Iraqi Patriarch Emmanuel Delly takes on the American evangelical missionaries

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On BosnewsLife

Mis­sion­ar­ies said Thurs­day, May 26, that Iraq’s churches “con­tinue to grow” despite reports of an exo­dus of Chris­tians and blood­shed, which already killed about 620 peo­ple this month.

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If you think “Jeho­vah Wit­nesses” are irri­tat­ing, Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal mis­sion­ar­ies can be much worst. The head of Iraq’s Chris­t­ian com­mu­nity has denounced Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal mis­sion­ar­ies in his coun­try for what he said were attempts to con­vert poor Mus­lims by flash­ing money and smart cars.

Patri­arch Emmanuel Delly, head of the Chaldean Catholic Church, said a week ago that many Protes­tant activists had come to Iraq after the over­throw of Sad­dam Hus­sein in 2003 and set up what he called “bou­tiques” to attract converts.

Delly said Iraq did not need mis­sion­ar­ies as its Chris­t­ian churches dated back long before Protes­tantism. As for try­ing to con­vert Mus­lims, he said: “You can’t even talk about that here.“

Chris­tians make up 3% of Iraq’s 26 mil­lion mostly Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion, the largest group being the 600,000 Chaldeans who are East­ern rite Catholics linked to the Vatican.

Say­ing the evan­gel­i­cals were not real mis­sion­ar­ies, Delly said they attracted poor youths with dis­plays of money and tak­ing them “out rid­ing in cars to have fun”.

“Then they take pho­tos and send them here, to Ger­many, to the United States and say ‘look how many Mus­lims have become Chris­t­ian’,” he said.

The patri­arch declined to say if the mis­sion­ar­ies were a chal­lenge for his church or if US author­i­ties sup­ported them.

The idea of con­vert­ing Mus­lims has gained some sup­port among US evan­gel­i­cals since the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks, but for­eign­ers who evan­ge­lise in Islamic coun­tries must keep very low profiles.

Some were active in Iraq in the first year after Sad­dam Hussein’s over­throw, but dete­ri­o­rat­ing secu­rity since then prob­a­bly means many have left, Bagh­dad res­i­dents say.

Many Mus­lim coun­tries con­sider Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies as part of a West­ern cam­paign against Islam and pun­ish both the preacher and the apos­tate Mus­lim severely. Unnamed Iraqi groups killed at least five evan­gel­i­cal mis­sion­ar­ies last year.

Delly had no over­all fig­ures for these mis­sions but said he knew of 14 evan­gel­i­cal houses in one cen­tral Bagh­dad neigh­bour­hood alone.

“I don’t know where their money comes from,” he added.

The patri­arch, who vig­or­ously opposed the US-led inva­sion of Iraq and met French Pres­i­dent Jacques Chirac — who also opposed it — on Wednes­day, declined to com­ment on Washington’s pol­icy there or whether he had con­tacts with US authorities.

“Frankly, I try to avoid meet­ing them as much as pos­si­ble,” he said. “They are the occu­piers. The occu­pied don’t want to be occu­pied. That’s human nature.”

‘Iraq’s Con­sti­tu­tion should Not only Be Based on Quran’

Also the patri­arch said Thurs­day that Iraq’s future con­sti­tu­tion should not solely be based on the Quran, despite the country’s over­whelm­ing Mus­lim majority.

“Ninety-five per­cent of the Iraqi peo­ple are Mus­lims. The gov­ern­ment should be Islamic but the Quran can­not be the sole source for the con­sti­tu­tion,” Delly told a press con­fer­ence in Paris.

Delly said he had dis­cussed Iraq’s future con­sti­tu­tion with the Shi­ite cleric in the coun­try, Grand Aya­tol­lah Ali Sis­tani, not men­tion­ing the Sunni clerics.

The Chaldean patri­arch said Sis­tani had told him he “did not want a gov­ern­ment that was only for Shi­ites or Mus­lims in gen­eral”, adding that new Prime Min­is­ter Ibrahim Jaa­fari “says the same thing”.

Iraq’s par­lia­ment has just set up a com­mit­tee to draft the con­sti­tu­tion by a dead­line of August 15.

The con­sti­tu­tion must “offer reli­gious free­dom to all in Iraq, but also per­sonal lib­er­ties,” Delly said.

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