The universal soldier - Glen Campbell
Friday, July 21, 2017
Thursday, July 20, 2017
Was Israel Commanded to Commit Genocide?
By Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan
This article first appeared in the Effective Evangelism column of the Christian Research Journal, volume 34, number 05 (2011). The full text of this article in PDF format can be obtained by clicking here. For further information or to subscribe to the Christian Research Journal go to: http://www.equip.org/christian-research-journal/
Have you ever been in a discussion with a skeptic about God and morality? Perhaps you’ve admirably made the case that God’s good character is the basis for human dignity and worth. Maybe you’ve shown how objective moral values and duties can’t be explained naturalistically. Then someone takes the wind out of your sails by asking, “Well, if God is so good, why would He command Israel to engage in ethnic cleansing and genocidal warfare against the Canaanites? After all, doesn’t Deuteronomy 20:16–17 plainly state this? ‘Only in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. But you shall utterly destroy them…as the Lord your God has commanded you.’”1 No matter how strongly the believer makes the case for the God-morality connection, this good argument can become overshadowed by the Canaanite question.
So what do we do? By all means, stick with the argument of how God’s existence makes better sense of a moral world in which intrinsically valuable persons exist! Yet we should be prepared to address this “genocide” question, which has gotten a lot more press since 9/11. “Religious radicalism” has emboldened New Atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, who attack “the God of the Old Testament.” In our own experience, the Canaanite question is emerging with increasing frequency, and we will point out key response points.
First, we should avoid using the misleading statement “taking the Bible literally.” We don’t (and shouldn’t) always take it literally. We should always take it literarily. That is, we should treat the Bible’s types of literature (genres)—poetry, historical narrative, apocalypse, prophecy, parable—as they were intended to be interpreted. We can’t apply a one size-fits-all approach to each of them. This is particularly important for interpreting the Old Testament’s war texts properly—in their ancient Near Eastern setting.
Second, the sweeping language of these warfare texts such as Joshua (as well as Numbers 31 and 1 Samuel 15) occurs in highly figurative, hyperbolic accounts—quite common in the ancient Near East. This kind of “utterly destroyed” bravado was common in ancient Near Eastern war texts. Biblical scholars and archaeologists (e.g., K. Lawson Younger, Kenneth Kitchen) have recognized the pervasive use of hyperbolic language—“boasting” about “total destruction”—in ancient Near Eastern warfare literature. Victories were often described hyperbolically in terms of total conquest, complete annihilation, and destruction of the enemy, killing everyone and leaving no survivors. One Moabite king wrote of his defeat of Israel, “Israel is no more.” The knowing ancient Near Eastern reader recognized that this was massive hyperbole, and the accounts were not understood to be literally true. This language was like a basketball team saying of their opponents, “We totally slaughtered them!”
Third, the contrast between “utterly destroying” and leaving ample survivors is fairly obvious. In the biblical canon, Joshua is connected not only to Judges 1–2 (where lots of Canaanite survivors remain alive after Joshua “left no survivors”!), but also to Numbers and Deuteronomy. And Judges reveals that this widespread killing never literally happened, since there were swarms of Canaanites remaining. Even within Joshua we read, “There were no Anakim left in the land” (11:22); they were “utterly destroyed” in the hill country (11:21). Yet later in Joshua, Caleb asked permission to drive out the Anakites from the hill country (14:12–15; cf. 15:13–19). Joshua’s military campaign in Canaan simply wasn’t a territorial conquest, but a series of disabling raids.
In Numbers 31 (after Midianite women had intentionally seduced the men of Israel), we’re told, “[Israel] fought against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and killed every man” (NIV, emphasis added). If literally true, why do we see Midianite multitudes in Judges 6:5? They were “like swarms of locusts. It was impossible to count them or their camels” (6:5 NIV). Also, the language is exaggerated in that every Midianite man was killed without a single Israelite fatality (Num. 31:50).
In 1 Samuel 15, Saul was commanded to “utterly destroy” the Amalekites. Stereotypical sweeping language was used: “Put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey” (15:3). On a literal reading, Saul carried this out—except for King Agag, who would meet his doom through the prophet Samuel (vv.7–9, 33). Yet this didn’t literally happen; the Amalekites were far from destroyed.
