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Contents:
Christian Slaughter in Libya: Raymond Ibrahim, Frontpage, Feb. 17, 2015 — The disputed fate of the 21 Coptic Christians abducted in Sirte, Libya is now clear and visible for all to see on video
The Religious Cleansing of Middle East Christians: Benjamin Weinthal, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 28, 2014 — The fate of struggling Christians in Muslim-majority countries in the Islamic heartland has shifted from persecution to an existential struggle.
Group Forming to Raise Public Awareness of Yezidi Genocide; "the World is Silent" Says Yazidi Spokesman: Doris Strub Epstein, CIJR, Jan. 27, 2015 — The genocidal atrocities being perpetrated daily on the Yazidi people by the Islamic State have vanished from media radar.
ISIS’s War on the World’s Ancient Religions: Stephanie Saldana, Wall Street Journal, Oct. 24, 2014— When thousands of Yazidis fled ISIS militants to Mount Sinjar in northwestern Iraq this August, newspapers soon filled with horrific stories
In Obama’s Impulse to Absolve Islam, He Offers a Rebuke to Christianity: Rex Murphy, National Post, Feb. 7, 2015— The President of the United States is an interesting theologian.
Minority Report: 10 Mideast Minorities Whose Futures May be Uncertain: Sophie Chamas, National Post, Jan. 15, 2015
Iraq Crisis: The Last Christians of Dora: Richard Spencer, Telegraph, Dec. 22, 2015
Yemen's Last Jews Eye Exodus After Islamist Militia Takeover: Mohammed Ghobari, Yahoo News, Feb. 15, 2015
The Last of the Arab Jews: Lucette Lagnado, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 13, 2015
Raymond Ibrahim
Frontpage, Feb. 17, 2015
The disputed fate of the 21 Coptic Christians abducted in Sirte, Libya is now clear and visible for all to see on video: while holding them down, Islamic State members shove their fingers in the Christians’ eye, crane their heads back, and slice away at their throats with knives—all in the name of Allah and Islam, all as the slaughtered call out on the “Lord Jesus Christ.” Earlier, the BBC had falsely reported that 13 of these now slaughtered Copts were “released.” (Such downplaying of Muslim persecution of Christians is, of course, standard for the BBC.)
In the video, the lead executioner waves his dagger at the camera while boasting of the Islamic State’s savagery: “Oh people, recently you have seen us on the hills of as-Sham and Dabiq’s plain [Syrian regions], chopping off the heads that have been carrying the cross for a long time. And today, we are on the south of Rome, on the land of Islam, Libya, sending another message.” He adds: “We will fight you until Christ descends, breaks the cross and kills the pig” (all eschatological actions ascribed to the Muslim “Christ,” Isa). As opposed to the Obama administration’s reactions to Islamic State beheadings of Americans and others—namely, strong assertions that such actions are not Islamic—Egyptian President Sisi responded to the slaughter of Egyptian citizens by immediately sending fighter jets to bomb Islamic State targets in Libya. What did these Coptic Christians—or, as the Islamic State refers to them, “The Humiliated Followers of the Coptic Church”—do to deserve such treatment? According to Catholic Pope Francis, “They were killed simply for the fact that they were Christians. It makes no difference whether they be Catholics, Orthodox, Copts or Protestants. They are Christians!”
