“Other reports suggest IS has been paid to free the hostages.” Kidnapping infidels and releasing them for ransom or enslaving them, as well as killing them if that option is deemed most advantageous for the Muslims, is fully sanctioned in Islamic law: “As for the captives, the amir [ruler] has the choice of taking the most beneficial action of four possibilities: the first to put them to death by cutting their necks; the second, to enslave them and apply the laws of slavery regarding their sale and manumission; the third, to ransom them in exchange for goods or prisoners; and fourth, to show favor to them and pardon them. Allah, may he be exalted, says, ‘When you encounter those [infidels] who deny [the Truth=Islam] then strike [their] necks’ (Qur’an sura 47, verse 4)” — Abu’l-Hasan al-Mawardi, al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah (The Laws of Islamic Governance), trans. by Dr. Asadullah Yate, (London), Ta-Ha Publishers Ltd., 1996, p. 192.
I trust that these Syrian Christians will be duly shunned and ostracized by their Christian communities now. After all, in getting themselves kidnapped by the Islamic State and thus making Islam look bad, they have harmed the “dialogue.”
“ISIS frees 37 kidnapped Syrian Christians: NGO,” AFP, November 7, 2015 (thanks to Lookmann):
BEIRUT: The Islamic State group on Saturday released 37 Syrian Christians, most of them women, who were among more than 200 people kidnapped more than eight months ago, an NGO said.
The Assyrian Observatory for Human Rights said the group of freed Assyrian Christians included 27 women and 10 men, most of them elderly.
They arrived on Saturday morning in the town of Tal Tamr in the Khabur region of Hasakeh province in northeastern Syria, the group said.
The releases were confirmed by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor, which said most of those freed were from other towns elsewhere in the Khabur region.
The former hostages were among a group of 220 Assyrians captured by IS when they overran parts of the Khabur region in February.
Since then, a trickle of the prisoners have been released, with between 140 and 150 believed to still be held by IS.
The Assyrian Observatory said the releases were the result of negotiations carried out by the church, but other reports suggest IS has been paid to free the hostages….