Mark's Notebook


	And this is the simple truth - that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order to the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce. - Soren Kierkegaard

Where attending church at Easter is itself a test of faith

Times Online

Thursday 27 July 2006, 3:57 pm
Keywords: Katrina Hurricane Relief , News Articles

(Still catching up ... Mark)

From Daniel McGrory in Baghdad

TO REACH her church to celebrate Good Friday today, Sameera Girgis will be smuggled on to a bus at a secret location, walk through a chicane of razor wire, and submit to a body search by gunmen guarding the Evangelical Protestant Church in central Baghdad. Security teams will check even her Bible to ensure that there is no bomb inside. “In Baghdad you pray watched over by Kalashnikovs, not angels,” she says with a shrug of her shoulders.

Dr Girgis realises that she will risk her life attending services this Easter, but the 42-year-old university lecturer insists that the insurgents will not scare her away as they have thousands of her fellow Christians in Iraq.

A neighbour and university colleague from the suburb of Azamiyah, north of Baghdad, was shot dead on his doorstep three months ago for organising the clandestine Sunday ten-mile bus trips to church.

Eight months ago insurgents bombed ten churches in Baghdad and others in Mosul, killing a dozen worshippers during Sunday services.

Religious leaders say that barely half of Iraq’s 700,000 Christians, who were protected under Saddam Hussein, remain in the country as militias linked to some of the ruling parties try to impose Islam by force.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-2133517,00.html