Exaggerated language is abundant. For instance, Saul’s army was numbered at 210,000—far larger than any army of antiquity. This was common in ancient Near Eastern war texts. In 1 Samuel 27:8–9, the same sweeping language of Chapter 15 is used: all Amalekites were wiped out—again! We’re told David invaded a territory full of Amalekites—the same territory covered by Saul. (Shur is near Egypt and Havilah is in Saudi Arabia—an area far too wide for Saul’s army to cover.) So, 1 Samuel 15 and 27 cannot both be literally true. What’s more, in 1 Samuel 30, a large Amalekite army attacked Ziklag (v. 1), and David pursued this army and fought a long battle with them, with four hundred Amalekites fleeing (1 Sam. 30:7–17). That’s not all: the Amalekites were even around during the reign of Hezekiah (1 Chron. 4:43).
So here’s the question: Why is it that virtually every time a narration of “genocide” occurs, it is followed by an account that presupposes it did not happen? Scripture took shape, and the Old Testament canon was formed. The final compiler or editor—who was certainly not mindless—saw no problem with side-by-side affirmations of “total destruction” and many surviving hostiles. He didn’t assume both to be literally true.
Fourth, the dominant language of “driving out” and “thrusting out” the Canaanites indicates further that “extermination” passages are hyperbolic (cf. Exod. 23:28; Lev. 18:24; Num. 33:52: Deut. 6:19; 7:1; 9:4; 18:12; Josh. 10:28, 30, 32, 35, 37, 39; 11:11, 14). Israel was to “dispossess” the Canaanites of their land (Num. 21:32; Deut. 9:1; 11:23; 18:14; 19:1). Just as Adam and Eve were “driven out” of the garden (Gen. 3:24), or Cain into the wilderness (4:14), or David from Israel by Saul (1 Sam. 26:19), so the Israelites were to “dispos- sess” the Canaanites. “Driving out” or “dispossessing” is different from “wiping out” or “destroying.” Clearly, utter annihilation was not intended; you can’t both drive out anddestroy.
Fifth, the biblical language of the Canaanite “destruction” is identical to that of Judah’s destruction in the Babylonian exile—clearly not utter annihilation or even genocide.Indeed, God threatened to “vomit” out Israel from the land just as he had vomited out the Canaanites (Lev. 18:25, 28; 20:22). In the Babylonian invasion of Judah (sixth-century BC), God threatened to “lay waste the towns of Judah so no one can live there” (Jer. 9:11 NIV). Indeed, God said, “I will completely destroy them and make them an object of horror and scorn, and an everlasting ruin” (Jer. 25:9 NIV). God “threatened to stretch out My hand against you and destroy you” (Jer. 15:6; cf. Ezek. 5:16)—to bring “disaster” against Judah (Jer. 6:19). The biblical text, supported by archaeological discovery, suggests that while Judah’s political and religious structures were ruined and that Judahites died in the conflict, the urban elite were deported to Babylon while many “poor of the land” remained behind to inhabit the towns of Judah. Clearly, Judah’s being “completely destroyed” and made an “everlasting ruin” (Jer. 25:9) was a significant literary exaggeration—which reinforces our point about the Canaanite “destruction.”
Sixth, “Joshua obeyed all that Moses commanded” (Josh. 9:24; 11:12), and yet Joshua left many survivors. It only follows, then, that in Deuteronomy 20 Moses did not literally intend for no survivors to be left.
Why should the critic take the passage in Deuteronomy literally but not the passages in Joshua? If he took the latter literally it would be easier for him to see that in context the former is using hyperbole and should not be taken literally.
Seventh, archaeology confirms the biblical record’s account of a gradual infiltration rather than a massive military assault against the Canaanites. This was a development that took more than two centuries to accomplish. This being the case, all tangible aspects of the Canaanites’ culture—buildings and homes—would have remained very much intact (cf. Deut. 6:10–11: “cities which you did not build”). Preserving such structures would have been a very sensible move if Israel was to settle down in the same region. Archaeologists have discovered that by 1000 BC (during the Iron Age), Canaanites were no longer an identifiable entity in Israel. Around this time also, Israelites were worshiping a national God, whose dominant personal name was Yahweh (“the Lord”). An additional significant change from the Late Bronze to Iron Age was that town shrines in Canaan had been abandoned but not relocated elsewhere—say, to the hill villages. This suggests that a new people with a distinct theological bent had migrated there, had gradually occupied the territory, and eventually became dominant.
Thus, the critic’s strategy of emphasizing literal Canaanite annihilation while ignoring literal Canaanite survival is simply inconsistent. —Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan
Paul Copan, Ph.D., is Professor and Pledger Family Chair of Philosophy and Ethics at Palm Beach Atlantic University and is author of Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God (Baker 2011).
