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Mesopotamian Christianity
The histories of Christianity and Islam in Mesopotamia – what is today Iraq – have been intertwined for centuries. Mesopotamian Christianity has been well established in Iraq since the faith’s inception, with local communities tracing their conversion to the apostles Addai and Mari. There are legends of direct communication between Jesus and King Abgar of Adiabene, in which the king invited Jesus to be his guest and to escape persecution. Converts to Christianity in Mesopotamia were shaped early on by cultural and linguistic influences from earlier traditions in this fertile region. Linguistically, the faith was chronicled in Syriac, while vernacular Aramaic traditions were also established, contributing to the intangible folkloric heritage that still exists in this now endangered tongue. The faith was systematically nurtured in Mesopotamia, and spread successfully eastward from there to other regions including India and China, where church institutions and heritage were also established.
Islamic leaders from Arabia recognized this Christian Mesopotamian heritage as a strength, integrating it into the Abbasid Empire. This led to important contributions, including a major translation movement that rendered Greek texts preserved in Syriac into Arabic, and eventually carried them back to Europe, where the originals had been lost.
Ba’athist Iraq
This period is remembered fondly by Christians and Muslims alike. The Ba’athist regime which came to power in 1968, invoked the Christian legacy in the 1970s: although it nationalized all schools and closed private Christian and Assyrian institutions, it vowed to preserve these communities’ cultural rights and to allow them to be educated in their own languages, along with the Turkmen, in areas where these groups constituted a majority. This stance was partly a response to Assyrian activism in the Iraqi opposition, given their high concentration in the north and their involvement in the Kurdish opposition as Assyrian tribesmen, nationalists, and intellectuals seeking to democratize the country and expand their rights as native citizens.[1]
In religious matters, however, the Ba’ath regime introduced Islamic studies into the public school curriculum, though it did respond when complaints from Christian communities were raised. The government was generally secular, and its concerns lay less with Christianity as a religion than with ethnic and nationalist issues. Nevertheless, its attacks on and suppression of the Iraqi opposition – which included Christians, such as members of the Assyrian Democratic Movement (ADM) and other northern Iraqi groups – meant attacks on Assyrian livelihoods and religious heritage. Many Assyrian Christian villages were destroyed, crops burned, and ancient churches bulldozed or dynamited, in campaigns that began in the 1970s and involved transporting villagers to urban areas as part of the government’s Arabization campaigns. These culminated in the Anfal campaign of 1988, which targeted Kurds, Christians, and others residing in the northern provinces. This campaign led to a significant wave since World War I, and the Ottoman genocide against Christians – Armenians, Assyrians, Pontic Greeks – of urban displacement, humanitarian loss, and cultural and religious destruction.
After 2003: Fundamentalism and Erasure
The toppling of the Ba’ath was a happy occasion for most Iraqis, though the US occupation brought insecurity and violence. After years of continuous wars in the 1980s and early 1990s, there were renewed concerns about the country’s stability and the continuation of mayhem. The ADM was the only Christian party recognized by the United States, and was officially part of the Iraqi opposition. Its members took part in drafting the first post-Ba’ath Iraqi constitution. Though some positive constitutional outcomes were achieved, significant problems also emerged. Historic Assyrian Christian areas were constitutionally designated as contested territories – including the Nineveh Plain, as well as Sinjar and Telafar, other areas with significant minoritized communities. In the north, land loss remained a problem, as Christians who wanted to return to their lands could not do so because larger Kurdish tribes had taken over their villages.[2] Meanwhile, relations between the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the ADM cooled as the latter shifted its focus toward the political center, preferring to negotiate on behalf of the community independently rather than under the Kurdistani umbrella, given that community members lived in mixed areas.
