My priest, Fr. Elias, sent out this article in an e-mail two days ago, and it’s been on my mind since then. (Talking about it means that there are some grim details, so let the reader be aware.)

Iraqi kidnappers who abducted a Syrian Orthodox priest three days ago left his beheaded corpse in an outlying suburb of the northern city of Mosul last night. Father Boulos Iskander, 59, was snatched off a Mosul street on Monday afternoon (October 9) while searching for car parts at local mechanic shops.

The article goes on to tell how the kidnappers asked for a large ransom and demanded that the Fr. Iskander’s church, St. Ephaim Orthodox Church, denounce the Pope’s remarks. Both these demands were met — a $40,000 ransom was paid and posters denouncing the Pope’s remarks were put up around the church. But Fr. Iskander was killed anyway. His beheaded and dismembered body was “arranged” in a district nearby, so apparently the kidnappers didn’t feel the need for any haste.

This is the Suffering Church indeed. Touchstone magazine has a regular feature called that, but it doesn’t usually touch this close to home. Well, close to my spiritual home anyway.

As I said, it’s been a few days since I first read this. I don’t get past two questions in response, which aren’t particularly deep but seem to be all I can come up with:

1. What kind of people are these? What kind of god is Allah supposed to be?I don’t feel good about this line of questioning, but this is the basic problem with terrorism as a means of reaching people. You don’t leave them any other choice but to think along primitive lines.
2. Will there be any Christians left in the Middle East? Or any Orthodox? I remember reading an article on the Orthodoxy Today Website decrying the flight of the Orthodox from the Holy Land, but do we have any right to ask them to stay? And alternatively, where would they go?

This article from the New York Times tells of the lot of the Christians living in Iraq and mentions the egress that has happened in the last few years:

Over the past three and a half years, Christians have been subjected to a steady stream of church bombings, assassinations, kidnappings and threatening letters slipped under their doors.

Estimates of the resulting Christian exodus vary from the tens of thousands to more than 100,000, with most heading for Syria, Jordan and Turkey.

The number of Christians who remain is also uncertain. The last Iraqi census, in 1987, counted 1.4 million Christians, but many left during the 1990’s when sanctions squeezed the country. Yonadam Kanna, the lone Christian member of the Iraqi Parliament, estimated the current Christian population at roughly 800,000, or about 3 percent of the population. A Chaldean Catholic auxiliary bishop, Andreos Abouna, told a British charity over the summer that there were just 600,000 Christians left, according to the Catholic News Service.

Other hunts of Orthodox Websites turned up this story on Orthodoxy Today. The story is from Religious News Today, and combines reporting of the beheading of Fr. Iskander with the concerns from the American lay leaders of the Christian Orthodox Church in the Order of St. Andrew. They believe that conditions for Orthodox Christians are getting worse:

Turkey recently confiscated 75% of the property of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, closed its seminary and requires the Turkish Prime Minister’s approval of new Ecumenical Patriarchs. Turkey also requires that Ecumenical Patriarchs be Turkish citizens while it drives the eligible population in Turkey toward extinction. Unless changed, this will result in the termination of this nearly 2,000-year-old Sacred See begun by Christ’s Apostle Andrew and spiritual head of 250 million Christians.

The terrorists seem disorganized, but opportunistic. Their actions don’t seem to show any strategy or be incredibly well-planned, but they’re so haphazard and so ruthless that I don’t know how anybody could accurately predict what they would try next.

Bottom line: If I lived in the Middle East, I’d be having to choose right now between my home (and the home of Christians from the Church’s beginning) and my life. Let’s hope we never have to make those choices, and that we can always offer those who flee a safe harbor where Muslim outrages don’t have to be endured.

Afterthought
I forgot this part. With all this on my mind, it was timely that my daily reading took me to the first chapters of Revelation where John in a vision is hearing the word that Christ has for the seven churches under John’s care:
And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write, “These things says the First and the Last, who was dead and came to life: ‘I know your works, tribulation and poverty (but you are rich); and I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death.’” (Rev. 2:8-12)

Many years to Fr. Boulos Iskander, and prayers for St. Ephraim Orthodox Church in Iraq.