Matthew Flannagan, Ph.D., has authored various articles and contributed to various books, including Set Forth Your Case (B&H Academic, forthcoming), and he and his wife Madeleine write the blog M and M, www.mandm.org.nz.
NOTES
All Scripture quotations are from the NASB unless otherwise noted.
Christian Research Institute
Our Mission: To provide Christians worldwide with carefully researched information and well-reasoned answers that encourage them in their faith and equip them to intelligently represent it to people influenced by ideas and teachings that assault or undermine orthodox, biblical Christianity.
No One Understands Chemical Evolution - Not One!
Consider what Dr. James Tour, Professor of Chemistry at Rice University, has to say about life's origins. He also teaches Computer Science, Materials Science, & Nano-Engineering. He is one of the world's leading experts in synthetic chemistry - the science of designing complex molecules. This is from a lecture at the University of Waterloo in 2016.
"Abiogenesis is the prebiotic process wherein life, such as a cell, arises from non-living simple organic compounds: carbohydrates, nuclear acids, lipids, proteins, and amino acids. All this is needed before evolution can begin. We have no idea how molecules that compose living systems could have been devised such that they would work in concert to fulfill biology's functions. We have no idea how the basic set of molecules, carbohydrates, nucleic acid, lipid, and proteins, were made and how they could have coupled in proper sequences, and then transformed into ordered assemblies until there was the construction of a complex biological system, and eventually to that first cell. Nobody has any idea on how this was done when using the know mechanisms of chemical science.Those that say that they understand are wholly uninformed regarding chemical synthesis. Those that say this is all worked out, they know nothing: nothing about chemical synthesis. Nothing!From a chemical perspective, neither I nor any of my colleagues can fathom a prebiotic molecule route to construction of a complex system. We cannot even figure out the prebiotic routes to the basic building blocks of life: carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins. Chemists are collectively bewildered. Hence, I say that no chemist understands prebiotic synthesis of the requisite building blocks, let alone assembly into a complex system. I've asked all my colleagues, National Academy members, Nobel Prize winners. I sit with them in our offices. Nobody understands this. So if your professors say, ´It's all worked out.` your teachers say, ´It's all worked out,` they don't know what they are talking about. It is not worked out. You cannot just refer this to somebody else. They don't know what they are talking about."
Wednesday, July 19, 2017
The Bible and same sex relationships: A review article
Vines, Matthew, God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same Sex Relationships, Convergent Books, 2014
Wilson, Ken, A Letter to My Congregation, David Crum Media, 2014.
The relationship of homosexuality to Christianity is one of the main topics of discussion in our culture today. In the fall of last year I wrote a review of books by Wesley Hill and Sam Allberry that take the historic Christian view, in Hill’s words: “that homosexuality was not God’s original creative intention for humanity ... and therefore that homosexual practice goes against God’s express will for all human beings, especially those who trust in Christ.”
There are a number of other books that take the opposite view, namely that the Bible either allows for or supports same sex relationships. Over the last year or so I (and other pastors at Redeemer) have been regularly asked for responses to their arguments. The two most read volumes taking this position seem to be those by Matthew Vines and Ken Wilson. The review of these two books will be longer than usual because the topic is so contested today and, while I disagree with the authors’ theses, a too-brief review can’t avoid appearing cursory and dismissive. Hence the length.
I see six basic arguments that these books and others like them make.
Knowing gay people personally.
Vines and Wilson relate stories of people who were sure that the Bible condemned homosexuality. However, they were brought to a change of mind through getting to know gay people personally. It is certainly important for Christians who are not gay to hear the hearts and stories of people who are attracted to the same sex.
And when I see people discarding their older beliefs that homosexuality is sinful after engaging with loving, wise, gay people, I’m inclined to agree that those earlier views were likely defective. In fact, they must have been essentially a form of bigotry. They could not have been based on theological or ethical principles, or on an understanding of historical biblical teaching. They must have been grounded instead on a stereotype of gay people as worse sinners than others (which is itself a shallow theology of sin.) So I say good riddance to bigotry. However, the reality of bigotry cannot itself prove that the Bible never forbids homosexuality. We have to look to the text to determine that.
Consulting historical scholarship.