Far from being satisfied with the slaughter of these 21 Christians, the Islamic State is calling on Muslims to find and slaughter more Coptic Christians. (Copts make for the majority of Christians in Libya, having migrated there from neighboring Egypt to find work during the Gaddafi years; most of them are desperate to return but need aid from the Egyptian government to cross the Libyan desert.) In its online English magazine Dabiq, after justifying the slaughter of the 21, the Islamic State concludes by asserting that “it is important for Muslims everywhere to know that there is no doubt in the great reward to be found on Judgment Day for those who spill the blood of these Coptic crusaders wherever they may be found.” And indeed, spilling Coptic Christian blood in Libya—and being rewarded for it—has been ongoing for some time now. The fact is that this most recent beheading, which received a decent amount of media attention, is only the latest in a long line of Muslim persecution of Christians in Libya…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
THE RELIGIOUS CLEANSING OF MIDDLE EAST CHRISTIANS
Benjamin Weinthal
Jerusalem Post, Dec. 28, 2014
The fate of struggling Christians in Muslim-majority countries in the Islamic heartland has shifted from persecution to an existential struggle. Anti-Christian violence in 2014 saw a transformation from under-told news coverage, to routine reports of radical Islamists seeking to obliterate Christianity’s presence…
"Persecution no longer adequately describes the treatment of Christians in a growing number of Muslim areas. Religious cleansing, a type of cultural genocide, which is a crime against humanity, is the more accurate description. This is now occurring in Iraq, Syria, parts of Nigeria, Egypt, Sudan, Somalia and Pakistan. A goal of Islamic extremists is total Islamization and this has nearly been achieved in Iraq, which a decade ago was home to one of the four most robust Christian communities in the Arab world,” said Nina Shea, director of the Washington- based Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom. Shea, who has written extensively about the lack of Christian religious freedom, said “Now, the overwhelming majority of Iraq’s Christian community, formerly numbering 1.4 million, are immigrants in the West, refugees in the region, or internally displaced persons in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Since Christians are the largest non-Muslim minority there and the smaller Yazidi, Mandean and Jewish communities have also been driven out or killed. Iraq is for the first time in history becoming entirely Islamic. Over the millennia, its minorities were influential and their absence will have geopolitical implications.” A snapshot of news headlines during the Christmas period signifies a rapidly deteriorating situation for the Middle East’s Christians. The Irish Times wrote, “Christians most persecuted and discriminated against worldwide: Most violations of religious freedom occur in Muslim countries.” The New York Daily News editorial noted: A war on Christians rages around the world. “Lack of help for Iraqi Christians from international community,” headlined the BBC for a video interview. “A jailed Iranian Pastor’s Christmas Prayer,” read a Wall Street Journal opinion article headline.
The case of Iran is part and parcel of a deceptive strategy to court the West while incarcerating Iranian Christians. Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani tweeted on Christmas; ”May Jesus Christ, Prophet of peace & love, bless us all on this day. Wishing Merry# Christmas to those celebrating, esp #Iranian Christians.” Pastor Farshid Fathi experienced four Christmases in prison for practicing his faith. American-Iranian pastor Saeed Abedini spent his third Christmas in prison for his Christian work. UN human rights reports have documented severe oppression of Christian Iranians, which Iran’s so-called moderate president shows no appetite for curtailing. According to Open Doors USA, an organization that seeks to prevent Christian persecution, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen are in the top 10 violators of Christianity. In terms of global persecution of Christians, Open Doors noted 322 Christians are murdered each month for simply being Christian, 214 Christian properties are destroyed and violence affects 772.
Spectacular levels of violence targeting Iraqi Christians prompted Pope Francis to say this month, “Your resistance is martyrdom, dew which bears fruit.” Islamic State presents the most immediate danger to Christians in Iraq and Syria because of its ideology to rapidly eliminate Christianity. Dexter Van Zile, a Christian Media Analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, said “we need to devote the resources necessary to defeat ISIS [Islamic State] and make it perfectly clear that the people responsible for murdering Christians, Yazidis and other minorities will face justice. We simply cannot let them get away with it. “The efforts to help the Christians in the Middle East will look a lot like the choices the West was faced with when the Jews were being murdered in Europe. We’ll have to get serious about providing permanent refuge to Christians from the region in our own countries, which ominously enough, did not happen with the Jews. I hope and pray we make a different choice this time. These people need homes, permanent homes in the West,” said Van Zile. He added, “we’ll have to think about providing a safe haven for them in the region…
Christians in Iraq have called for the creation of a special province for minorities in Iraq – the Nineveh Plains proposal – which has largely been ignored by policy makers in the West.” Analyzing Israel’s role in the region can help in grasping the larger context, according to academic experts. Dr. Richard Landes, director and co-founder of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University said, “in the old days [Yishuv days], when the Muslims rioted and massacred Jews, they’d say, ‘first the Saturday people, then the Sunday people.’ Now that the Jews have a state and can defend themselves, they’ve moved on to the Sunday people, and the only place Christians are safe is where the Saturday people have sovereignty.” He added, “The really sick part of this picture is that the Christians in the west not only won’t come to the defense of the Sunday people in the Muslim world, but rather, seem fixated on not letting the Saturday people defend either themselves or the Sunday people who live among them. With their western enemies behaving so self-destructively, it’s a good time to be a jihadi.”…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
GROUP FORMING TO RAISE PUBLIC AWARENESS OF YEZIDI GENOCIDE;
"THE WORLD IS SILENT" SAYS YAZIDI SPOKESMAN
Doris Strub Epstein
CIJR, Jan. 27, 2015
The genocidal atrocities being perpetrated daily on the Yazidi people by the Islamic State have vanished from media radar. They have been targeted by the IS for death, forced conversion and sexual slavery. The killing, the torture of thousands; the abduction of girls as young as eight, raped, sold, used as sex slaves by IS fighters, continues unabated.
