I read about it early in the morning, and tipped off Pamela Geller who blogged about (and kindly gave me a hat tip) at Atlas Shrugs:
I have previously written about the plight of Iraqi Christians who are subject to a genocidal islamic campaign to completely eliminate them from their Iraqi homeland HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.
How much longer are good and decent and fine people going to take this?
7 wounded in bombing outside Baghdad church MSNBC hat tip Zilla
BAGHDAD — An Iraqi police official says seven people have been wounded by a roadside bomb outside the entrance of a Baghdad church.
The official says the blast took place Sunday just yards (meters) from the Sacred Heart Church in Baghdad's Karradah neighborhood. Shrapnel from the bomb struck the outside of the building.
Four policemen and three civilian bystanders were wounded.
Iraqi security forces are on high alert for any violence targeting Iraq's beleaguered Christian community this Easter. Iraqi Christians have faced a recent wave of violence, including an attack last year against a Baghdad church that killed 68 people.
Christians are being erased from Iraq just like the Jews were before them. Excerpt from Mission network News:
Iraq (MNN) ― More Christians have been fleeing Iraq in recent months than ever before.Have we learned nothing from history?
Carl Moeller with Open Doors USA says extremists are calling for the complete extermination of believers in the country.
"We've been calling this a 'religicide'--which is the systematic destruction and elimination of a religious group simply for being that religious group. And we see this now unfolding in a very shocking way," says Moeller.
The number of Christians in Iraq has dropped dramatically in the last few decades, dropping from 850,000 believers in 1991, to 550,000 believers in 2003, to 345,000 believers in early 2010. Now perhaps less than 250,000 Christians call Iraq home, a number which includes those who have been permanently displaced from their homes.
The loss of so many believers in just a year can be attributed in part to one significant event: "Last October 31, 60 Christians were killed in a terrorist attack by al-Qaeda-linked groups at Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad," Moeller reminds us. As a result, "We've now seen an additional perhaps up to 95,000 Christians leave the country since that attack."
At the current rate of the exodus, Iraq will not have any Christians left in three years, according to an Open Doors' field worker.
To some, it might seem outlandish to suggest that an entire religious population would be wiped out from a nation, but believers have reason to fear the threat of total extermination. "Their families are threatened. Even young children are being killed. Extremists want to eliminate Christians from Iraq," said Moeller in a recent Open Doors report.
More than that, Iraq has a history of "religicide," which most notably occurred with the country's Jewish population.
"The Jewish community in Iraq 60-70 years ago in the 1930s and 40s was thriving and vibrant," says Moeller. "Then, systematically, as our friends at the Simon Wiesenthal Center have pointed out to us, they were targeted by extremist Muslims in the region for extermination and for extinction from that community. Now I can say, categorically, there's no Jewish community that is of any size in Iraq."
If it happened with a "thriving and vibrant" religious group, fear is understandable for another consistently persecuted minority.
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