Vines and Wilson claim that scholarly research into the historical background show that biblical authors were not forbidding all same sex relationships, but only exploitative ones — pederasty, prostitution, and rape. Their argument is that Paul and other biblical writers had no concept of an innate homosexual orientation, that they only knew of exploitative homosexual practices, and therefore they had no concept of mutual, loving, same-sex relationships.
These arguments were first asserted in the 1980s by John Boswell and Robin Scroggs. Vines, Wilson and others are essentially repopularizing them. However, they do not seem to be aware that the great preponderance of the best historical scholarship since the 1980s — by the full spectrum of secular, liberal and conservative researchers — has rejected that assertion. Here are two examples.
Bernadette Brooten and William Loader have presented strong evidence that homosexual orientation was known in antiquity. Aristophanes' speech in Plato's Symposium, for example, tells a story about how Zeus split the original human beings in half, creating both heterosexual and homosexual humans, each of which were seeking to be reunited to their “lost halves” — heterosexuals seeking the opposite sex and homosexuals the same sex. Whether Aristophanes believed this myth literally is not the point. It was an explanation of a phenomenon the ancients could definitely see — that some people are inherently attracted to the same sex rather than the opposite sex.
Contra Vines, et al, the ancients also knew about mutual, non-exploitative same sex relationships. In Romans 1, Paul describes homosexuality as men burning with passion “for one another” (verse 27). That is mutuality. Such a term could not represent rape, nor prostitution, nor pederasty (man/boy relationships). Paul could have used terms in Romans 1 that specifically designated those practices, but he did not. He categorically condemns all sexual relations between people of the same sex, both men and women. Paul knew about mutual same-sex relationships, and the ancients knew of homosexual orientation. Nonetheless “Nothing indicates that Paul is exempting some same-sex intercourse as acceptable.” (Loader, Making Sense of Sex, p.137).
I urge readers to familiarize themselves with this research. A good place to start is the Kindle book by William Loader Sexuality in the New Testament (2010) or his much larger The New Testament on Sexuality (2012). Loader is the most prominent expert on ancient and biblical views of sexuality, having written five large and two small volumes in his lifetime. It is worth noting that Loader himself does not personally see anything wrong with homosexual relationships; he just — rightly and definitively — proves that you can’t get the Bible itself to give them any support.
Re-categorizing same sex relations.
A third line of reasoning in these volumes and others like them involves recategorization. In the past, homosexuality was categorized by all Christian churches and theology as sin. However, many argue that homosexuality should be put in the same category as slavery and segregation. Vines writes, for example, that the Bible supported slavery and that most Christians used to believe that some form of slavery was condoned by the Bible, but we have now come to see that all slavery is wrong. Therefore, just as Christians interpreted the Bible to support segregation and slavery until times changed, so Christians should change their interpretations about homosexuality as history moves forward.
But historians such as Mark Noll (America’s God, 2005 and The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, 2006) have shown the 19th century position some people took that the Bible condoned race-based chattel slavery was highly controversial and never a consensus. Most Protestants in Canada and Britain (and many in the northern U.S. states) condemned it as being wholly against the Scripture. Rodney Stark (For the Glory of God, 2003) points out that the Catholic church also came out early against the African slave trade. David L. Chappell in his history of the Civil Rights Movement (A Stone of Hope, 2003) went further. He proves that even before the Supreme Court decisions of the mid-50s, almost no one was promoting the slender and forced biblical justifications for racial superiority and segregation. Even otherwise racist theologians and ministers could not find a basis for white supremacy in the Bible.
So we see the analogy between the church’s view of slavery and its view of homosexuality breaks down. Up until very recently, all Christian churches and theologians unanimously read the Bible as condemning homosexuality. By contrast, there was never any consensus or even a majority of churches that thought slavery and segregation were supported by the Bible. David Chappell shows that even within the segregationist South, efforts to support racial separation from the Bible collapsed within a few years. Does anyone really think that within a few years from now there will be no one willing to defend the traditional view of sexuality from biblical texts? The answer is surely no. This negates the claim that the number, strength, and clarity of those biblical texts supposedly supporting slavery and those texts condemning homosexuality are equal, and equally open to changed interpretations.
Wilson puts forward a different form of the recategorization argument when he says the issue of same-sex relations in the church is like issues of divorce and remarriage, Christian participation in war, or the use of in vitro fertilization. We can extend that list to include matters such as women’s roles in ministry and society, as well as views of baptism, charismatic gifts, and so on. These are “issues where good Christians differ.” We may believe that another Christian with a different view of divorce is seriously wrong, but we don’t say this means his or her view undermines orthodox Christian faith. Wilson, Vines, and many others argue that same-sex relations must now be put into this category. Since we see that there are sincere Christians who disagree over this, it is said, we should “agree to disagree” on this.
