The Islamic State issued an ultimatum—convert, pay or die—that drove 100,000 Christians to flee their homes in hopes of survival.
Now, a priest captured and tortured by al-Qaida opens up about the reality of Christians living under what he calls the “third generation of radical Islam.”
Al-Qaida abducted Father Douglas Bazi on his way home from mass in 2006. While he was tortured during the day, he spent his evenings ministering to fellow prisoners. The eye-opening experience enabled Bazi to speak the truth of what’s happening in Iraq:
“Overnight 100,000 people escaped from Mosul and escaped from ISIS. When they arrived and took over Mosul they told the people we have three conditions according to Sharia,” Bazi tells Express. “Number one was convert. The second was to pay Jizya (Islamic taxes) and they asked for each person to pay 4,000 to 8,000 U.S. dollars. Third, they said you have to leave or you will be beheaded.”
Bazi now ministers to refugees at a churchyard in Kurdistan, but watches his parish shrink week by week as more displaced people seek asylum outside the Middle East.
“I look at their faces,” Bazi tells Chaldean News. “As a priest I am prepared for all kinds of sadness but what has happened here is hard to prepare for and to answer their many questions as to why this is happening. … No one blames God in Iraq. They blame man. What disappoints our people in Iraq is the feeling they have been forgotten.”
The Iraqi Christian plight is one Western nations largely ignore. Without intervention, Christianity in Iraq could be extinct within five years.
Meanwhile, the Islamic State makes inroads across the Middle East, particularly in Aleppo, Syria. Some believe the violence holds prophetic significance.
The brewing conflict results in atrocious violence that sickens Bazi.
“We cannot live peacefully among people who are taught to hate us for our religion,” Bazi says. “This is their belief: that we are infidels and our heads should be cut off.”
Christian and Muslim neighbors who have lived peaceably together for decades are now falling prey to the Islamic State-influenced ethnic cleaning.
Bazi told Express how one jihadi fighter forced a dentist to accept a Yazidi girl sex slave as payment for medical treatment.
In another situation, “The Muslim guy, he went to the Christian’s door and knocked and said ‘did you hear about the decree, the announcement is to leave in 24 hours by Allah’s name, and if I see you here tomorrow I’m going to kill you because I have the right to take your home’.”
Bazi says Christians won’t vocalize the genocide for fear of family members stuck under the Islamic State’s thumb.
“Anyone who says anything outside, the other members of their family inside Iraq will pay for it.”
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