At the same time as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has organized a mass rally for his State of Law coalition, where bands of men carrying Shi’a religious flags chant his name in a stadium, I go to mass at the Virgin Mary Chaldean Church in Karradah, East Baghdad.
The last time I was here, in the wake of the invasion, there were more people at mass. But a few months later, extremist groups began fire-bombing churches. The priest tells me that he has since lost half his congregation to emigration. He is very concerned about the recent killings of Christians in Mosul.1 He grew up and attended seminary there. ‘I remember it well,’ he says. ‘There was no problem between Christians and Muslims then. We lived together in peace.’ But that was before post-invasion violence, mainly perpetrated by newly empowered extremist Muslim militias, drove out most of Iraq’s Christian community, many of whom can trace their ancestry back to Babylon.