However history shows that same-sex relations do not belong in this category, either. Around each of the other items on Wilson’s list there are long-standing and historical divisions within the church. There have always been substantial parts of the church that came to different positions on these issues. But until very, very recently, there had been complete unanimity about homosexuality in the church across all centuries, cultures, and even across major divisions of the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant traditions. So homosexuality is categorically different. One has to ask, then, why is it the case that literally no church, theologian, or Christian thinker or movement ever thought that any kind of same sex relationships was allowable until now?
One answer to the question is an ironic one. During the Civil War, British Presbyterian biblical scholars told their southern American colleagues who supported slavery that they were reading the Scriptural texts through cultural blinders. They wanted to find evidence for their views in the Bible and voila — they found it. If no Christian reading the Bible — across diverse cultures and times — ever previously discovered support for same-sex relationships in the Bible until today, it is hard not to wonder if many now have new cultural spectacles on, having a strong predisposition to find in these texts evidence for the views they already hold.
What are those cultural spectacles? The reason that homosexual relationships make so much more sense to people today than in previous times is because they have absorbed late modern western culture’s narratives about the human life. Our society presses its members to believe “you have to be yourself,” that sexual desires are crucial to personal identity, that any curbing of strong sexual desires leads to psychological damage, and that individuals should be free to live as they alone see fit.
These narratives have been well analyzed by scholars such as Robert Bellah and Charles Taylor. They are beliefs about the nature of reality that are not self-evident to most societies and they carry no more empirical proof than any other religious beliefs. They are also filled with inconsistencies and problems. Both Vines and Wilson largely assume these cultural narratives. It is these faith assumptions about identity and freedom that make the straightforward reading of the biblical texts seem so wrong to them. They are the underlying reason for their views, but they are never identified or discussed.
Revising biblical authority.
Vines and Wilson claim that they continue to hold to a high view of biblical authority, and that they believe the Bible is completely true, but that they don’t think it teaches all same-sex relations are wrong. Vines argues that while the Levitical code forbids homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22) it also forbids eating shellfish (Leviticus 11:9-12). Yet, he says, Christians no longer regard eating shellfish as wrong — so why can’t we change our minds on homosexuality? Here Vines is rejecting the New Testament understanding that the ceremonial laws of Moses around the sacrificial system and ritual purity were fulfilled in Christ and no longer binding, but that the moral law of the Old Testament is still in force. Hebrews 10:16, for example, tells us that the Holy Spirit writes “God’s laws” on Christians’ hearts (so they are obviously still in force), even though that same book of the Bible tells us that some of those Mosaic laws — the ceremonial — are no longer in binding on us. This view has been accepted by all branches of the church since New Testament times.
When Vines refuses to accept this ancient distinction between the ceremonial and moral law, he is doing much more than simply giving us an alternative interpretation of the Old Testament — he is radically revising what biblical authority means. When he says “Christians no longer regard eating shellfish as wrong,” and then applies this to homosexuality (though assuming that Leviticus 19:18 — the Golden Rule — is still in force), he is assuming that it is Christians themselves, not the Bible, who have the right to decide which parts of the Bible are essentially now out of date. That decisively shifts the ultimate authority to define right and wrong onto the individual Christian and away from the biblical text.
The traditional view is this: Yes, there are things in the Bible that Christians no longer have to follow but, if the Scripture is our final authority, it is only the Bible itself that can tell us what those things are. The prohibitions against homosexuality are re-stated in the New Testament (Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6, 1 Timothy 1) but Jesus himself (Mark 7), as well as the rest of the New Testament, tells us that the clean laws and ceremonial code is no longer in force.
Vines asserts that he maintains a belief in biblical authority, but with arguments like this one he is actually undermining it. This represents a massive shift in historic Christian theology and life.
Being on the wrong side of history.
More explicit in Wilson’s volume than Vines' is the common argument that history is moving toward greater freedom and equality for individuals, and so refusing to accept same-sex relationships is a futile attempt to stop inevitable historical development. Wilson says that the “complex forces” of history showed Christians that they were wrong about slavery and something like that is happening now with homosexuality.
