This unfathomable brutality is predicated on the Qur’anic division of the world: “Muhammad is the apostle of Allah. Those who follow him are merciful to one another, but harsh to the unbelievers” (48:29). It would be hard to sustain an argument that these Islamic State jihadis were being too harsh to the unbelievers; the Qur’an doesn’t define the parameters of harshness.
“Wedding rings cut off fingers, bibles burned. Chaldean Catholics Remain Faithful,” Catholic Online, August 19, 2014:
LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – Your Catholic Voice Foundation is continuing in its sincere and faithful mission to save and support Chaldean Catholics displaced by the Islamic State in northern Iraq. These amazing and resilient people belong to some of the oldest Christian communities and societies on the planet. This is literally true, their Christian communities easily date to the time of the earliest apostles.
Despite their ancient, fruitful and peaceful presence – they have never fought wars against their neighbors – they have been systematically rooted out of their homes and forced to flee. Those who stayed behind have been killed in one of the world’s most shocking acts of genocide in decades.
Help these Christians who have lost everything for the faith.
For those who have fled, the stories are all identical. Upon arriving at the outskirts of Mosul and other communities, they were forced to pass through a checkpoint. All Christians were searched thoroughly before being sent into 120 degree heat of the Iraqi desert, deprived of everything.
And we mean everything.
Pockets were emptied of everything, jewelry was confiscated, even wedding rings. Rosaries were stolen for their value in gold and silver. When one woman in Mosul was unable to remove her gold wedding ring, they cut off her finger to get at it.
Bibles, some old family heirlooms treasured by those who carried them, were taken at gunpoint, tossed into piles and later burned to cries of “Allah ackbar!”
Even little children carrying their favorite toy, the only thing to pacify those who had no idea what was happening or why, had their last toy stripped from their hands and smashed or ripped as they cried in horror.
No person was spared. The elderly were stripped of medication and water was confiscated, greedily consumed by checkpoint guards, or poured into the dry earth.
“Don’t even dream of coming back,” people were warned.
Some of the unfortunate people, especially the children and the elderly, died in the trek to neighboring cities such as Irbil where safe havens were established.
All who survived arrived with absolutely nothing, and were herded into refugee camps where they could at least be fed….
Champ says
IS = devout muslims
This is true islam, folks …
Jay Boo says
IS = Islam’s Serpents
Muhammad is the lowly slimy Serpent of Satan that slithers beneath the soles of our feet.
dumbledoresarmy says
This is *exactly* what happened during the jihad genocide of the Armenian Christians (in which Greek Christians and Assyrian Christians in the same region were also targeted).
Islam: the Cult of Pure Sadism.
Allowing thugs, bullies, and sadists to do as they please with impunity – indeed with a blessing – and programming the born-neurologically-normal to *become* thugs, bullies and sadists.
somehistory says
Faith: the assured expectation of things hoped for, without seeing the immediate reality (Heb. 11:1).
At least, the savages, who will be recompensed for their errors, can not take the faith of these ones. Paul said that nothing can separate us from God’s love (Romans 8:38). Not even death.
But this is still terrible to read about and see in the eyes of the mind these poor people suffering so much with so much loss. And knowing the little ones do not understand why they are being subjected to evil.
CornHolio says
This all probably sounds “radical” and incredible to the average Westerner, who is no doubt looking for reasons for this “sectarian” behavior. It will be put down to sectarian strife, or regional conflict, or radicalized “islamist” elements. It will probably be sagely attributed to oil.
But for an explanation one needs go no further than Muhammad’s first stop, year one of the Islamic calendar – the oasis community of Yathrib/Medina. Yathrib was the original template for what ISIS is doing now. Under the flimsiest of pretexts, the big Mo took only a couple years to empty the area of its original inhabitants, and taking all their stuff.
HEY! THAT should be in the Hamas charter! It’s succinct! It’s pithy!
“Kick them out and take all their stuff”!
AnneM says
Doing what their father, the devil tells them to do.
dumbledoresarmy says
Right at the moment, there are things one can do.
Despite the general cluelessness of our governments, we must *not* give up. We must go on making noise, writing letters, phoning, emailing, pestering our elected representatives, heads of state, foreign affairs and immigration ministers: **demanding** – individually, and through organisations such as our churches – that these Iraqi (and also the Syrian) Christians be given absolute priority in our refugee/ humanitarian visa intakes. Or even that extra room be made: *specifically* for the threatened-with-genocide Iraqi Christians.
