It’s rare that you would find an American Christian with an in depth knowledge of the Koran, however due to cultural proximity, many Chaldean’s born in Iraq, have an intimate knowledge of the “other” holy book. From an outsider’s perspective you have to wonder if it’s safer to just become “American”. After years of persecution in Iraq, sometimes subtle and sometimes overt, the experience of being a minority is not new to most Chaldeans. Whether born in Iraq or in the US that status has stayed the same. What America needs to know is that 70% of the Iraqis in the US are neither Muslim nor Arab, they are Chaldeans or Assyrians who are also Christian. In their homeland over 30 churches have been bombed throughout the US/Iraq war, although this has gotten little to no coverage in the media. In Iraq, for the most part, anybody or anything Christian is associated with the west. Not only do Chaldeans share a dialect of Jesus’ native tongue, Aramaic, they form one leg of a triad of sister languages that also includes Hebrew and Arabic. Talk about deep roots. In fact, Islam, Judaism and Christianity are intricately woven from the same historical landscape. So what are we fighting for again?

-- el fin.