Leaving Iraq

"I don't like when they talk about what a pity it will be -- Iraq without Christians."
"The Middle East and Iraq will be here forever. You've [parishioners] been here for 2,000 years and persecuted for much of that time. If you are going to decide to emigrate that's your decision."
"It is no secret, we are going to lose half of our Christians. ... In the last two months, at least 10,000 families have gone."
Father Douglas Bazi, Chaldean Catholic archdiocese, Mar Elia Church, Ankawa, Irbil, Iraq

"We never thought about wanting to live overseas before this. In Qaraqosh we had a feeling of attachment to our land and our town, but now we don't have that."
Abeer Jamal, displaced Christian, Iraq

"Christians are everywhere, not just in Iraq. Everywhere you go you can find Jesus. We are connected to our religion more than our land."
Dina Yonan, Christian parishioner, Mar Elia parish

An Armenian Christian Catholic priest leads a mass for Easter Sunday celebrations at Umm al-Nour Church on April 5, 2015 in Arbil, the capital of the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq. Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images

In fact, the ancient Chaldean Christian sect that has its heritage status in Iraq long predating the advent of Islam, appears to have little choice in a Middle East roiled by sectarian hatreds and violence that spews its vitriolic threats over the existence of Christians in a geography ruled by Islam, an Islam at war with itself and with all other present -- but to finally absent itself in total from the land it knows as its own.

The reality is that people are connected to their religion, but they are also connected to their inherited genetic instinct for survival. And to survive events that have always marginalized them, and threaten now to burden them with the demand of abandoning Christianity and surrendering to Islam, or be killed, mandates that they leave entirely. Tens of thousands have left their ancestral homelands, travelling to the safety of the autonomous Kurdish north of Iraq.

They live now as persecuted refugees fleeing violent Islamism inflicting the sentence of conversion or death on them, leaving them little choice but to run for their lives, abandoning their homes and their churches. And the parishioners of Mar Elia have found refuge in Ankawa where they have attended Easter sermons in the Christian neighbourhood in the capital of the Kurdish Region, Irbil.

There were over a million Christians living in Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion that removed Saddam Hussein. Although living as a persecuted people in Iraq, a nominal protection was afforded them under the Baathist regime. With the Sunni dictator gone, the control that kept Iraq's majority Shiites and its minority tribal Sunnis apart disintegrated, and the vicious chaos of bloodletting ensued. The one million Christians are now reduced to less than half their original number.

Father Bazi, of the city's Chaldean Catholic archdiocese, has tried to persuade Iraq's Christians to remain in the country. He is in Irbil as a  refugee from Baghdad, his hometown. He had been shot in the leg by a Shiite militiaman after his church was bombed two years ago. He was kidnapped by a criminal gang for a short period, then released. And he left Baghdad.

Qaraqosh, on the Nineveh Plains, was one of a number of towns that ISIL took last summer. Since that time, 125,000 Iraqi Christians have sought refuge in Kurdistani Iraq, leaving Islamic State to desecrate their empty churches. Many of the Christians who have been routed from their homes are planning to emigrate from Iraq altogether, to find haven in some other geography of the world where their religion can be freely practised without threat.

One such man is a homesick Rames Jamal, who recalls Easter in Irbil with longing. He and his wife are considering emigrating to Germany, to join his wife's relations there. "It's really expensive, you have to go to a UNHCR camp in Jordan or Turkey first to apply for refugee status. You don't know how long you will be there for."

Armenian Christian Catholic Iraqis sing during a mass for Easter Sunday celebrations at Umm al-Nour Church on April 5, 2015 in Arbil, the capital of the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq. AFP PHOTO / SAFIN HAMED (Photo credit should read SAFIN HAMED/AFP/Getty Images)