{"id":3824,"date":"2006-12-23T23:31:58","date_gmt":"2006-12-23T23:31:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/last-christmas-in-iraq.html"},"modified":"2006-12-23T23:31:58","modified_gmt":"2006-12-23T23:31:58","slug":"last-christmas-in-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/last-christmas-in-iraq.html","title":{"rendered":"Last Christmas in Iraq?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nina Shea at NRO on Iraq and religious freedom.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Iraq\u2019s government has not been notably effective in protecting anyone, and its stance toward the Christians and other small minorities has been abysmal. The Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, was quoted earlier this year urging kidnappers to target Christian women instead of Muslims. After addressing the tragic abduction of his own sister, Thayseer, the Speaker was reported saying: \u201cWhy kidnap this Muslim woman; instead of Thayseer, why not kidnap Margaret or Jean?\u201d The latter are Christian names \u2014 implying that it would have been better for a Christian woman to have been kidnapped, raped, and killed. <\/p>\n

The United States has a great moral responsibility to address the plight of the most vulnerable of Iraq\u2019s religious groups. Even from the \u201crealist\u201d foreign-policy perspective, it would serve American interests. Last spring, one Iraqi government official \u2014 a Muslim \u2014 urged me, \u201cSpeak up for the Christians \u2014 they have needed skills and they bring moderation. Iraq needs them.\u201d <\/p>\n

Specific policy actions are required to help them. But these policies should differ from the efforts we once took to rescue another religious minority, Soviet Jewry \u2014 because most of Iraq\u2019s Christians, Yizidis, and Mandeans do not want to leave Iraq, their ancestral home. <\/p>\n

We must ensure that they receive an equitable share of U.S. reconstruction aid. We also need to provide assistance to the internally displaced, support their constitutional right to their own administrative department, ensure that their areas have local police forces, and take other actions developed by the Iraqi advocacy groups and religious-policy experts to increase the security of these minorities within Iraq. For the most desperate individuals, we must offer resettlement here in the United States, where hundreds of thousands of their relatives (largely refugees from persecutions in earlier periods) and co-religionists are eager to assist them.<\/p>\n

Time is running out. Without a new commitment of U.S. help, this may be the last Christmas in Iraq.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nina Shea at NRO on Iraq and religious freedom. Iraq\u2019s government has not been notably effective in protecting anyone, and its stance toward the Christians and other small minorities has been abysmal. The Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, was quoted earlier this year urging kidnappers to target Christian women instead of Muslims. After…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nLast Christmas in Iraq? - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/last-christmas-in-iraq.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Last Christmas in Iraq? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Nina Shea at NRO on Iraq and religious freedom. Iraq\u2019s government has not been notably effective in protecting anyone, and its stance toward the Christians and other small minorities has been abysmal. The Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, was quoted earlier this year urging kidnappers to target Christian women instead of Muslims. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3824\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}