Once home to one of the largest Christian communities in the Middle East, Iraq today is in danger of losing Christianity completely. The Islamic State group forced thousands of Christians to flee after it stormed through the Nineveh Plains in 2014. Some have now returned, following IS’s military defeat. But even with IS gone, in many areas of Iraq daily life is governed by Sharia (Islamic law) and Muslims are forbidden to leave Islam.

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‘It’s time to be real: what happens in Iraq is ethnic cleansing’ – UK analyst

Tahira Church in Qaraqosh, a Christian town in northern Iraq, shortly after liberation from Islamic State in November 2016. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

What Iraq’s Christians want from the West is to say the plain truth: that there is ethnic cleansing of Christians in the region and it is ongoing, Dr Tim Stanley told a meeting at the UK’s parliament last Tuesday, 9 July. The historian and columnist, working for UK daily newspaper […]

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Iraq: Five years after IS occupied Mosul, returnees live in fear

Iraq: Five years after IS occupied Mosul, returnees live in fear

The Islamic State’s three-year occupation of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and its surrounding villages ended nearly two years ago, yet the city and its diminished number of Christian residents remain vulnerable.   Last month the Iraqi government announced it would arm residents of 50 villages around Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, […]

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Iraq: UN team starts probe into IS war crimes

Destroyed market in the town of Bartella, 15km east of Mosul, which was liberated from IS by Iraqi forces in October 2016. (Photo World Watch Monitor)

One of the world’s most influential Muslim clerics has told a UN team that an investigation into “heinous crimes” committed against Christian and other Iraqi minorities was welcome and urgent, reports Agenzia Fides The team, known as UNITAD, started its work formally this month following a UN resolution in September 2017. […]

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