Everyone with an ounce of human decency will recoil at the images that invade our television screens, laptops, notebooks, tablets etc chronicling the atrocities committed by the self-proclaimed Islamic State against religious minorities, including Christians.

I write as a Christian, but I acknowledge that it is not only my own brothers and sisters in Christ who are suffering at the hands of this fundamentalist movement. Indeed anyone who is other is seemingly to be obliterated. Christians are other to the Islamic State by virtue of their baptism, which should give Christians in the west preparing to baptise children of parents with no recognisable faith food for thought. I also acknowledge that the so-called Islamic State will to many Muslims be a perversion of their faith.

I also lament the fact that my own government, with others, helped create a situation where this fundamentalist group could flourish. The UK government is not responsible of course for the choices each individual has made, but our sometimes headlong rush into military intervention has looked to like a crusade. Indeed the then British Prime Minister and president of the United States seemed to talk like people on a mission, at times like fundamentalists of a different kind.

I am saddened by our Western Christian inability to understand the history of the Christian faith, and to seemingly know nothing of the historic centres of Christianity in the Middle Eastern region. Christians, Muslims, Jews have co-existed peacefully in many countries; always sustained just by the delicate environment created by successive governments. How many of us would have heard of Mosul before the turn of this year? How many of us would have sought to understand that when our governments ensured the end of their governments, the religious bio-structure would be profoundly shaken, leading to destruction of centuries of lived out faith. There were Christians in Iraq long before Augustine came to Canterbury.

All this can should shake us and descend into a lament. That would be good, if western Christians learned afresh from others.

Practically, you can pray – but pray in an informed way: use resources offered by Christian Aid and by organisations working alongside the suffering Church. Remember to pray for those who are not Christians too. No one should be hounded because they are other.

You can make sure others are informed.

You can protest: why not write to your MP. I have written to mine, see below. Make sure you adjust it. An individual letter can have more effect than a petition.

You can challenge: why cannot the UK offer asylum to anyone fleeing from this mess? We have after all helped create it.

We cannot simply walk by on the other side. It is time that praying hands also got a little dirty

Albert Owen
House of Commons
Westminster
London SW1A 0AA

Dear Albert

It was good to meet you at St Cybi’s, Holyhead on 2 August for the First World War commemoration service. I am, I suspect like you, desperately moved by the reports coming out of Iraq, particularly concerning the alleged atrocities towards Christians and other religious minorities by the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

I am delighted that Her Majesty’s Government has sought to provide humanitarian relief to those who have fled in fear of their lives, and would ask you to convey my thanks for this to the FCO, but urge them to increase such action alongside our international partners.

I am though very saddened by reports that the government is not prepared to offer asylum to those who lives are at risk. As you are aware, the United Nations defines a refugee as someone who lives with a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”. Those fleeing for their lives or in hiding clearly come into this category.

Whilst I am willing to be corrected, there seems to have been an articulate silence from the Leader of the Opposition on the matter of the persecution of minorities in Iraq. The nations of the United Kingdom have a long tradition of generosity to those who are fleeing violence. This stems from the inherited Judaeo-Christian tradition that has shaped some of our values, but is found in the social justice of the Labour movement and shared by many people of goodwill regardless of their religious beliefs.

I would be grateful if you could press the government to do more to help and embrace those who are being forced to flee, and also encourage your own front bench team to become more vocally articulate in supporting and challenging the actions taken by the government. I look forward to hearing from you