Arabische Welten

Historical papal visit: Pope Francis is the first Catholic leader ever to visit Iraq. War and the Corona-pandemic could not stop the Catholic leader from travelling to the crises-ridden country. With his visit Pope Francis wants to encourage Iraqi Christians to stay. Whether he will succeed in his mission is doubtful.   07/03/2021 This article was translated by Syriacpress .   By  Alfred Hackensberger  Correspondent for Die Welt The papal plane from Rome landed at exactly  2pm. on Friday  at Baghdad airport. Iraqi Prime Minister Mustapha al-Kadhimi waited on the red carpet to receive Pope Francis and lead him to the VIP lounge for the official welcome ceremony. From there, the motorcade drove through the Iraqi capital. From a bulletproof BMW Pope Francis greeted the cheering people standing on the roads. First stop was the presidential palace of head of state Barham Salih. A flock of doves of peace rose to the sky. A military band was playing. Men in white ...

10/02/2021 Two recent reports with a total of some 900 pages come to a similar important conclusion: discrimination and persecution against Christians around the world is intensifying and increasing. These are the findings of last autumn’s report on religious freedom by the German federal government and the recently published “ World Persecution Index 2021 ” by international Christian aid organization Open Doors. Inside the Dark Valley This article was originally published in German on 22 January 2021 by  Die Welt . Translation by  SyriacPress By  Alfred Hackensberger, Christina zur Nedden, Marc Neller, Christian Putsch, Ibrahima Yakubu For the period October 2019 to September 2020, the NGO Open Doors counted around 5,000 documented cases in which Christians were killed because of their faith. The year before that there were 2,983 cases. Nine out of ten of these killings were in Africa. According to the World Persecution Index 2021, worldwide more than 340 million Christi...

  19/12/2020 Ten Years of Arabellion: “I was in contact with an IS fighter for a year. Then he’s dead.” It is the tenth anniversary of the start of the "Arab Spring". A seemingly distant revolution that suddenly came very close. As Islamic State (IS) terror and the refugee crisis have shown, Germany and the Middle East are much intertwined. Our reporter was always there – he saw people hope and celebrate, torture and die. This article was originally published in German by  Die Welt  on 16 December 2020. The original can be found  here . Transalted by Syriacpress  By  Alfred Hackensberger   Correspondent  for Die Welt I. How it started – Tunisia 2011 The evening airplane from Madrid to Tunis is almost empty. A Tunisian lawyer and his wife sit in business class. The couple boarded the plane a little tipsy and continued to drink during the flight. They have something to celebrate. The day before, Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali fled the co...