Lest we forget: Christmas in the “Caliphate” of Iraq—UPDATED

From Al Arabiya News: 

After a year of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria purging Christian minorities from its self-declared caliphate, Iraqi and Syrian Christians are facing muted celebrations this Christmas.

“Talk of Christmas and Christian occasions is forbidden under ISIS,” said Sulaiman Youssef, a Syrian researcher on minorities.

“The group has destroyed, torched and looted all churches, and barred any display of Christian faith. They also forced the hijab and Islamic way of dress on Christian women, and killed several Christian men for refusing to obey their orders.”

…Michel Kassarji, the Chaldean bishop of Beirut, said his church was struggling to meet the needs of the 1,800 Christian refugee families – a figure growing by 25 every week – under its care.

“It’s very difficult… As a church, we do everything to make the people here happy, and we try to help them with their food” and put children in school, said Kassarji.

Nevertheless, the church still has numerous religious events this Christmas season, which both Iraqi and Syrian Christians attend.

On Christmas day “we have three to four masses, and every three or four days we [give presents] to the children,” he added.

Read it all. And pray for the Christians of Iraq and Syria this Christmas.

UPDATE: The New York Times reports:

No, Miriam, Santa Claus did not forget you this year.

In these circumstances, though, and being far from home, it is a reasonable question for a 5-year-old to ask.

“Yes, he will come, he will never forget you,” Miriam’s mother, Hamama, told her.

For months now, since militants of the Islamic State stormed her hometown, Qaraqosh, in northern Iraq, near Mosul, and began killing and driving out Christians, home for Miriam and dozens of her old neighbors has been the run-down Al Makasid Primary School in Baghdad. To get by, they have relied on the kindnesses of the nearby church, and of local Muslims, too.

In the school’s dingy courtyard there is a tree, trimmed in balls and bells, and a Nativity scene. A few gifts have been donated — toys, clothes, dolls and candies. It is not much, and nothing like being at home, but Christmas has not been the same in Iraq for a long time now.

Two numbers tell that story. In 2003, when the Americans invaded, there were an estimated 1.5 million Christians living in Iraq. Today, experts say, there are fewer than 400,000, many of them on the run from the Islamic State.

Read it all.