Premonitions of Danger at Baghdad Church Held Hostage

Seven weeks before he died, Father Thaer Abdal was standing beside the gnarled stone grotto to the Virgin Mary in Sayidat al-Nejat church, an extremely worried man.

Sayidat al-Nejat means “Our Lady of Salvation,” and the young Syrian Catholic priest feared that his Baghdad congregation might soon be needing a measure of that divine salvation.

Thousands of miles away in Gainesville, Fla., the Rev. Terry Jones, was planning to burn a Koran on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Father Thaer was afraid that after a period of relative calm for his parishioners, Christians in Iraq were about to be targeted again.

The Koran-burning was canceled, but anti-Christian hatred had already been stirred by the widespread advance publicity. And whether or not the Koran burning threat contributed to what was to come, the Iraqi priest’s fears proved correct.

http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/premonitions-of-danger-at-baghdad-church-held-hostage/?partner=rss&emc=rss