As the protests in Iraq continue, Christians, once enthusiastic backers, are starting to move on.
Samuel, with Redemptive Stories, says “Part of it is we have seen change occur in relationship to the prime minister in Iraq . . .I think that the church is seeing good things occur, and they want to just still be able to be effective at those good things.”
Christians in Iraq couldn’t do many things while the government was unstable, but now things are shifting, they want to get back to the work of building Christ’s kingdom.
“For instance,” Samuel says, “we’ve had the various projects that we’ve been trying to do with some church partners there, but they always hit this roadblock of ‘Okay, well, we can’t do anything until the government gets settled.’ So there’s kind of this desire to bring some semblance of order back to society.”
The protesters, Samuel says, are mostly 18-25-year-old men, often college students or graduates, who are frustrated with the lack of opportunity in their country.
“It’s kind of like Occupy Baghdad,” Samuel says. “They just sit there and they continue to sit there because they don’t believe in the parliamentary system that is governing their country currently.”
After months of negotiating, Iraq finally has elected a new prime minister, but the protestors see him as part of the problem-creating establishment. “And so, the protesters of Occupy Baghdad feel like this is just going to continue to propagate the same system that was there before and that they will continue to have strong ties to Iran. They will continue to not be able to provide jobs, not look to the West in order to bring in companies.”
SOURCE: Mission Network News, Kevin Zeller
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