Will the Pope take a lesson from the history and condition of Iraq?

Pope Francis's visit to Iraq, planned last year and postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic, received wide coverage in the world press. The fact that it is the first of the foreign trips suspended for 15 months because of this pandemic period, and of course that this first trip is to a Muslim country, increases its importance even further, and its whole content and contacts, in every detail, arouse more curiosity and draw attention.

What is the meaning of visiting Iraq, which no Pope has ever visited before, in these days? What could the Pope be seeking in Iraq at such a tight time?

The Pope, who during the three-day visit met President Barham Salih at the Baghdad stop and the Shiite leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani at the Najaf stop, completed his circuit by meeting Nechirvan Barzani in Erbil as well.

Although the officially announced assessments of the trip also mention an effort to increase dialogue between Christians and Muslims, there was also the aim of giving moral support to Christians in the Middle East, particularly the Christian population in Iraq, whose numbers have greatly diminished since 2003.

This part of the matter in fact provides an ideal occasion for comparing Christians in Muslim societies with Muslims in Christian societies. It also provides a good opportunity to lay bare what has happened to the Muslim and Christian populations as a result of the attacks launched since 1991 against the Muslim Middle East, which were openly described as a "crusade" by Bush the son. Undoubtedly there are deep lessons in this comparison that the whole world should see.

For the reason for the decline of the Christian population, said to have diminished since 2003, is not Muslims but none other than the Crusader mentality that has regarded this place as a target of attack. Until the first attack in 1991 the number of Christians in Iraq reached 1.5 million, and this number is thought to have fallen to 400 thousand today. The Pope's visit probably also sees Muslims as the cause of this decline. So he sees it, and he is coming to give morale to Christians who feel threatened within a Muslim majority. In fact, no one doubts that this morale will turn into a new aggression directed against the actual majority. But before that, is not the question that should be asked how so many Christians were able to live for so long within a Muslim society?

The very reason we give this question a chance is the deep ignorance that the first question suffers from. For Muslim society has throughout history always displayed a complete "cultural-religious pluralism." We have said before that such a mosaic appearance is surprising to Europeans, and is even perceived as a weakness of Muslim culture regarding establishing dominance and creating cultural homogeneity. That this perception has even become the subject of an Orientalist sense of superiority is in fact like proclaiming one's valor while confessing one's theft. For the alternative to this mosaic society is nothing but cultural genocide, intolerance and bigotry, and this Orientalist thesis, while brazenly confessing its theft, is as if boasting of its own bigotry.

For that reason, the fact that Christians were able to survive for centuries in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, the Balkans and Anatolia is related not to Christians' being very loyal to their religion, but to the legal guarantees provided to them in Muslim society and the tolerance they encountered. Thanks to this, today the Pope can find Christians to visit in Iraq.

But we cannot imagine the opposite. For example, today a Muslim leader cannot visit and give morale to a tiny surviving Muslim community in Andalusia, where Muslims ruled for 700 years. Because all that is left of those Muslims, if anything is left, is some memories or books that were written there and could be smuggled out in their time.

Today, after the crusades that came one after another in only 30 years, it is not only the Christian population in Iraq that has diminished or changed; the Muslim population too, with all its components, has been deeply affected by this process. In particular, a serious massacre, deportation and demographic surgery has taken place against the Sunni population. Despite this, Iraq, with the elements still to be found in Iraq, Arab, Kurdish, Turkish, Shiite, Sunni, Catholic, Chaldean, Assyrian, Yazidi, Shabak, Jewish, Sabian and so on, continues to reflect all the traces of a very rich cultural diversity. Of course, until the Crusader-Western intervention of 1990, this diversity, with its cultural syntheses, formed an extremely harmonious composition that promised far more stability. Despite the blood and instability that have intervened today, it is still possible to sustain this cultural pluralism. If only others would not interfere, would not meddle and spoil it.

For precisely this reason, the Pope in fact has not much to give by coming to Iraq. But if he opens his heart a little, there is a great deal he can receive and learn.

It would also be far more beneficial for him to recommend the peace and brotherhood he would recommend to the people of this place to those closer to himself. Because the root of the problem is none other than the never-ending colonialist ambitions of those near him.