Charles Taylor, however, explains how this idea of inevitable historical progress developed out of the Enlightenment optimism about human nature and reason. It is another place where these writers seem to uncritically adopt background understandings that are foreign to the Bible. If we believe in the Bible’s authority, then shifts in public opinion should not matter. The Christian faith will always be offensive to every culture at some points.
And besides, if you read Eric Kaufmann’s Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?(2010) and follow the latest demographic research, you will know that the world is not inevitably becoming more secular. The percentage of the world’s population that are non-religious, and that put emphasis on individuals determining their own moral values, is shrinking. The more conservative religious faiths are growing very fast. No one studying these trends believes that history is moving in the direction of more secular societies.
Missing the biblical vision.
The saddest thing for me as a reader was how, in books on the Bible and sex, Vines and Wilson concentrated almost wholly on the biblical negatives, the prohibitions against homosexual practice, instead of giving sustained attention to the high, (yes) glorious Scriptural vision of sexuality. Both authors rightly say that the Bible calls for mutual loving relationships in marriage, but it points to far more than that.
In Genesis 1 you see pairs of different but complementary things made to work together: heaven and earth, sea and land, even God and humanity. It is part of the brilliance of God’s creation that diverse, unlike things are made to unite and create dynamic wholes which generate more and more life and beauty through their relationships. As N.T. Wright points out, the creation and uniting of male and female at the end of Genesis 2 is the climax of all this.
That means that male and female have unique, non-interchangeable glories — they each see and do things that the other cannot. Sex was created by God to be a way to mingle these strengths and glories within a life-long covenant of marriage. Marriage is the most intense (though not the only) place where this reunion of male and female takes place in human life. Male and female reshape, learn from, and work together.
Therefore, in one of the great ironies of late modern times, when we celebrate diversity in so many other cultural sectors, we have truncated the ultimate unity-in-diversity: inter-gendered marriage.
Without understanding this vision, the sexual prohibitions in the Bible make no sense. Homosexuality does not honor the need for this rich diversity of perspective and gendered humanity in sexual relationships. Same-sex relationships not only cannot provide this for each spouse, they can’t provide children with a deep connection to each half of humanity through a parent of each gender.
This review has been too brief to give these authors the credit they are due for maintaining a respectful and gracious tone throughout. We live in a time in which civility and love in these discussions is fast going away, and I am thankful the authors are not part of the angry, caustic flow. In this regard they are being good examples, but because I think their main points are wrong, I have had to concentrate on them as I have in this review. I hope I have done so with equal civility.
Article can be found at the following address: https://www.redeemer.com/redeemer-report/article/the_bible_and_same_sex_relationships_a_review_article
Tuesday, July 18, 2017
Monday, July 17, 2017
The Uncertain Fate of Iraq’s Largest Christian City
| By Katrin Kuntz, Der Spiegel, July 13, 2017 Before Islamic State invaded, Qaraqosh was home to Iraq’s largest Christian community. Now liberated after three years of occupation, little remains and former residents are considering whether it’s worth rebuilding in a country with an unclear future. Ayouka had a pure heart and he loved his country, the priest says as he walks across a ravaged cemetery in northern Iraq, preparing to recover the dead man’s body. The man was strangled by Islamic State (IS) fighters simply because he was a Christian, like the cleric. The priest, whose name is Roni, wears his black cassock tightly over his shoulders, his eyes are lowered and he silently climbs over what’s left of smashed crosses. Now and then, the thud of mortar shells can be heard from nearby Mosul, where Islamic State is still holding on. Our route leads past graves whose inscriptions and crosses were destroyed by IS and Father Roni steps over broken vases and a destroyed Madonna statue. The dead man is lying on the left side of the cemetery, at its outer edge. The jihadists threw him into a two-meter deep burial chamber as if he were just a piece of trash. Now Ayouka’s body has been wrapped in a felt blanket. Next to him lie the bodies of a woman and a man, which are also wrapped in gray blankets. “IS killed them because they considered them to be infidels,” says the priest, who knew them from Qaraqosh where they lived. Qaraqosh was once considered the cradle of Christianity in Iraq. Located some 35 kilometers southeast of Mosul along the Nineveh plains, 40,000 people lived here until three years ago–no other city in the country was home to so many Christians. The city was built in Mesopotamia, which is traversed by the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, and its history stretches back to biblical times. Until about eight months ago, Islamic State ruled Qaraqosh–expelling and murdering its Christians, desecrating