Iraqi Christians find safe haven in Jordan’s churches
Many Iraqi Christian refugees have given up on the Middle East and refuse to ever go back to Iraq, even if the Islamic State is completely annihilated.
AMMAN, Jordan — His teenage daughter being married to an Islamic State (IS) fighter, his wife being forced to convert to Islam and his sons being trained by militants in the Islamic State's children's training camps.
These are just a few images Nadjm’s imagined when he was driving from Mosul to elsewhere in northern Iraq in August 2014. Clothing, photos and other personal belongings were left behind. There was no time for packing.
"We got a call that ‘Daesh’ (the Arabic acronym for IS) was coming. In just a few hours, all Christians in our village decided to flee. People even forgot to take their passports. It was a huge mess,’’ Nadjm, 43, recalls.
He and his family members stayed in the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) region in northern Iraq for a few months. Since November 2014, he has lived with his wife and four children in the Mar Youssef Church in Amman. According to a spokesman for Caritas, around 1,000 Iraqi Christians currently live in Jordan’s churches, after they fled to northern Iraq. In the Mar Youssef Church around 18 families, 76 people in total, found shelter in the center that is usually used to celebrate Christian fests such as Christmas.