The ADM’s slogans called for a free, democratic Iraq and the recognition of Assyrian identity – goals that were especially urgent under the Ba’ath regime, which denied the community’s identity and ran an authoritarian state that abused human rights. In post-2003 Iraq, however, sectarianism became the dominant new norm in political engagement. To counter this trend and hoping to be integrated into the police forces, the ADM disbanded its militias. While funding had certainly been an issue, some within the community would later argue that this decision had been a fatal mistake, as sectarian civil war began in Baghdad, terrorizing many Iraqis, including Christians. Without the rule of law, adequate security, or strong political representation, Christians were left unprotected. They faced attacks, abductions for ransom, killings, and threats to force them to leave their homes. Very quickly, Iraq’s Christian population of around 1.5 million declined drastically by roughly fifty percent during this period and has since continued to fall to an estimated 250,000-500,000 today. Beginning in 2007, groups like al-Qaeda also began operating in various areas, and in the Nineveh Plain political struggles intensified, due to the contested status of these historically Christian areas. Civil society organizations faced threats as well as coercive measures and incentives to align with larger political parties. Local police forces were prevented from operating in Christian towns and villages, and instead politicized militias took root. The political marginalization of the community continued in various forms, not only in party politics but also through laws that discriminated against non-Muslims.
The culmination of these issues, rooted in the post-2003 system, came in 2014. ISIS invaded northern Iraq and devastated minoritized communities, including Christians and Yezidis, targeting not only these communities themselves, but also their faith and cultural heritage. In Mosul, Christian homes were marked; people were given the option to convert or die; villages were ransacked and destroyed; religious institutions were attacked and ancient manuscripts burned.[3] This constituted the latest and most devastating wave of violence. Years later, recovery is still ongoing. Ironically, the attacks on these villages came on the same calendar day as the attacks on the Assyrians in Simele and neighboring villages in August 1933 – often described as the first major crime of the nascent Iraqi state and its army against its own citizens. Almost eighty years later, some of the underlying problems remain unresolved. It is striking that in January 2014, a few months before the ISIS attacks, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a statement announcing the creation of three new provinces – one of which, Halabja, was established that spring as the fourth province in the Kurdistan region, while the Nineveh Plain was also proposed to be a province, but no decision has yet been made. Instead, the contested status of the Nineveh Plain attracts Iranian-backed militias, notably through the Badr Brigade, which have sought to capture the Christian quotas – five legislative seats reserved for the Christians– and terrorize the community. The contested territory falls within what some have called the ‘Shi’a crescent’, linking Iran to the Levant. Militias still provide so-called security, and politicians associated with them and with Iran continue to capture the Christian quota vote, as well as local appointments.[4]
The Region Today
For Iraq’s Assyrian Christians, the Nineveh Plain carry deep significance: situated near ancient Nineveh, it is home to some of the oldest Syriac Christian monasteries and church centers and has long been a heartland of the community’s cultural and linguistic renewal. The creation of a Nineveh Plain province, east and northeast of Mosul city in the Nineveh Governorate or at least a robust local administration, which would include the districts of Tel-Kaif, Shaykhan and Hamdaniya, would help ensure that local issues were handled by the communities who live there: Christians, Yezidis and Shabaks. Though no official census exists, a quarter million or so inhabitants in these districts would benefit from improved education, health, and civil services that are among the most pressing needs. Additionally, the region needs the allocation of dedicated budgets that can actually be spent in rural communities, which were largely ignored by the government before 2003. The provision of business opportunities that enable young people to stay and contribute to rebuilding their communities would help Iraq’s minoritized communities remain and prosper. It is also crucial to reserve the quota system for minorities alone, as it was originally intended. Today however, the quota vote is open to all Iraqis, and political parties seeking to gain additional seats promote candidates from within the communities for which the quota was designed who do not genuinely represent those minorities, but are nonetheless assured victory when the parties mobilize their wider voter base for them. Iraqi leaders I met with in October 2025 in Baghdad – in meetings organized by the Iraqi Group for Foreign Affairs – recognized the problems with the quota system and agreed that it needs to be corrected before the next election.