their churches and, in the end, burning down their homes. After the Iraqi military captured the destroyed Great Mosque of al-Nuri the week before last, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi claimed that the days of Islamic State were almost over–around three years after IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed his so-called “caliphate” at the same site three years ago. It was a decisive, long yearned-for moment, even though IS has yet to be completely wiped out and still controls some Iraqi territory and a few towns. The liberated areas around Mosul will remain deserted for now–too many people fled and, so far, few have dared to return. Father Roni has made it his task to resuscitate Qaraqosh. “We have to bury the dead so life can return,” he says. The bodies of 11 murdered people lie unburied at the cemetery. Some have been here so long that their faces are no longer recognizable. On this morning, the priest has Ayouka’s body brought from the chamber so that he can be given a proper burial in a grave, where his wife stands waiting. There, the priest says a prayer for the dead, raising the palms of his hands in supplication. With Mosul liberated, the Christians of Iraq will soon be able to return to their homeland. But who will govern the region after the IS defeat? Will Christians ever feel safe here again after some of their Muslim neighbors so brutally turned against them? Qaraqosh currently looks like a ghost town. Islamic State bored some 30 tunnels beneath it, some ending in buildings while others are thought to stretch all the way to Mosul. There’s a four-meter (13-foot) deep hole in the ground near the cemetery leading to a tunnel that snakes its way for hundreds of meters through the hills. Mattresses and crumpled blankets can still be found in the dark and cool tunnels, where IS fighters slept only a short time ago. An abandoned bomb factory is located next to the exit. The greatest danger here is currently posed by the mines IS laid during its retreat. When you carefully open the door to the former city library on the rooftop of the priests’ seminary, the ashes of thousands of burned books cover the floor like snow. From up here, you can see the damage caused to the buildings by the airstrikes–the burned-out rooftops and the collapsed belfry of a church. Inside the Saint Behnam et Sara church, one of the city’s most spectacular, benches have been destroyed and charred Bibles lie on the ground. The baptismal font has been blackened by a fire set by Islamic State. The jihadists used the church’s inner courtyard for shooting practice and the bullet-riddled mannequin used as a target can be seen in the rubble. Former Qaraqosh residents only dare to return for a few hours at a time. Most come from Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region located about an hour and a half away. They come to inspect their looted homes, bringing food with them which they eat in their empty kitchens. When Father Roni went back to visit his own home, he looked through the window into his old bedroom. “I found Viagra and underwear there. The IS leaders summoned women into my bed,” he says. “Should the city be burned down before it is rebuilt, to get rid of the pain? Or would it be better to turn it into a museum?” Around half of the residents of Qaraqosh have left Iraq, with about 40 Christian families heading abroad each week to places like France, Jordan, Australia–anywhere but here, a region that doesn’t hold much of a future for them. Some 1.3 million Christians lived in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was in charge. Today that figure is believed to be only 200,000. Christians have been discriminated against and persecuted in the region for hundreds of years and they see themselves as the victims of a Muslim majority. Under Hussein’s rule, they were at least halfway safe. As a Sunni Muslim, Hussein was himself part of a minority in the country and he formally incorporated the Christians into the state apparatus as part of his efforts to consolidate power. But their situation deteriorated after the United States’ 2003 invasion of Iraq. Despite the Americans’ claims of being liberators, the chaos they created further fomented the hatred many Iraqis had for Christians. The post-invasion governments in Baghdad focused on gaining the support of the country’s Shiite majority and they no longer needed the Christians as a bargaining chip. Christians who were persecuted in Baghdad at the time fled to Qaraqosh. To speak to former residents of Qaraqosh today, one must travel to Erbil. Zarifa Bakoos, Ayouka’s 75-year-old widow, also lives here. An attractive woman with distinctive facial features, Bakoos is still dressed in black when she answers the door to her apartment. Inside, she sits in front of the TV, soap operas being the only escape she still has. Bakoos was crying as she left the cemetery that morning and wasn’t in the mood to stay and talk. She says her husband’s burial will be her last visit to Qaraqosh. “We were sleeping when the jihadists came to Qaraqosh,” Bakoos recalls. She says she and her husband woke up in August 2014 without knowing that almost all the other residents had fled. “We wondered where our neighbors were,” she says. “Soon the Muslims knocked on our door and demanded money.” IS demanded that old people either convert to Islam or pay them a jizya, a special levy. That’s the only way they could obtain protected status, dhimma, and they were told they would be killed if they refused. Zarifa Bakoos can still remember