydney

By The Catholic Weekly

Adam Wesselinoff

In 2014, Archbishop Amel Nona was visiting a parish in the plain of Nineveh, outside of Mosul in Northern Iraq, when he received a phone call. 

It was a representative of ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. 

Archbishop Nona was told he and the Christian population of the city had four choices: convert to Islam, pay the jizya tax to fund the new Caliphate, leave the city, or be killed. 

He never re-entered Mosul, where he had been made Archbishop in 2010 after the kidnapping and murder of his predecessor, Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho. ISIS then issued an ultimatum online to Christians: leave the city within 24 hours.
That night, 120,000 people left one of the ancient homes of Christianity for towns in the plain of Nineveh. This was only a fraction of the once-thriving Christian community; many had already fled in preceding years, as religious violence ripped through Iraq in the wake of the US invasion of 2003. 

A month later, as ISIS advanced, they were forced to flee again, this time into Kurdistan.
“Few people were killed. We thank God for that,” Archbishop Nona told The Catholic Weekly. “It was very difficult: 120,000 people without anything. We opened all the churches there [in Kurdistan], all the Christian schools. “People there were sleeping in the churches, schools, classrooms, gardens. We thank God it was summer, not winter.”
With the help of Aid to the Church in Need and other international organisations, assisted by donations from Chaldean Dioceses in western nations, the refugees built camps in which they lived for almost a year.
Some left for Jordan, Syria or Turkey, with others migrating to Australia, Canada and the US.
Around 61,000 Assyrians and Chaldeans now call Australia home, with three-quarters living in the City of Fairfield in Western Sydney.
Yet shortly they may be living alongside their persecutors; the Albanese Government has proposed to repatriate 16 women, relatives and wives of former ISIS fighters, from detention camps in North-East Syria where they have been living since ISIS’s final defeat by Kurdish forces in 2019.
The so-called “ISIS brides” are Australian citizens, and would be repatriated along with 42 children, some of whom were born in detention overseas.
At least a dozen Australian men who fought for ISIS are also in detention overseas.
Some have expressed remorse and wish to return to Australia, but no plans for their repatriation have been announced.
Some of the women have relatives in Western Sydney, and may resettle in suburbs in which Assyrians and Chaldeans live.
“It’s not easy for us to live with people who persecuted us, who forced us to leave everything and killed our people,” Archbishop Nona said.
“I can’t understand it, really. From one side we talk about the free choice of everyone, in our Western society … If these people choose to go there, to combat, and to do whatever – it was their choice. That was their choice.”
He heard about the government’s proposal from media reports, and told The Catholic Weekly on 10 October that his community had not been forewarned or consulted about the decision.
“There should be justice, should be respect for other people – the victims,” Archbishop Nona said. “There should be someone who can say sorry to the victims, and more importantly, if they come back – yesterday, even, I heard that they want to put them in Western Sydney … It is a very bad decision, and we will talk about that if they do that.”
The de facto spokesperson for the women, “ISIS bride” Mariam Dabboussy, claims she and her husband were tricked by her brother-in-law into going to Syria to join ISIS. Ms Dabboussy told The Australian earlier this year that her youngest daughter Aisha, whom she took to Syria at 18 months old and is now aged nine, has spent a third of her life in prison camps. Some of the women likewise claim they were coerced, forced to remarry when their husbands were killed, and suffer from degrading conditions in the Syrian refugee camps. 

The decision to repatriate them has come after a secret investigation by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) in Syria, and the women have reportedly agreed to be detained upon arrival in Australia.
They have also volunteered to submit to control orders before release into the community.
Archbishop Nona said that the women must be prosecuted if they have broken Australian law, and should not be excused because they were only the spouses of ISIS fighters.
“About the children, I am 100 per cent with them. Small kids, of course they did nothing: they’re victims also,” he said. “But adults? I think they must ask them about what they did.”
Whatever the government’s decision about resettling former members of ISIS in Sydney, Archbishop Nona said Christians cannot return to Iraq – and few Australian Chaldeans would want to.
“We are a small minority there, and after many, many years and decades of persecution it’s difficult for our people who are now here to think about that land, their homeland,” he said.

