Surely these churches have nothing to worry about if they don’t have any clergy or parishioners who have drawn Muhammad, stood up for the freedom of speech, or otherwise provoked the poor dears and poked them in the eye, right? Surely the churches that have pursued “dialogue” with Muslims even at the cost of remaining silent about the Muslim persecution of Christians and abandoning those Christians to their fate have nothing to worry about, do they? The Islamic State will surely see how accommodating they have been and spare them, won’t it? Surely the Islamic State will go easy on the cowards and appeasers, no?
No.
“Exclusive: ISIS Puts Out Holiday Attack List Of U.S. Churches,” by Gilad Shiloach, Vocativ, December 22, 2016:
The Islamic State published the names and addresses of thousands of churches in the United States and called on its adherents to attack them during the holiday season, according to a message posted late-night Wednesday in the group’s “Secrets of Jihadis” social media group.
A user going by the name of “Abu Marya al-Iraqi” posted an Arabic-language message calling “for bloody celebrations in the Christian New Year” and announced the group’s plans to utilize its network of lone wolf attackers to “turn the Christian New Year into a bloody horror movie.”
The series of messages appeared in a pro-ISIS group on Telegram, which also provides manuals for the use and preparations of weapons and explosives for aspiring assailants. The information, distributed in a number of posts, was all previously available online and includes a public directory of churches across all 50 states. (Vocativ does not publish specific information found in lists like these.)
In another group post, a member summoned “the sons of Islam” to target “churches, well-known hotels, crowded coffee shops, streets, markets and public places,” and shared a list of addresses in the United States, as well as in Canada, France and the Netherlands….