every detail from those terrible years. She describes some with complete incomprehension and others with a defiant humor. She grew up in Qaraqosh and had experienced the town as a safe Christian center in the region. A city with 12 churches that rose into the sky like stone sentinels: Tahira, MarZena, Saint Behnam et Sara. She still fondly recites their names. “They forced me to trample a Madonna figure,” she adds. “I had to spit on a cross.” Her husband soon fell ill and the jihadists picked him up and said they were taking him to the hospital. They brought Bakoos to a house where an old blind woman lived and the two would then live there together for two and a half years. Even though their door wasn’t locked, they didn’t dare go outside, living as if they were in jail. Bakoos took care of the woman and they would often talk about the times when they could still walk freely around the streets of Qaraqosh. Now they were forced to wait until an IS man would bring them something to eat and drink–their lives had basically become one long wait, for sundown and sunrise. When the Iraqi army closed in on Qaraqosh last October, the IS began setting fire to buildings and churches and Bakoo and her companion were scared to death. By that point, they had also grown very weak. It had been weeks since the IS men had brought them anything to eat. “We sat on the bed and hugged each other so that we would die together,” she says quietly. When the Iraqi soldiers entered their house, they both began crying. It was a long time before they stopped. Since then, Bakoos has been homeless. “Every few days, I sleep somewhere else,” she says. A sofa here, a bed there–the Christian community in Erbil is sticking together. They’re all familiar with the stories of expulsion and fear. The province of Nineveh, where the Christians have found refuge, is one of the most ethnically diverse in Iraq. In addition to Christians, it is also home to Yazidis, Sunni Arabs, Shiites and Kurds. As such, it is considered a test case for how the divided country might coalesce once again after the fall of Islamic State. It would cost $10 million (€9 million) to rebuild Qaraqosh, but no one knows where the money might come from. And coexistence is little more than a vision given that the forces that have fought against IS have different ideas about how the region should be governed. The Iraqi central government and the Kurds each claim equal control over Qaraqosh and other disputed territories in Nineveh, threatening to create a new conflict. But who would provide protection to the Christians if they were to decide to go back? The next morning, 50 men gather in Saint Behnam et Sara, Qaraqosh’s central church, soldiers with the Nineveh Plain Protection Units (NPU), a Christian volunteer army. Their Kalashnikovs are lying on their laps. Above them, the church’s ceiling has been blackened by the soot of the fires. The destroyed church is defenseless on the plains and these men are its only protectors. “We’re still afraid,” says the bishop. “But we want to tell IS that they have lost. We will rebuild our city again and restore life.” The bishop of Qaraqosh is also rebuilding his home here in the city, wanting to encourage others to return. One solder after the other kneels before him, pushes his weapon to the side and takes the wafer and wine of communion. The church and the militia are the only forces fighting for Qaraqosh right now but not even they can agree on what the city’s future should hold. The church doesn’t dare summon its followers back to a region where it cannot protect them and hopes to cooperate with the Kurds who have thus far provided for stability. But the NPU’s Christian soldiers are leaning more toward Baghdad. They helped liberate Qaraqosh together with the Iraqi army and have often felt patronized by the Kurdish Peshmerga. In a sparse barracks located right next to the church, around 20 young men sit down to a meal of chicken and rice in NPU quarters. “If it weren’t for us, even more Christians would have fled Iraq,” says their spokesman, Athra Kado, a self-confident 27-year-old. Given the choice, he would grant sole responsibility for the administration of the Nineveh province to his troops. NPU was formed in late 2014 and it has 500 volunteers, 70 of whom have been assigned to Qaraqosh. The unit also receives financing from the Iraqi central government while the men borrowed their weapons from the Kurds. Many don’t have any combat training. Former residents of Qaraqosh would like to see Nineveh become an autonomous region with up to eight provinces, which would in fact be permissable under the constitution. Each province would then be home to a different minority. In this scenario, Nineveh would also remain part of Iraq and subject to its constitution, while international oversight and corresponding laws would provide protection for the Christians. Such is the utopian vision. The young NPU spokesman dreams of a special protected zone in which Christians could live undisturbed by others. “We’re at a turning point,” he says. “Either we get our own protected homeland or there will soon no longer be any Assyrians here. If we don’t separate our ethnicities now, another IS will emerge in Iraq in a few years.” After the meal, Kado and his men head back out to continue guarding the destroyed churches, providing instruction to a few trash collectors as they rake up debris, and keeping watch over the entrances and exits to a city that doesn’t have anything left to steal. They have also erected a new cross before the city. |
