Ten years after ISIS conquered the grand Iraqi town of Mosul, their devastating impact on the Christian communities of northern Iraq remains. At the time of Mosul’s capture in 2014, all 1,200 Christian families living in the city fled. ISIS was routed from the area in 2017, but according to Paul Thabit Mekko, the Chaldea Bishop of Alqosh, barely forty of those families have returned.
Other estimates—harder to check—allege less than half of the 80,000 Christians that fled the Nineveh Plain have returned to their villages. Shia militia groups, funded by Iran, have also partially filled the power vacuum in Northern Iraq, ensure that the ever-shrinking population of Christians remains marginalized.
While the focus was on Israel’s conflict with Hamas and subsequently Hezbollah, a perceptible reduction in religious freedom was observed throughout the region, especially among Muslim background believers (MBB’s).
Arrests of those leading Muslim background believer house churches in Iran rose sharply. The same happened in Mauritania, Yemen, and Morocco. Expatriate Christians in the UAE reported much higher levels of surveillance, and in Oman more Christians were expelled than usual. The number of Indigenous Christians in Gaza fell below a thousand.
To read more: https://www.christiandaily.com/news/christians-are-squeezed-like-never-before-in-the-middle-east-and-north-africa
By Ronald Boyd-MacMillan | christiandaily
