Iraq: living under the Islamic State

When a new school year began in Iraq this month, children from Mosul reportedly returned to a new curriculum created by the jihadist group, Islamic State (IS), which captured the city in June.

Everything has changed for schoolchildren, even simple things like calling the country the Republic of Iraq has changed – it’s now the Islamic State.

So all of these things have changed dramatically – the curriculum, the subjects children learn, everything. Physics, mathematics, lots of subjects have been dropped. Even singing and sport, all of this has been stopped.

Life is very difficult with failing infrastructure and diminishing resources for people each day.  There is no freedom – the Islamic State has forced the niqab [a veil for the face that leaves the area around the eyes clear] on us. You cannot go out as a woman without a “protector” – a husband, a father or a brother.

Many people describe living without any sense of a future under this new regime. They live in fear, changing rules mean they have little understanding of what is now expected or required of them.

Cry out for the mercy of God in these days; for the witness of the Church globally as it stands together for the name of the Lord; for evil to be stopped and God to be glorified even in these most difficult times.

Source: BBC news.