(SHNS) Terry Mattingly: Vicar of Baghdad visits the Holocaust Museum

There are at least three levels of violence. The first demonstrates mere power and greed, with mobs and soldiers driving people out of their homes and businesses and into the streams of refugees. According to United Nations estimates, at least 1 million Iraqis have been displaced during the past four months.

The second level of everyday violence, she said bluntly, is “just shooting people.”

On the third level, people move beyond deadly violence into unbelievable acts of terror. A Muslim who fled the fighting, said Ahmed, told her one story about what happened to some Iraqi men who could not flee fast enough. The Islamic State soldiers “lay them on the ground, after shooting them,” and then rolled over the bodies with a tractor in “front of their families, just to devastate them.”

[Andrew] White said those who survive are left haunted by what they have seen and, in some cases, what they themselves have done.

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Posted in * Anglican - Episcopal, * Culture-Watch, * Economics, Politics, * International News & Commentary, * Religion News & Commentary, Inter-Faith Relations, Iraq, Judaism, Middle East, Other Faiths, Religion & Culture, Terrorism, Violence