A un anno dal voto l'Iraq è senza governo e sull’orlo della guerra civile

By Asia News

Dario Salvi

Un “dialogo senza precondizioni” per sbloccare uno stallo politico e istituzionale che si trascina da un anno, dalle elezioni parlamentari dell’ottobre 2021 che non hanno garantito una maggioranza definita facendo prevalere la logica dei veti incrociati. A lanciare l’appello, ultima in ordine di tempo, è la Missione di assistenza delle Nazioni Unite in Iraq (Unami) che si rivolge a tutti gli attori in gioco, dai sadristi ai filo-iraniani, dai sunniti ai curdi, perché lavorino per la nascita di un nuovo esecutivo.

“Attraverso il compromesso - spiega la nota Onu - [gli schieramenti] devono concordare in modo corale gli obiettivi chiave” per far fronte alle “esigenze del popolo iracheno” e “stabilire un governo efficace e con pieni poteri”. Tuttavia, non vi sono all’orizzonte elementi che facciano presagire svolte positive, mentre il vuoto di potere rischia di favorire, oggi come in passato, una nuova spirale di violenze di movimenti jihadisti o gruppi di interesse sostenuti da attori regionali o internazionali. Una impasse istituzionale, prima ancora che politica, un baratro come lo definiscono i vescovi caldei, che va affrontato secondo alcuni non col voto anticipato, ma mettendo mano all’architettura dello Stato e riscrivendo le regole della competizione. Anche in questo caso l’interesse per il Paese è relegato in secondo piano e sopraffatto da egoismi di partito e obiettivi personali di leader politici e loro tutori all’estero.

Paralisi istituzionale

Un anno fa, in Iraq si sono tenute elezioni parlamentari frutto di un voto anticipato indetto in risposta alle proteste di piazza su scala nazionale contro corruzione e malaffare. A oggi il Paese non ha un nuovo governo, né ha saputo votare - e approvare - il bilancio dello Stato, oltre alla nomina del nuovo presidente della Repubblica e del primo ministro, prolungando ad interim le cariche. L’unica elezione portata a termine è quella del presidente della Camera, affidata al sunnita Mohammed al Habousi, peraltro dimissionario.

Per il capo dello Stato, un curdo, sono state bruciate diverse candidature e non vi è consenso unanime sul prolungamento del mandato di Bahram Salih. Una paralisi che ha spinto lo stesso premier Mustafa al-Kadhimi a pubblicare un comunicato in cui, rivolgendosi a tutte le forze, chiede di rilanciare la collaborazione e mettere la parola fine alla crisi attraverso il dialogo. Parole che sembrano destinate a cadere nel vuoto prolungando lo stallo di un esecutivo ad interim con poteri e margini di manovra assai ridotti, soprattutto in campo economico e in un’ottica di alleanze sul piano regionale e globale.

Il nocciolo della questione ruota attorno al vincitore delle elezioni, il leader radicale sciita Moqtada al-Sadr, che non intende sottostare a un esecutivo di larghe intese, ma, al tempo stesso, non ha i numeri per formare un governo di maggioranza; di contro, la fazione sciita filo-iraniana espressione del Coordination Framework preme per una formazione di larghe intese. A ciò si sommano le tensioni alimentate da ingerenze esterne e potenze straniere con interessi contrapposti. Alla paralisi nelle istituzioni ha fatto da contraltare la tensione nelle piazze, che ha raggiunto l’apice a fine agosto in seguito all’annuncio di al-Sadr di volersi ritirare dalla vita politica, parole che hanno spinto i suoi simpatizzanti e sostenitori a scendere in piazza a manifestare, col rischio di una deriva verso la guerra civile. L’appello dello stesso leader sciita e una faticosa opera di mediazione hanno restituito la calma e scongiurato ulteriori spargimenti di sangue, pur lasciando immutati i molti problemi del Paese. “La situazione resta di estrema fragilità” ha sottolineato al Consiglio di sicurezza Onu l’inviato speciale Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert. “Troppi iracheni - ha aggiunto - hanno perso fiducia nella capacità della classe politica di agire nell’interesse del Paese”.

