Your Egypt

kamar · Joined: 24 Apr 2004 Posts: 10597

The Sabian Mandaeans - one of the oldest religious groups in the world - are facing extinction, according to its leaders.

They claim that Islamic extremists in Iraq are trying to wipe them out through forced conversions, rape and murder.

The Mandaeans are pacifists, followers of Adam, Noah and John the Baptist.

They have lived in what is now Iraq since before Islam and Christianity.

More than 80% have been forced to flee the country and now live as refugees in Syria and Jordan.

Even there they do not feel safe - but they say western governments are unwilling to take them in.

Victim voices

There are thought to be fewer than 70,000 of the Sabian Mandaeans spread across the world - only 5,000 are left in Iraq.

Nine-year-old Selwan likes watching cartoons and playing football.

But he is too scared to leave his flat. The other children tease him.

He has burns all down the side of his face and on 20% of his body.

He was kidnapped by Islamic militants who forced him to jump into a bonfire - because he is Mandaean.

Now his family lives in a tiny flat in a slum in Damascus.

I meet Luay. He is too scared to be identified and does not want to use his full name.

He was dragged off the street by armed men and forcibly circumcised - a practice not allowed in the Mandaean religion.

He is 19 and is now unlikely ever to find a bride from his own faith.

Worse, he was forcibly converted. That means in the eyes of those same extremists if he now declares himself Mandaean he is apostate.

That makes him a traitor to Islam, who may be murdered. He says he will not be safe in any Muslim country.

'Convert or die'

Then there is Enhar, raped by a gang of masked men in front of her husband - because she would not wear a veil.
Mazen used to be a prosperous jeweller. Now he lives in a cramped flat, with his wife and children. Water drips through the ceiling.

His legs are peppered with machine-gun wounds, he can barely walk.

Shoaki wears a Manchester United hat and shows me the scars where a gang beat and cut him with a knife - he watched his brother murdered in front of him.

Mandaean elders use words like annihilation and genocide - they believe Islamic militants, both Sunni and Shia, offer them two choices - convert or die.

"Some will not consider us people of the book... they see us as unbelievers, as a result our killing is allowed," says Kanzfra Sattar, one of only five Mandaean bishops left worldwide.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6412453.stm

kamar · Joined: 24 Apr 2004 Posts: 10597

What do you think about ?

Louise · Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 102

I think this is a terrible facet of Islam. I think that, if God existed, none of this would happen. I think that radical Islam is a serious threat to humanity and to civilization.

You did ask me.

kamar · Joined: 24 Apr 2004 Posts: 10597

I agree in what you told Louise.

SeaBird · Joined: 12 Jan 2006 Posts: 696 Location: Alexandrea, EGYPT

Hi Kamar
Please, be careful with the news-reports.
A week ago, I read in our newspapers that the Iraqi Refugees have become 3.8 Millions, 150,000 of them are in Egypt. This morning Ahram reports the number reaching 8 EIGHT Million Iraqi Refugees! So, I doubt the precision of these 2 counts, but I only trust that the number of Iraqi Refugees due to the American Occupation is counted in Millions. How many, precisely, they should be? I can't tell.
So, when Iraq as a country faced its preplanned fragmentation, every sect of the Iraqi society has been suffering, has losses, has tragedies, Moslems and also NonMoslems,
so don't rush to what the reporting is designed to,
Islam as a Faith has been in Iraq since 1400 year,
as long as any of the Non Moslems were still living and prospering in Iraq before the current American Occupation, so blame the Americans for the Misery of whoever suffering or turning into a Refugee inside or outside Iraq, and as you see the Moslem Syria is hosting those nonMoslem Iraqi refugees.
Question: Are there Moslem Iraqi girls/women who aren't wearing a viel?
Ans: Plenty, if not the majority in the big cities.
So, this report is written on purpose to show Islam as an ugly faith.

RoughShod · Joined: 02 Sep 2004 Posts: 2109 Location: South Africa

preplanned fragmentation??????????..please. what an excuse for a country in the terminal grip of a dictator

Get rid of the dictator, and open a pandoras box of vexation that should be dealt with I say

Explorer the eighth · Joined: 01 Oct 2005 Posts: 818 Location: England

The Mandeans would have still been alright in Iraq if the western axis hadn't gone blundering in there after the oil. That is why we have a duty to take many of them in to live in our countries as refugees.

Louise · Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 102

Explorer the eighth wrote: The Mandeans would have still been alright in Iraq if the western axis hadn't gone blundering in there after the oil. That is why we have a duty to take many of them in to live in our countries as refugees.

Speak for yourself, please. Taking them into our countries will open the doors to social problems, potential terror (how will you separate the terrorists from the honest people?) and economic problems, as well.