And if idiots scream that this is discrimination, then state flatly: why should we NOT “discriminate”, when it is a matter of discriminating between persecuted and persecutors, between an ancient and massively-outnumbered indigenous people (these Syriac and Chaldean Christians) who are being subjected to genocide, and those who openly identify with and share the goals of the ideologically-defined gestalt that is **carrying out the genocide**?
We can also support bodies such as Open Doors and Barnabas Fund. Barnabas *is* managing to get physical help to these poor people on the ground, in the places to which they have fled. And Barnabas is lobbying western governments.
Further: 23 August has been declared by many as a day of prayer for Iraq (specifically, focusing on the plight of the Iraqi Christians). Check around and if you are a Christian, find out whether a church near you is participating. Go along and when you chat to people before or after, try to find out how much they know about the specific Islamic reasons for the persecution of the Iraqi Christians. (Many Christians are aware of and disturbed by this persecution, without having any real understanding of the awful reality that the persecution is straight from the core of orthodox, classical, historic Islam).
Sarah L Nield says
I will never give up! Every day, I am doing something. Like writing to my MP and others in government, the Home Secretary, the Foreign Secretary, protesting on their one sided treatment of the different groups in the Middle East.
I rang the Manchester students union and challenged them on their no Israel policy, reminding them that it gross racism against all they say they stand for. It’s the holidays, but the switchboard is still active. I was assured I had been given the wrong information and everyone was welcome so long as they behaved, that is adhered to the safe zone around the union, and let everyone be. That prejudice in all forms was unacceptable. That recently, a Muslim representative on the Student Council had been warned her homophobic words were not acceptable.
I want it to be true. Of course I do! I have got rich, deep ties with the place going back almost fifty years, and would hate to have to finish over displays of anti-Semitic hate speech. So I am going to test this. I am going to go into the union I am going to wait till when the students come back and am going to be wearing a Star of David badge on my lapel and order a cup of tea from the coffee shop, and sit quietly with a book with a Star of David on the front and keep my head down and read.
Recently, I have risked legal action because I would not shut up in my campaign to end the forces of reactionary imperialism.
Because that is what they are. The forces of Islamic jihad represent everything I have been fighting against. As a proud third generation member of Labour, I have been striving against the forces of reaction, of anti-women, of anti-hate, of pro-LGBT rights, for pro-equality for years and just because the fashion has changed I will not give in.
It hurts, that my old comrades refuse to have anything more to to do with me, that I have been called an Islamophobe (screamed at from a moving car passing me on the street) by people young enough to be my grandchildren, whose only idea of struggle is what flavour sauce to have in their Starbucks coffee.
But doing the right thing has never been easy and as the Great Man himself said, You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.
The Great Man of course, being Winston Churchill, who would not suffer fools gladly and at the moment is on the cusp of being hated by the left movement for his rigid adherence to his in born policy of fairness, of defending the little chap.
dumbledoresarmy says
Bless you, Sarah.
Judi says
Good for you Sarah. Keep it up. Like yourself, I too, albeit in a smaller way, write to our “so-called” politicians, newspapers and send links where applicable. The latest is signing a petition in support of arresting George Galloway under the terror laws. Today I received an e-mail from the organiser of the petition telling me that they had received no less than 18,627 signatures and that he is now under investigation by the Crown Prosecution Service . Result!!
Bee says
Me too. Trying to do my bit and mainly writing to many church leaders, Home Secretary etc, I feel the tide is turning. We must never give up. It is comforting to know others are doing what they can,
duh_swami says
It is impossible for sinful people who shine no light to engage in a holy anything.
Now ‘that’s’ heavy…Of course you have to believe in sin to be a victim of it. And belief in sin takes many forms of denial. Muslims deny that vicious behavior is sinful, in fact what is sin to you is holy to them…Strange, but true.
PRCS says
There is a benefit to the Islamic State sending any and all “unbelievers” packing.
As the world is now being exposed, daily, to the atrocities committed in achieving that “divine” goal, the reluctance to carpet bomb those who remain into oblivion is reduced.
While I would shed a tear for the innocent Muslims who would lose their lives in such an attack–the children and women who have no say in the behavior of their “extremist”, “radical”, “radicalized” co-religionists–it has to be done.