Crescita e povertà

Ricco di idrocarburi, ma devastato da decenni di conflitti, l’Iraq ha raccolto nell’anno corrente entrate cospicue grazie alle esportazioni petrolifere. Queste ricchezze finiscono però per restare bloccate - e inutilizzate - nelle casse della Banca centrale, dove le riserve di valuta estera hanno raggiunto quasi 90 miliardi di euro. Per investire questa ricchezza serve un governo nel pieno dei poteri e capace di presentare al Parlamento un bilancio, prerogativa che non compete all’esecutivo ad interim che può solo gestire gli affari correnti. “Ogni progetto infrastrutturale - spiega a L’Orient-Le Jour l’economista Yesar Al-Maleki - richiede anni di pianificazione. La situazione politica ha causato una massiccia perturbazione, che ne ha aggravato la cattiva reputazione”.

Dall’altro, la Banca mondiale mostra proiezioni che parlano di una crescita economica media annuale del 5,4% tra il 2022 e il 2024. A giugno il Parlamento ha votato una legge sui finanziamenti di emergenza del valore di quasi 18 miliardi di euro che include l’acquisto di gas ed elettricità, oltre ai cereali per garantire la “sicurezza alimentare”. Questa situazione di caos “non permette opportunità di crescita economica e privata” pur a fronte di un potenziale di prim’ordine. In prospettiva 2023, le autorità potrebbero essere tentate di approvare un’altra legge finanziaria di emergenza. In effetti, diversi progetti lanciati dal ministero del Petrolio e dalle aziende straniere avanzano sin troppo lentamente, e a pagarne le conseguenze è la popolazione: in una nazione di 42 milioni di abitanti, quasi 4 giovani su 10 sono disoccupati e un terzo del totale vive in condizione di povertà (fonti Onu).

Sfollati, emergenza attuale

A farne le spese sono le fasce più deboli ed emarginate della popolazione. Fra questi vi sono i rifugiati cristiani che, nell’estate 2014 in seguito all’ascesa dello Stato islamico (SI, ex Isis), hanno abbandonato le loro case e le loro terre a Mosul e nella piana di Ninive. Se una parte è potuta ritornare, molti altri ancora restano abbandonati alla loro sorte e un governo debole, unito a istituzioni e realtà assistenziali pressoché assenti, hanno contribuito ad inasprire l’emergenza. Fra le poche realtà che cercano di portare aiuto, pur a fronte di risorse limitate, vi è la Chiesa caldea con il suo primate il card. Louis Raphael Sako che nei giorni scorsi ha visitato il centro di accoglienza di Zayouna, alle porte della capitale, condividendo sofferenze e bisogni degli ospiti.

Accompagnato dall’ausiliare mons. Basilio Yaldo, la sera del 5 ottobre il porporato si è recato al complesso della Vergine Maria, che il Dipartimento per gli investimenti e lo sviluppo di Baghdad intende evacuare. Nella struttura, che sorge su terreno demaniale, vi sono fino a 120 nuclei familiari ricollocati in passato nell’area dal governo centrale. Fra i problemi che queste famiglie si trovano ad affrontare vi è l’inizio dell’anno scolastico, con la necessità di garantire la frequenza ai figli, e l’arrivo della stagione invernale. Lo stesso card. Sako sta trattando con i funzionari dell’amministrazione capitolina* per rinviare almeno di un anno l’evacuazione, per poter trovare un’alternativa adeguata in un’ottica di accoglienza, lavorando al contempo a soluzioni di lungo periodo in Iraq. Il timore, che la Chiesa per prima vorrebbe scongiurare, è quello di un nuovo esodo all’estero verso l’Europa, il Nord America o l’Australia andando così ad alimentare la già nutrita pattuglia dei caldei della diaspora.

* Ovviamente si tratta di una svista e nel testo arabo sono citati i "funzionari governativi"   iracheni e non romani. 
Nota di Baghdadhope

Leggi anche: Arab News
Obtober 10, 2022
Year after Iraq vote UN urges dialogue to end gridlock

P. Samir: continui bombardamenti iraniani sul Kurdistan dopo la morte di Mahsa Amini

By Asia News

3 ottobre 2022 

L’eco, e le violenze, legate alle proteste per la morte della 22enne curda iraniana Mahsa Amini per mano della polizia della morale “sono arrivate nel Kurdistan iracheno: da giorni Teheran ha iniziato a bombardare diverse aree, da Erbil ad Ankawa a Sulaymaniyya, la notte siamo svegliati dalle esplosioni. Nel mirino campi profughi o centri dove vivono curdi o iraniani della dissidenza, fuggiti da tempo”. 

