Everyone knows that what the Islamic State does is egregious and unique and unprecedented, and has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam, but those who are willing to allow their balloon to land may be interested to know that there is precedent even for this in the history of the caliphate.
The last caliphate, the Ottoman Empire, drew its most formidable warriors against Christianity from among the Christians themselves. Christian fathers were forced to appear in the town squares with their sons, the strongest and brightest of whom would be seized from their parents, converted to Islam, and trained up to be part of the Empire’s crack fighting force, the janissaries. In certain areas this practice, the devshirme, became an annual event.
“Mosul: Islamic State abducts 111 children,” Asia News, July 7, 2015:
Baghdad (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Islamic State group militants abduct 111 schoolchildren in Mosul to train as terrorists, Iraq’s Arabic news channel Al Sumaria reported.
The abducted children, mostly aged between 10 and 15 years, were moved to the IS terrorist group’s educational and military centres for brainwashing, Iraqi Kurdistan Democratic Party spokesperson Saeed Mamuzini told the TV channel.
IS terrorists also detained 78 men who protested against the abduction of their children.
Since the terrorist group captured Iraq’s second city over a year ago, it has kidnapped 1,420 Iraqi children, the Kurdish official said.
In a previous statement, he said that IS terrorists had executed 15 of its own militants after facing a defeat in Bashiqa town, northeast of Mosul, adding that they were executed by children trained by the terrorist group.
Local Iraqi government and security officials also said that IS terrorists abducted 500 children in the eastern province of Diyala and western province of al-Anbar.
mortimer says
Ah, the good old days of the Ottoman Empire! Smell the stench. ISIS, however, is taking their empire all the way back to the 7th century. Muslim young people around the world see ISIS’ depraved barbarism as exciting and exhilarating.
Radical Islamic chic is rampant among Muslim youth and police, teachers and their very parents are afraid to report it.
Angemon says
Facts never prevented muslims and their apologists from assuring everyone that Christians were a “protected class” in islamic-ruled states.
David, Thailand says
Regardless what the Islamic State do, our spineless leaders will respond with little more than cosmetic bombing raids to persuade the gullible that they are serious, and lashings of rhetoric that allow the masses to sleep easy at night.
Meanwhile, they ousted Qadaffi and ultimately gifted Libya to the Islamic State on the strength of fraudulent claims that Qadaffi intended to slaughter civilians in Benghazi, when he actually said that he would slaughter the rebels holding parts of Benghazi. Oh yes, the ‘rebels’ we were supporting, who are now part of the Islamic State.
We are being lied to through the teeth by our confused and clueless leaders supported by a cowardly media that equally fear frightening truths.
Frankly, we deserve the consequences of freely electing leaders that work openly against the interests of our future generations.
duh_swami says
‘We came, we saw, he died’…laughter…Hillary…We have all the parts for a first class TV drama, if we can come up with a real motive for the destruction they sponsored. Why did the strong man rulers, ‘have to go’, and why did the US remove them? There is more to this story than we know…
Ed says
In the times of the Ottoman Empire, they would abduct (harvest) dhimmi Christian children from their colonies, convert them to iSSlam (abuse them) and turn them into savage warriors and put them to fight and die the battles to expand the caliphate.
Westman says
Could this be called paying the jizya in kind? We took your son; feeling subdued yet?
Matthieu Baudin says
Despicable.