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Seven weeks before he died, Father Thaer Abdal was standing beside the gnarled stone grotto to the Virgin Mary in Sayidat al-Nejat church, an extremely worried man.

Sayidat al-Nejat means “Our Lady of Salvation,” and the young Syrian Catholic priest feared that his Baghdad congregation might soon be needing a measure of that divine salvation.

Thousands of miles away in Gainesville, Fla., the Rev. Terry Jones, was planning to burn a Koran on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Father Thaer was afraid that after a period of relative calm for his parishioners, Christians in Iraq were about to be targeted again.

The Koran-burning was canceled, but anti-Christian hatred had already been stirred by the widespread advance publicity. And whether or not the Koran burning threat contributed to what was to come, the Iraqi priest’s fears proved correct.

On Sunday during a service, he was shot dead at the altar, alongside his worshipers, when gunmen burst into the church intending “to kill, kill, kill,” as one survivor recalled.

Sayidat al-Nejat is a well-known landmark in Karada, the mixed, largely middle-class district of central Baghdad, where many Christian churches are gathered together. Towering above the church is a huge modernist crucifix that dominates the local skyline. It is a beacon to the faithful and fanatics alike, shouting across the skyline, “We are here.”

Father Thaer’s name translated as “wrath,” but he was the calmest and politest of men. When a team from The New York Times pulled up outside the church in early September it was clear that everyone was preparing for the worst. Concrete bollards, razor wire and oil drums filled with cement barricaded the entrance; a mound of sand blocked the road, and a police car sat in the road outside. Much of this was a legacy from 2004, when the church was attacked by a car bomb, which killed two people, wounded 90 and damaged graves in the churchyard in an earlier outburst of deadly violence from extremists who have in the past needed no provocation to attack Christians, other religious minorities, and indeed their own co-religionists.

When the priest saw journalists start to interview locals in the street he quietly said, “Come with me,” and guided us by the arm into the “safety” of the church grounds.

Standing beneath the crucifix he said that although his congregation had “witnessed very improved security” in recent years, half his parishioners had already left the country, and he was worried that the threatened Koran-burning could prove to be as damaging to Christian-Muslim relations as the 2005 Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

“Perhaps the man who is doing this is trying to take advantage of it to become famous, or to start a war between Muslims and Christians,” Father Thaer said of Rev. Jones, whose threat had been condemned internationally and by President Obama and residents in his Florida hometown.

“I would like to send a message to the pastor who is in America; he lives in a society that protects humans and religious beliefs. Why would he want to harm Christians in Iraq? This is dangerous. He should realize that we live in cultures of various denominations, especially in Iraq.”

Muslim neighbors of the church had already asked him if he and his congregation found Koran-burning “acceptable as Christians,” Father Thaer said. “I give them an answer with all love, and I want to say that this is an unacceptable thing.”

The Islamic State of Iraq, a militant organization connected to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, took responsibility for Sunday’s attack, calling the church “the dirty den of idolatry” and saying that the fuse of a campaign against Iraqi Christians had been lit.