A raccontarlo ad AsiaNews è p. Samir Youssef, parroco della diocesi di Amadiya, nel Kurdistan iracheno, dove nei giorni scorsi si sono registrate anche delle vittime: “Bombe e attacchi droni - prosegue - hanno ucciso almeno 12 persone, decine i feriti. Fra le vittime ha destato particolare commozione la morte di una giovane donna incinta, ospite di un campo profughi; i medici sono riusciti a salvare almeno il bambino”.

La presenza dei curdi iraniani, o dei membri della dissidenza, risale ad anni fa ed è legata ad accordi politici di alto livello, vincolata al fatto che dal Kurdistan non partissero attacchi in territorio iraniano. 

“La presenza di basi della resistenza è nota - conferma p. Samir - ma non si erano verificati grossi problemi e, a differenza della Turchia con il Pkk, Teheran non colpiva. Ma dopo la morte della ragazza, e l’inizio delle manifestazioni, anche qui la situazione è cambiata e pure il nostro territorio è diventato un obiettivo da colpire, alimentando un clima di tensione e di paura”.
La vicenda della giovane curda, sottolinea, ha avuto “ampia eco nei media regionali e nazionali, con un sostegno diffuso al popolo iraniano e la sua legittima richiesta di libertà e diritti”.

Intanto dall’Iran continuano ad arrivare notizie di repressioni avallate dalle autorità. Secondo fonti di Amnesty International, il governo di Teheran ha ordinato alle Forze di sicurezza di reprimere “con severità e senza alcuna pietà” le manifestazioni. Per il movimento attivista vi sono documenti risalenti al 21 settembre, provenienti dal quartier generale delle Forze armate e diretti ai comandi dei vari reparti in cui si chiede di “affrontare con la massima severità gli anti-rivoluzionari e i facinorosi”. Un altro documento del 23 per la provincia di Mazandran esorta ad “affrontare senza pietà, fino a causare morti, qualsiasi disordine da parte di rivoltosi e anti-rivoluzionari”.

Tuttavia, le minacce e le violenze degli ayatollah non fermano l’onda di protesta che continua nelle strade, nelle piazze e persino nei campus, sotto assedio. È il caso della Sharif University a Teheran, dove si sono registrati violenti scontri fra agenti - anche reparti in borghese - e studenti. Ieri sera elementi delle milizie basij hanno “circondato il campus e aperto il fuoco” usando proiettili di gomma e “arrestando almeno un centinaio di persone, fra studenti e docenti”. In un video pubblicato sui social, nonostante il blocco della rete imposto dalle autorità, si vedono studenti rincorsi da poliziotti e il fermo ai cancelli dell’università, oggi simile più a una prigione.

Fra le persone arrestate vi è anche la giornalista che ha diffuso per prima la notizia della morte di Mahsa. Si tratta di Niloofar Hamedi, che da diversi anni si occupava dei fatti di cronaca riguardanti le squadre della polizia della morale e la sua influenza - crescente dall’ascesa alla presidenza dell’ultraconservatore Ebrahim Raisi - sulla società iraniana. Nel frattempo il bilancio è salito ad almeno 133 morti, oltre un migliaio (ma è difficile avere stime attendibili) le persone arrestate dai reparti di sicurezza. Fra queste vi è anche una ragazza italiana, Alessia Piperno, turista di 30 anni (sembrerebbe estranea alle proteste, pur avendone scritto sui propri canali social) e fermata nel giorno del suo compleanno. Nella notte l’appello disperato della famiglia sui social, che chiede aiuto al governo di Roma per ottenerne la liberazione.

P. Samir sottolinea che “anche fra i cristiani iraniani vi è profonda preoccupazione per quanto sta succedendo”. E le proteste di piazza per la morte di Mahsa Amini sono state oggetto di confronto e di discussione anche nell’incontro dei giovani della diocesi, promosso dallo stesso sacerdote: “Le ragazze si sentono toccate dalla vicenda, sono tristi e avvertono dolore per le morti e per i video in cui si tagliano i capelli. Sostengono però con altrettanta forza loro battaglia per le libertà e i diritti e nelle messe che abbiamo celebrato in questi giorni abbiamo voluto pregare anche per loro”.