Last Friday morning a group met with Yazidis at the Zionist Centre on Marlee [Toronto, ON], to hear their story and to help raise public awareness of their plight. Participating was Dr. Mordechai Kedar, renowned Arab and Middle East expert, whose cutting edge ideas and leadership abilities have led many to call him the Winston Churchill of our day. A professor at Bar Ilan University, he also served for many years in the IDF's Intelligence, specializing on all facets of Islam. He was in town for a series of lectures.
Hearing Mirza Ismail talk about his people, was eerily reminiscent of the history of the Jewish people. He is Chairman of the Yezidi Human Rights Organization International. Like the Jews, the Yezidis are an ancient people, dating back 6,000 years. Their origin is in the heart of Mesopotamia, the birth place of civilization. They have been attacked again and again over the centuries by Islamic forces, "just because we have a different culture and religion". Today they are on the verge of annihilation. "And the world is silent", he told the group in despair. The Yazidis have an ancient monotheistic religion that is neither Christian nor Muslim.
The present plight of the Yazidis is disturbingly similar to what happened to the Jewish people during the Holocaust. They were persecuted and targeted for genocide simply because they were Jews and were abandoned by the world. This time the enemy is wearing black hoods instead of brown shirts. There are 500,000 -700,000 Yazidis, largely based in Northern Iraq in the province of Nineveh and Mt. Sinjar. But they are also in Syria , Turkey, Iran, Russia, Georgia and Armenia, forced to flee their ancient homelands. Some are also in the US and about 85 families live in Canada. In August, 2014, ISIS attacked and took over the Kurdish controlled town of Sinjhar, driving more than 50,00 Yazidis out of their homes and fleeing for their lives to Sinjar Mountain. An estimated 10,000 men have been executed and as many as 7,000 women and girls have been made sex slaves and sold. Four hundred escaped and told horrific tales of brutality; multiple rape – 20 to 30 times daily – beatings, being forced to give blood to wounded ISIS fighters.
Eyewitnesses report stories of beheadings, rape and children dying of starvation and dehydration. William Devlin, a New York pastor who visited in January, called the present situation of more than 300,000 refugees "genocidal and insane" in dire need of humanitarian aid. In the camp "hospitals" there are no doctors. "For the Yazidis there is no doctors without borders", Merza told the group. Why in the 21st Century, everybody knows, but nobody cares about our lives?" Furthermore, they are treated "with no respect" by the Muslim UN workers in the camps, he said.
Twelve thousand are still on Mt. Sinjar, totally isolated, lacking food, water and "most important," said Mirza, "arms…The US and Europe are giving arms to the Kurds to give to the Yazidis, but they don't. The world thinks the Kurds are protecting them, but they don't give them any support." Mirza connected Dr. Kedar by telephone to a Yazidi on Mt. Sinjar. They spoke in Arabic. I could hear the desperation in his voice over the speaker phone. "The world is not taking them seriously. They have no power because they are not sufficiently organized," said Dr. Kedar. He proceeded to tell them how to "package" themselves to get the attention of the media and the world. "If you are not on the media, you don't exist," he said. Later he arranged a meeting for them with the Indian Consul General. "Our voices must be their voices," said JIMENA's (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa) president, Gina Waldman. "Their plight must be our plight."
ISIS’S WAR ON THE WORLD’S ANCIENT RELIGIONS
Stephanie Saldana
Wall Street Journal, Oct. 24, 2014
When thousands of Yazidis fled ISIS militants to Mount Sinjar in northwestern Iraq this August, newspapers soon filled with horrific stories: young Yazidi women sold into slavery, tens of thousands of refugees escaping into Syria and Kurdistan in the summer heat, and thousands more trapped on the mountain without food and water. Vian Dakhil, the sole Yazidi member of the Iraqi Parliament, broke down in front of her colleagues in a speech that was viewed around the world: “My people are being slaughtered. . . . I speak in the name of humanity. Save us!” No one disputed that the Yazidis were facing life or death. The real question was: Who are the Yazidis?
