"Muslims send warm Christmas message" by Reuters December 25, 2007
PARIS — More than 100 Muslim scholars have addressed warm Christmas greetings to Christians around the world, a message notable both for what it says and the fact that it was sent at all.
The greeting, sent by a group of 138 Sunni, Shiite, Sufi and other scholars who recently proposed a dialogue with Christian leaders, called for peace on Earth and thanked church leaders who have responded positively to their invitation.
Islam is a decentralized faith, with no pope or archbishop who can speak for believers as a group. Individual Muslim clerics previously have exchanged holiday greetings with Christians, but nothing on this scale has been done before.
It noted that Christmas came just after the Muslim hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice, recalling how the prophet Abraham almost sacrificed his son.The greetings began in Arabic, English and Latin (the letter's text is available on the group's website, acommonword.com.):
"Al-Salaamu Aleikum, Peace be upon you, Pax Vobiscum. God's refusal to let Abraham sacrifice his son . . . is to this day a divine warrant and a most powerful social lesson for all followers of the Abrahamic faiths, to ever do their utmost to save, uphold and treasure every human life and especially the lives of every single child. May the coming year be one in which the sanctity and dignity of human life is upheld by all. May it be a year of humble repentance before God and mutual forgiveness within and between communities."
The group, linked to an Islamic research institute headed by Jordanian Prince Ghazi bin Mohammed bin Talal, wants a serious dialogue between Christian and Muslim theologians to help bridge a gulf in understanding between the religions."
The Associated Press Tuesday, December 25, 2007
BAGHDAD: Thousands of Iraqi Christians picked their way through checkpoints and along dusty streets lined with concrete blast walls, packing churches in Baghdad on Tuesday for Christmas Mass.
Death is never far in Iraq — two separate suicide bombings north of Baghdad killed at least 34 people and wounded scores more. But the number of attacks has fallen dramatically in the past few months — the U.S. military says by 60 percent since June — and the country's small Christian community took advantage of the lower violence to turn out in numbers unthinkable a year ago.
Rasha Ghaban, one of many women at the small Church of the Holy Family in Karradah, a mainly Shiite district in downtown Baghdad where many Christians live:
"We did not celebrate last year, but this year we have security and we feel better. We hope our future will be better, God willing."
Families streamed into the church's courtyard, wrapped in heavy winter jackets to protect them from the early morning chill. Young children with neatly combed hair held their parents' hands, and women stopped by the front door to pick through a basket of small lacy headscarves, placing them over their hair before walking in.
The pews were almost full — women toward the back and on the right side of the church, the men on the left — and still more people streamed in. Outside, police armed with automatic rifles manned a checkpoint at the corner of the narrow street, searching every passing car for possible bombs.
Christians have often been the target of attacks by Islamic extremists in Iraq, forcing tens of thousands to flee. Many of those who stayed were isolated in neighborhoods protected by barricades and checkpoints. Less than 3 percent of Iraq's 26 million people are Christians — the majority Chaldean-Assyrians and Armenians, with small numbers of Roman Catholics.
A coordinated bombing campaign in 2004 targeted churches in the Iraqi capital, and anti-Christian violence also flared last September after Pope Benedict XVI made comments perceived to be against Islam.
But this year, with the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha coming just before Christmas, Iraq has been living through some of the most peaceful moments since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.
Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly, leader of the ancient Chaldean Catholic Church and Iraq's first cardinal, celebrated Mass before about 2,000 people in the Mar Eliya Church the capital's eastern New Baghdad neighborhood.
The 80-year-old Delly told the congregation:
"Iraq is a bouquet of flowers of different colors, each color represents a religion or ethnicity but all of them have the same scent."
Muslim clerics — both Sunni and Shiite — also attended the service in a sign of unity.
Shiite cleric Hadi al-Jazail told AP Television News outside the church:
"May Iraq be safe every year, and may our Christian brothers be safe every year. We came to celebrate with them and to reassure them."
William Jalal, a 39-year old father of three and a cook in one of Baghdad's social clubs, attending Mass at Mar Eliya, said this Christmas was clearly different:
"We didn't celebrate like this in the past two years as we were holding limited celebrations for relatives in an atmosphere filled with fear. Now we feel better as we see all these security forces in the streets to protect us."
Bombers still attack city markets, police or army patrols and stores, and the dead bodies of tortured kidnap victims turn up almost daily along river banks or dumped on the streets.
Venturing out in large numbers late at night in Baghdad is still unthinkable, so the capital's Christians celebrated midnight Mass in the middle of the afternoon on Christmas Eve.
Delly, speaking to The Associated Press at his guarded compound in western Baghdad on Christmas Eve, said fear still pervaded everyday life, despite the fall in violence:
"Everyone is still afraid to go out. Even small animals are afraid of the danger."
But in Irbil, a city in northern Iraq's much safer Kurdish autonomous region, thousands packed the Mar Yusef church at night for midnight Mass on Christmas Eve — unlike in Baghdad, where the service was held in the afternoon.
Sita Butrous, a 31-year-old Caldanean Christian, wore a tight teeshirt and jeans, clothes she said she could no longer wear in Baghdad:
"There's some improvement in security (in Baghdad), but I'm not reassured. Our sect doesn't have weapons to protect us, and we are a minority."
Worshipers headed to the town of Ain Kawa, near Irbil where Kurdish Christians live. Some 1,600 Arab Christian families from Baghdad and nearby regions have settled there, said the local mayor, Fahmi Sulafa.
Matti Gordese, a 40-year-old father of four originally from Baghdad:
"Here, I feel my soul is at rest. I can practise my religion without feeling that suddenly, a bomb will explode and kill you in God's house."
