A statement from the Office of the President Bishop of the Episcopal/Anglican Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East

The Most Revd Dr Mouneer Hanna Anis, Bishop of the Episcopal/Anglican Diocese of Egypt with North Africa and the Horn of Africa and the President Bishop of the Episcopal/Anglican Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East, stated that the suffering, persecution and displacement of Iraqi Christians, especially in the Mosul area, is a disgrace to the international community which is not doing enough to rescue the people of Iraq from the terrorist attacks carried out by ISIS.

Bishop Mouneer also expressed his deep sadness for burning and looting of churches in Iraq, noting that the Chaldean Church in Iraq goes back to the first century.

He added that emptying Iraq of Christians is a great loss to the people of Iraq.

Bishop Mouneer also called upon the Iraqi government and the international community to make every effort to stop these terrorist crimes against Christians and called upon on Al Azhar Al Sherif and Muslim scholars in the Middle East to stand against the terrorist ideologies of these terrorists who have also killed innocent Muslims.

ENDS

Other statements from Anglican/Episcopalian leaders will be added below as we find or receive them:

The Bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney has issued a statement about the ongoing situation in Iraq

July 25, 2014

The Bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney, the Rt Rev Dr Robert Gillies, has issued the following statement as Senior Bishop in the Scottish Episcopal Church:

“The forced expulsion of Christians by ISIS militants in Mosul and northern Iraq is a deep tragedy not just for the individuals concerned but also removes from that part of the middle east some of the most ancient Christian communities.

“This ISIS militants are perverting to a level of extremism the peaceable teaching of the Islam they profess and within which Christians and Moslems have lived together and cooperated together for centuries. Sadly, and within our own times, Christians have behaved equally badly.

“In the same week that Christians were fleeing the northern city of Mosul in Iraq Europe was recognising the nineteenth anniversary of the massacre of some 8000 Moslems by invading (Christian) Serb forces in Srebrenica, in Bosnia Herzegovina. This too we must criticise for it was the biggest genocide Europe has seen since the Second World War.

“Ethnic cleansing is wrong on all counts. Where it brings death and injury that wrong is magnified to appalling proportions. Where it is done in the name of religion (whatever the religion might be) then those who recognise this to be a perversion of the religious belief they hold must say so. And this I do.”