Douglas Al-Bazi | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Douglas Joseph Shimshon Al-Bazi 1972 (age 49–50) |
| Occupation | Priest |
Douglas Joseph Shimshon Al-Bazi (or Doglas Yousef Al Bazi, born 1972 in Baghdad) is a Chaldean Catholic Church parish priest in Auckland, New Zealand, as the leader of the Chaldean Catholic congregation there. He formerly served in Baghdad, Iraq.
Al-Bazi was vicar of the St. Elia (alt: Elias) Catholic Church, and the adjacent St. Elia Catholic School in the "working class" New Baghdad neighborhood of Baghdad. [1] [2] By 2010, the school had an 82 percent Muslim enrollment, as a result of the exodus of Christians from Iraq. [1] In his autobiography, Norman Kember relates that Al-Bazi described his church as having been bombed ineffectively by unidentified anti-Christian elements and as a church where members of several denominations worshiped together. [3] According to Zenit News Agency the church was attacked twice in the year before Father Douglas was kidnapped; the Father was shot during one of the attacks.
Father Douglas fled from Baghdad, his hometown, to Erbil in 2013. [4]
In November 2006 Father Douglas was kidnapped by an Islamist group. [5] He was tortured and released nine days later. He suffered multiple injuries including two broken vertebrae from his spinal cord, and his face and knees were smashed using a hammer. [6] [1] [7] [5] An Ak-47 bullet still remains in his leg. He was released after the Chaldean Catholic Church paid $170,000 in ransom for the release of al-Bazi and Father Samy Al Raiys by their kidnappers. [6] [2] [8]
Al-Bazi is known for sheltering hundreds of Christian war refugees who escaped from the ISIL conquest expansion in August 2014 to Mar Elia Church in Erbil, Iraq where he is the parish priest, and founder and manager of a refugee camp. [6] [9] [10] [11] Father Douglas built the refugee camp in part of the church property previously furnished with benches and used as a small garden, [12] now it is a refuge for Christians fleeing persecution in ISIL-dominated regions of Iraq. Many of the refugees are from Qaraqosh. [4] The camp, which is located in the predominantly Christian Ankawa neighborhood of Erbil, boasts prefabricated housing units, a library, and an emphasis on education. [10] [13] Funding has come predominantly from Canada. [7] By November 2014, Mar Elia, which hosts about 700 refugees, was one of six churches in Erbil sheltering about 3,000 Christian families. [14]
Al-Bazi described the ethnic cleansings being carried out by ISIL in 2015 as "genocide". [15]
In September 2015, the Knights of Columbus released for national broadcast in the U.S. a television commercial featuring Father Douglas in the hope of encouraging more Americans to donate money for the relief of Christian refugees. In the commercial, al Bazi asks viewers to "pray for my people, help my people, and save my people" saying that, "genocide is the easy word for what is happening to my people." [16]
Father Al-Bazi has spoken out against the genocide of Christians by ISIL. [17]
In 2016 Fr. Al-Bazi moved to New Zealand where he became parish priest at St. Addai Chaldean Catholic Church, in Papatoetoe. He continues his political activism on behalf of Christians in the Middle East. [18]
Nineveh Governorate is a governorate in northern Iraq. It has an area of 37,323 km2 (14,410 sq mi) and an estimated population of 2,453,000 people as of 2003. Its largest city and provincial capital is Mosul, which lies across the Tigris river from the ruins of ancient Nineveh. Before 1976, it was called Mosul Province and included the present-day Dohuk Governorate. The second largest city is Tal Afar, which had an almost exclusively Turkmen population.
Bartella is a town that is located in the Nineveh Plains in northern Iraq, about 21 kilometres east of Mosul.
Qaraqosh, also known as Al-Hamdaniya or Bakhdida, is an Assyrian city in Iraq within the Nineveh Governorate, located about 32 km (20 mi) southeast of the city of Mosul and 60 km west of Erbil amid agricultural lands, close to the ruins of the ancient Assyrian cities Nimrud and Nineveh. It is connected to the main city of Mosul by two main roads. The first runs through the towns of Bartella and Karamlesh, which connects to the city of Erbil as well. The second, which was gravel until being paved in the 1990s, is direct to Mosul. All of its citizens fled to Kurdistan Region after the ISIS invasion on August 6, 2014. The town was under control of ISIS until October 19, 2016 when it was liberated as part of the Battle of Mosul after which residents have begun to return.
Iraqi Assyrians are an ethnic and linguistic minority group, indigenous to Upper Mesopotamia. Assyrians in Iraq are those Assyrians still residing in the country of Iraq, and those in the Assyrian diaspora who are of Iraqi-Assyrian heritage. They share a common history and ethnic identity, rooted in shared linguistic, cultural and religious traditions, with Assyrians in Iran, Assyrians in Turkey and Assyrians in Syria, as well as with the Assyrian diaspora.
Assyrians in Syria are an ethnic and linguistic minority that are indigenous to northeast Syria. Syrian-Assyrians are people of Assyrian descent living in Syria, and those in the Assyrian diaspora who are of Syrian-Assyrian heritage.
The Assyrian homeland or Assyria refers to areas inhabited by Assyrians. The areas that form the Assyrian homeland are parts of present-day Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria. Moreover, the area that had the greatest concentration of Assyrians in the world until recently is located in the Assyrian Triangle.