There are other legal provisions that discriminate against Christians and other non-Muslims. Article 2 of the Iraqi Constitution stipulates that Islam is the religion of the state and a foundational source of law, but it also guarantees the rights of Christians, Yazidis, and Mandean Sabeans.[5] Complications can arise when provisions intended to protect minorities are interpreted as contradicting Islamic principles, which is not permissible under Article 2 and therefore results in discrimination against non-Muslims. Most concerning is the National Card Law of 2016.[6] Article 26 of this law allows only non-Muslims to change their religion, and automatically changes the registration of minor children when a parent converts to Islam. In a few highlighted cases, when a Christian parent remarried and the new spouse was Muslim, the children of the original Christian couple, now divorced, were automatically registered as Muslims following the new Muslim step-parent. The children had their personal status and IDs reissued as well.
Moving on to issues that are economic yet deeply significant at a personal level, Article 14 of the Municipal Revenues Law prohibits the consumption and sale of alcohol.[7] The law has affected between 150,000 and 200,000 workers in sectors linked to the sale of alcohol – mostly non-Muslims from the Christian community, but also Yazidis and Mandeans – resulting in millions of dollars of economic losses each month, with fines for violations ranging between ten and twenty-five million dinars. This law was passed in 2016, but was only put into practice in 2023, when conservatives held a majority in the Iraqi parliament.[8]
Preserving Iraq’s rich multi-religious heritage will help ensure that narratives of coexistence and pluralism endure and combat discrimination. The University of Dayton hosts a project with by local partners in Iraq to document the intangible and textual heritage of both Yazidi and Christian communities.[9] Much of the oral tradition is conveyed in ancient languages and dialects—particularly the endangered Neo-Aramaic dialects spoken by Christians as well as the Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish used by Yazidis. These memories and narratives are vital not only to minoritized communities but also to the broader pluralistic history of northern Iraq and the country as a whole. Strengthening the protection of cultural heritage, while linking it to education and curriculum reform, will not only help to preserve the past, but also provide a lodestar in the future.
Dr. Alda Benjamen is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Dayton specializing in the modern Middle East. She is the author of Assyrians in Modern Iraq: Negotiating Political and Cultural Space (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and directs cultural heritage preservation projects focused on religious minorities in Iraq.
[1] Alda Benjamen, Assyrians in Modern Iraq: Negotiating Political and Cultural Space (Cambridge University Press: 2022).
[2] https://www.uscirf.gov/sites/default/files/USCIRF%20Testimony%20Benjamen.pdf
[3] Benjamen, Alda. “Interview with Archbishop Najeeb Michaeel of Mosul and Aqra of the Chaldean Church1.” Journal of contemporary Iraq & the Arab world (Online) 14, no. 1 (2020): 149–152.
[4] On militias see Benjamen, Alda. “A Century of Changing Perceptions of ‘Christian Militias’ in Iraq.” The Middle East journal 77, no. 3 (2024): 392–414. Note that in the recent Iraqi elections held on November 11, 2025, the Babylon Brigade lost some ground but still retained its parliamentary seats in Nineveh and Baghdad. The final results were still pending at the time of publication.
[5] https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Iraq_2005#s13; https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Iraq_2005#s21
[6] https://www.refworld.org/legal/legislation/natlegbod/2016/en/124167
[7] Iraqi Official Gazette Department, Translation Section, Official Gazette of Iraqi Issue No. (4708) 2023
https://moj.gov.iq/upload/pdf/قانون%20واردات%20البلديات%20-%20Copy_704.pdf
[8] The March 2023 law comes into effect though passed but tabled in 2016.
2016 ban on alcohol: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37743180; “Minorities see Iraq’s alcohol prohibition push as ‘violating right’” https://thearabweekly.com/minorities-see-iraqs-alcohol-prohibition-push-violating-right
[9] https://theconversation.com/islamic-states-genocide-was-not-limited-to-killing-and-enslaving-yazidis-christians-and-other-communities-it-also-erased-their-heritage-234352?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=bylinetwitterbutton
