Click for larger viewOne of the world’s oldest Christian groups—the Assyrians—is being decimated by an Islamist crusade of intimidation and murder, and the West is silent.

Since the invasion of Iraq, Muslim militants have bombed 28 churches and murdered hundreds of Christians. Last October, Islamists beheaded a priest in Mosul in revenge for the Pope’s remarks about Islam at Regensburg. But never let it be said that jihadis do not have a sense of ironic humour: that same month they crucified a 14-year-old Christian boy in Basra.

The latest report by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that two million Iraqis have fled since the invasion, and almost a third of these are Assyrian – who are down from 1.4 million in Saddam’s Iraq to fewer than 500,000 today.

The Assyrians are one of the world’s oldest civilisations. Their empire collapsed in 612 BC after four and a half millennia of civilisation; Rome was still a village and the Angles and Saxons were a thousand years away from forming a partnership. Now, while one of the world’s oldest Christian nations faces extinction at the hands of Islamic extremists, the West does nothing.

Damian Thompson of the London Daily Telegraph notes that, although the invasion of Iraq has worsened the situation of Assyrian Christians, Saddam Hussein had already begun their ethnic cleansing from Iraq.

"Saddam destroyed over 200 of our towns and villages, but with our very limited resources, we have rebuilt hundreds of homes," says a spokesman for the Assyrian Aid Society.

Assyrian Christians, most of whom belong to the Syrian Orthodox Church, are also known as Syriacs or Chaldeans.  They worship in Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus (and by the actors in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ).

The Assyrians have been almost completely driven out of southern and central Iraq.  Those living in northern Iraq, the seat of the ancient Assyrian civilisation, are being targeted by Kurdish Muslim extremists.

h/t: Damian Thompson at Holy Smoke

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