The Christians of Iraq are considered to be one of the oldest continuous Christian communities in the world. The vast majority of Iraqi Christians are indigenous Eastern Aramaic-speaking ethnic Assyrians who claim descent from ancient Assyria, and follow the Syriac Christian tradition. Some are also known by the name of their religious denomination as well as their ethnic identity, such as Chaldo-Assyrian, Chaldean Catholics or Syriac Orthodox Church. Non-Assyrian Iraqi Christians are largely Arab Christians and Armenians, and a very small minority of Kurdish, Shabaks and Iraqi Turkmen Christians. Most present-day Iraqi Christians are ethnically, linguistically, historically and genetically distinct from Kurds, Arabs, Iranians, Turks and Turcomen. Regardless of religious affiliation the Eastern Aramaic speaking Christians of Iraq and it's surrounds are one genetically homogeneous people. They identify themselves as being a separate people, of different origins and with a distinct history of their own harking back to ancient Assyria and Mesopotamia. Assyrian Christians also have communities in North Eastern Syria, South Eastern Turkey and North Western Iran as well as in the wider worldwide Assyrian diaspora.
Chaldean Catholics, also known as Chaldeans, Chaldo-Assyrians or Assyro-Chaldeans, are Assyrian adherents of the Chaldean Catholic Church, which originates from the historic Church of the East.
Assyrians in Lebanon are people of Assyrian descent living in Lebanon. It is estimated that there are approximately 30,000 Assyrians currently residing in Lebanon, primarily in Beirut and Zahlé. This number includes the descendants of Assyrian genocide survivors who fled Iraq, Turkey, and Iran between 1915-1934.
Tel Keppe is a town in Iraq. It is located in the Nineveh Governorate, less than 8 mi (13 km) northeast of Mosul. The town was majority Assyrian with a Yazidi minority until ISIS took it over, and is today mostly Sunni Arab, followed by Assyrians and Yazidis.
In the 2010 Baghdad church massacre, six suicide bomber jihadists of a group called Islamic State of Iraq attacked a Syriac Catholic church in Baghdad during Sunday evening Mass, on 31 October, 2010, and began killing the worshipers. The Islamic State of Iraq, according to Agence France-Presse news agency, was a militant umbrella group to which al-Qaeda in Iraq belongs.
The genocide of Christians by the Islamic State involves the systematic mass murder of Christian minorities, within the regions of Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Libya controlled by the Islamic terrorist group Islamic State. Persecution of Christian minorities climaxed following the Syrian civil war and later by its spillover.
Between 1 and 15 August 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) expanded territory in northern Iraq under their control. In the region north and west from Mosul, the Islamic State conquered Zumar, Sinjar, Wana, Mosul Dam, Qaraqosh, Tel Keppe, Batnaya and Kocho, and in the region south and east of Mosul the towns Bakhdida, Karamlish, Bartella and Makhmour
Deliberate destruction and theft of cultural heritage has been conducted by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria since 2014 in Iraq, Syria, and to a lesser extent in Libya. The destruction targets various places of worship under ISIL control and ancient historical artifacts. In Iraq, between the fall of Mosul in June 2014 and February 2015, ISIS had plundered and destroyed at least 28 historical religious buildings. Valuable items from some buildings were looted in order to smuggle and sell them to foreigners to finance the running of the Islamic State. By March 2019, ISIS had lost most of its territory in the Middle East.
The Timeline of the War in Iraq covers the War in Iraq, a war which erupted that lasted in Iraq from 2013 to 2017, during the first year of armed conflict.
In early 2014, the jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant captured extensive territory in Western Iraq in the Anbar campaign, while counter-offensives against it were mounted in Syria. Raqqa in Syria became its headquarters. The Wall Street Journal estimated that eight million people lived under its control in the two countries.
The persecution of Shia Muslims by the Islamic State refers to the persecution of Shia Muslims by the Islamic extremist group Islamic State (IS), which took place in Iraq and Syria.
The Islamic State carried out a genocide of Yazidis in the Sinjar area of northern Iraq in the mid-2010s. The genocide led to the expulsion, flight and effective exile of the Yazidis from their ancestral lands in Upper Mesopotamia. Thousands of Yazidi women and girls were forced into sexual slavery by ISIL, and thousands of Yazidi men were killed. Five thousand Yazidi civilians were killed during what has been called a "forced conversion campaign" carried out by ISIL in Northern Iraq. The genocide began after the withdrawal of the Kurdistan Regional Government's Peshmerga, which left the Yazidis defenseless.
Najeeb Moussa Michaeel O.P. or Najib Mikhael Moussa, born Najeeb Moussa Michaeel Yonan al Sanati al Atrash on September 9, 1955, in Mosul, Iraq, is an Iraqi Chaldean Catholic prelate. He was elected Chaldean archbishop of Mosul. Pope Francis granted him the ecclesiastica communio on December 22, 2018.
Pope Francis's visit to Iraq took place between 5 March and 8 March 2021. The visit was accorded on following an invitation of the Government of Iraq and the local Catholic Church. The visit was remembered as an attempt to mend bridges between the different faiths in Iraq. During this first ever journey to Iraq by a Pontifex, Pope Francis visited the cities of Ur, Baghdad, Najaf, Qaraqosh, Erbil and Mosul.