BAGHDAD - Christians are fleeing in droves from the southern Baghdad district of Dora after Sunni insurgents told them they would be killed unless they converted to Islam or left, according to Christian leaders and families who fled.
Sunni gunmen have been enforcing the edict with a dozen or so kidnappings, a shooting, by knocking on doors and by posting leaflets on walls - actions that have prompted hundreds of Christians to leave an area that was once home to one of Baghdad's largest Christian communities.
The exodus began three weeks ago after a fatwa, or religious edict, was issued by Sunni insurgents offering Christians a stark choice: to convert to Islam and pay an ancient Islamic tax known as "jizyah," or to depart within 24 hours and leave their property behind. If they did neither, they said, they faced death.
Iraq's minority Christian community, put at 800,000 (1) on the eve of the U.S. invasion, has already been decimated by threats, fear and intimidation over the past four years, and as many as half of Iraq's Christians (2) are now living outside the country, according to the latest report of the U.S. International Commission on Religious Freedom issued last week.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articl...ns0508-ON.html
Notes
(1) Article cuts the number of Christians (near two million in April 2003) to the half
(2) Article hides these are the LAST Christians left in Babylon now ruled by the antichrist. And where does that fit in the end times chronicle? Answer:
First Days of End Times - click #1 and read the first paragraph, in particular the last words
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...f+End+Times%22
Last Days of End Times - click #1 and read the first phrase
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22on...amaic%22&hl=en
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