Whats the status of the Christian community in Iraq now?
It’s a complicated picture. I think there’s a lot of fear and anxiety among Iraqi Christians. There’s a fear that government is being increasingly identified along religious lines, that the government has kind of an Islamist cast, and that there’s not a place for them. I think you have seen some migration out of the country of people who have means to do so. I don’t want to overstate this. I want to be very careful how I say this, but I think among some Christians there is maybe a sense that Saddam was a brake against Islamist ambitions in the country and that there is not necessarily a brake on those ambitions anymore. In a country that increasingly has an Islamist cast to it, there’s not a place for them, necessarily. So I think you’re seeing a sense of marginalization, a fear of what’s ahead, that maybe the community itself should probably stay reclusive, that they shouldn’t play too big a role, not expose itself. At the same time, there is political organizing going on. There are C
