Cruel Coronavirus Leaves Middle East Refugees in Desperate Fight for Survival
The sound of refugees clamoring over the arrival of a truck was the signal for a hungry family to come out of their tent for critical aid.
Amid the coronavirus crisis, local missionaries distributing aid had to keep their minds alert even as their hearts ached.
“No matter how much we wanted to hug them, we had to maintain the distance between us,” the ministry director said. “I have known them for a long time, but I have never seen them so desperate, because they know how cruel this disease is, and they are very afraid.”
Muslim Refugee Finds New Life in Jordan – but Relatives Do Not Approve
Traumatized from violence in northern Iraq, a Muslim woman was weak with an unknown illness after she and her young children took refuge in Jordan. She began attending a women’s Bible study and attending church services, but then she stopped after relatives visited. “She fasted in the month of Ramadan with them, fearing that she would be caught,” the ministry leader said. “She lived in terror of the discovery of her faith and of her participation in church.”
For Refugees in the Middle East, Surviving Coronavirus Especially Challenging
Countries throughout the Middle East are reeling from the novel coronavirus, with already suffering refugee populations especially vulnerable.
Syrian Mother Gives Birth amid Bombs
Nine months pregnant when ISIS soldiers began going door-to-door in search of opponents and people non-compliant with Islam, an Alawite mother was terrified and immediately fled with her family to another part of Syria.
The family made it to a hospital hours away just as Haya went into labor. She gave birth as bombs fell, but soon nurses told her that everyone had to leave the hospital.
The exhausted Haya said her temperature was dropping fast, and that she could not move.
Refugee and Daughter’s ‘Chance’ Encounter Leads to New Life
With the economy in his Middle Eastern country in tatters and his wife leaving him, Mohammad saw no hope for himself or his young daughter.
He spent most nights drinking, and his daughter was largely uncared for during the day as well, when he would look for odd jobs.
“They were very poor, and when he took out a loan, he spent it on alcohol and other nasty habits,” said a native missionary in Turkey. “Then he came to Turkey as a refugee and decided to repent of these bad habits and return to his Shiite religion.”
Suffering Syrian Refugees Face New Potential Dangers
As Aimar sat in a freezing tent in a makeshift refugee camp in southern Turkey, he recalled how his children had asked him what they had done to displease Allah.
Since fleeing his home and farm in Syria under cover of darkness four years ago, he’d worked day and night to keep his family fed, but three days without work had left them without food.
“There was no food to eat, and the kids were crying and asking, ‘Father, why is Allah not giving us food? What have we done to him?’”
Displaced Muslims in Iraq Struggle to Recover
Five years ago, a Muslim family man in northern Iraq believed Christians were misguided and that Islam was the solution to the world’s problems.
When Islamic State (ISIS) militants took over his town in the Nineveh plains, he rejoiced that Islamic law would finally be implemented.
Within a month, ISIS forces had beaten his sister and mother on the street and killed his brother.
Syrian Refugees Thought It Couldn’t Get Worse
More Syrian refugees flooding into job-scarce towns in Turkey further agitate Turks who have already derided and attacked them as Arabic-speaking trouble-makers.
Unwelcome in Turkey, Muslim refugees from terrorist-infested Idlib, Syria face the threat of officials sending them back if they are suspected of association with Islamist extremist militants and rebel fighters there.
More than eight years after war drove millions of Syrians out of their country, a cascade of geopolitical events has hit refugees in Turkey especially hard.
Christ Begins to Rule among Refugees
Refugees from Syria are so desperate for help they usually don’t see beyond their own needs, but native missionaries in Turkey recently noticed something different in them. When a native ministry’s food truck arrives at a given refugee settlement, usually the predominantly Muslim refugees from Syria crowd around it and clamor for distribution to begin. On a recent distribution, however, several Muslim women went not to the truck, but straight to the director. “I said, ‘Go around to the back of the truck, that’s where the food will come from,’” he said.
Remembering the Forgotten Millions of Syrian Refugees
Millions of Syrians remain as refugees in countries such as Turkey even though Syrian government forces have retaken large areas previously lost to rebel forces; why? Refugees living in tent camps and dilapidated apartments tell native missionaries that they have nothing to go back to but more danger. The Syrian army bombed their homes or set them on fire, and security authorities are threatening those they suspect of supporting or sympathizing with the uprising against the regime of President Assad.
