Black Banners of Isis by David J. Wasserstein

Author:David J. Wasserstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press

CHAPTER SIX

Christians and Jews and …

THE PICTURE SAYS IT all: atop what looks like the entrance to a monastery or a church, an IS fighter with a rifle over his back carries a black banner of IS flaunting the IS slogan “La ilaha illa Allah, Muhammad rasul Allah” (There is no god but God, Muhammad is the Messenger of God), as he works intently to topple a large cross. Its tilt testifies to the success of his efforts and the imminence of collapse. The flag flutters higher, just a little higher, than the topmost point of the falling cross. The photo is weirdly reminiscent of those sculpted representations in medieval churches showing the church and the synagogue as two maidens. The church stands erect, eyes to the front, wearing a crown and carrying a staff with a cross on top; the church triumphant. The synagogue is motionless, often blindfolded, her head bent to one side, carrying a broken lance to remind us of the lance that pierced the Christ’s side. The symbolism is clear—Christ has won, the old dispensation of the synagogue has been defeated. In the present case, the imagery is just as clear: the cross is coming down as the banner of Allah rises on high. Islam has won, Christianity has lost.1

Mosul

It is not clear what institution the cross and arch belong to. The news stories that carry the picture, from July 2014, refer generally to a church in Mosul. The media tell us routinely, and apparently basing themselves on a single source, of forty-five Christian institutions in that city (churches, monasteries, cemeteries, and so on) belonging to various ancient and, to Western ears, exotic Christian sects taken over, destroyed or converted to IS purposes—a church turned into an arms depot, or a cemetery whose graves have been defiled and its tombs overturned.2 The fall of Mosul to IS forces in the summer of 2014 unleashed an assault on Christianity in northern Iraq wide in scope and damaging to the very existence of Christianity there. In the words of Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, “because of [IS] the Christians face elimination in the very region in which Christian faith began.”3

Mosul has had a Christian community since early times. Christianity spread east as well as west from the Holy Land, reaching the town of Nineveh, close to the site of what became Mosul, by the second century. A shrine of Jonah adorned the city, recalling his visit there and his prediction that Nineveh would be overthrown; and Saint George, he of the dragon, and the patron saint of England, is said to be buried here too. The choice of location for his grave points to the city’s importance in Christian tradition. Later on, in the ninth century—long after the Islamic conquest—the area was still home to Christian writers of importance such as Ishodad of Merv and Moses bar Kepha, both of whom wrote extensive biblical commentaries in Syriac.4

By modern times, Islam had sunk deep roots in the region.

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