Click here to view the embedded video.

Um Kulthum, a very famous Egyptian, Arab singer who drew the hearts of her audiences, in my opinion, the best singer in Egyptian history.

“Thirty years after her death, Kolthoum still outsells many popular Egyptian artists. Take that, Elvis!” (negrophonic 8).

What do you guys think or know about her?

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It’s an 8 minute news video, if you have time, please watch it!

(AINA) — A string of demonstrations have been witnessed around the world this summer. The common denominator has been the persecution of the Christian Assyrians (also called Chaldeans and Syriacs) in Iraq.

Thousands of Assyrians, inspired by the first demonstration by the community in the Swedish capital in May, have taken to the streets since then.

Demonstrations have been held in Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Florida, Chicago, Canada, Australia, Sweden and France. In some countries Assyrian communities have arranged more than one demonstration.

The demonstrators from the different continents and countries have been united in one voice calling for the protection of Iraq’s indigenous population, the Christian Assyrians.

Recent reports make visible an ethno-religious cleansing campaign against Iraq’s third largest minority which is at the same time the only Christian minority.

Several districts of Baghdad have already been emptied of their Christian residents after attacks on churches, kidnappings, forced conversions to Islam, imposition of Islamic taxes on non-Muslims and forced hijab dress for Christian women.

The pattern of this ethno-religious cleansing in Baghdad is feared to be repeated in northern Iraq if nothing is done to protect the hundreds of thousands of Christian Assyrians living there on ancestral lands that once constituted the heartland of the Assyrian Empire.

A solution in form of a legal administrative area in the Nineveh plains in northern Iraq is currently being considered to halt the exodus of the Christian Assyrians from Iraq.

The current Iraqi constitution allows for the formation of administrative areas and if it becomes real, the Nineveh plains administrative area would become the first of its kind in an Iraq still spiralling into chaos.

Already inhabited by different vulnerable minorities, both Christian and non Christian, the Nineveh plain administrative area could be the life buoy that will allow Iraq to keep its minorities alive through these difficult times.

The Nineveh plains administrative area would give the minorities living there tools to protect themselves from forced conversions, kidnappings, Islamic taxes and what could be described as a civil war in Iraq.

By Afram Barryakoub

Welcome to The Religion Report.

Stephen Crittenden: The plight of Christian minorities in the Islamic Middle East is one of the 20th century tragedies to which we pay least attention.

From the Copts in Egypt, to the Maronites, the Melkites in Lebanon, Orthodox and Chaldeans, the Christian population of the Middle East is a fraction of what it was, and more vulnerable than ever. Nowhere is the situation worse at the moment than in Iraq. And few groups are more vulnerable than the ancient Assyrian Christian community. In fact, this week the Italian journalist Sandro Magister, has warned of the end of Christianity in Iraq.

In early May in a heavily Christian suburb of Baghdad, a Sunni extremist group began broadcasting a fatwah over the loudspeakers of the neighbourhood mosque: the Assyrian Christian community had to convert to Islam or leave, or die. Their Muslim neighbours were to seize their property.

The men were told they had to pay the gizya – the protection money Jews and Christians traditionally had to pay to their Muslim overlords – and families were told they could only stay if they married one of their daughters to a Muslim.

More than 300 Assyrian families have fled, mostly to the north into the Kurdish region of Iraq where they are not welcome either They are sleeping in cemeteries, they have no food, more than 30 of their churches have been bombed, their children are being kidnapped and murdered.

According to the statement that was posted on city streets, the Islamic group threatened as well all Christians living in Mosul to leave the city within three days or the group will behead any Christian who will remain in the city.

The Islamic Emirate of Mosul had killed four Christians living in the al-Sa’aa and al-Yarmook quarters of the right littoral of the city; after they were kidnapped their bodies were found in the Wadi ‘Aaqab cemetery. The group had killed as well two Christians who arrived from Hamdaniya District to Mosul where they worked. The said group murdered another female Christian employee of the Iraqi Central Bank in Mosul.