It is difficult to imagine a more timely book than Gerard Russell ’s “Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys Into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East.” Equal parts travelogue and history, Mr. Russell’s meticulously researched book takes readers into some of the region’s least-known minority communities: the Mandaeans of Iraq, the Copts of Egypt, the Zoroastrians, the Samaritans, and, yes, the Yazidis. These religious groups are often ignored in public debate about the Middle East because of their esoteric beliefs and their size—there are only an estimated 750 Samaritans left in the region—and because they have often survived by living in isolated mountains, marshlands and villages far outside the traditional seats of power. Tragically, many of these remote areas in Syria and Iraq are now under ISIS control. And in countries throughout the region, ancient faiths—including Christianity—are disappearing as believers flee Islamic extremism, civil war and poverty. As Mr. Russell writes: “There are no safe places anymore.”
The author, who spent 14 years as a British diplomat in the region and is fluent in Arabic and Dari, is an ideal guide for this journey. In every case, he travels in search of religions that are the “frail descendants” of ancient civilizations, connecting “the present to the past, bringing us within touching distance of long-dead cultures.” He writes movingly of worshiping with Coptic Christians in Cairo for a year and of traveling to the Shrine of Lalish to understand the Yazidis’ reverence for Melek Taoos, the peacock angel who they believe is “God’s lieutenant in the knowable universe.” He also doesn’t shy away from the bewildering contradictions of some these religions. The Druze religion, for example, is so secretive that many of its own members don’t know its tenets. In a classic moment in Lebanon, where Mr. Russell interviews Walid Jumblatt, the famous political leader of the Druze community there, Mr. Jumblatt tells the author: “I know nothing about the Druze.” In the opening chapter of his book, Mr. Russell introduces us to the Mandaeans of Iraq, whose members practice baptism as their primary means of worship. Often referred to as followers of John the Baptist, they say that he—not Jesus—was the greatest miracle worker. Scholars trace their holy texts to the second or third century, though the Mandaeans believe they were passed down from Adam himself. Known for wearing long white robes and immersing themselves in the water of the Tigris and Euphrates for their baptisms, the group faced kidnapping, forced conversion and murder in the chaotic aftermath of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Today, 90% of the Mandaeans of Iraq are gone. As one believer in exile tells Mr. Russell of Iraq: “I love it there. But I can’t live it.”
The author also journeys to meet the Samaritans—familiar to many readers from the story of the Good Samaritan in the Gospel of Luke, who today still live outside Nablus in the West Bank and claim to be among the lost tribes of Israel. He joins them on Mount Gerizim, the place they believe Abraham bound Isaac for sacrifice, to watch them sacrifice lambs during Passover. In the process of reporting on these communities, Mr. Russell explodes the common myth that the Middle East is the monolithic “Islamic world,” showing instead that it is home to some of the world’s oldest religious traditions. Indeed, one of Mr. Russell’s central points is that Islam was for much of history more open to religious minorities than Christian Europe. The atrocities carried out today by the Islamic State—including the persecution of so-called Islamic heretics—is a far cry from the pragmatic tolerance of the Ottoman Empire…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
IN OBAMA’S IMPULSE TO ABSOLVE ISLAM,
HE OFFERS A REBUKE TO CHRISTIANITY
Rex Murphy
National Post, Feb. 7, 2015
The President of the United States is an interesting theologian. He has taken to declaring that Islamic terrorists, who by their own emphatic insistence are Islamic, and who conduct their merciless operations in Nigeria, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq and fitfully in many countries around the world explicitly and defiantly under the banner of Islam, are not what or whom they say they are. His purpose can been seen as vaguely worthy — making the point that not all Muslims subscribe to the violent actions and tenets of the numerous radical factions, but saying “not all” does not erase a worryingly large “some.” Some, in these dreadful cases, is very, very many. But who really blames, or has been blaming, “all Muslims” ever? Western world leaders to a person have been insisting it is not all Muslims since the morning of the 9/11 attacks. This is a tired, and by now needless, rhetorical gambit. But Mr. Obama treads travels much further on this dubious ground. On Thursday, two days after Jordanian pilot Muath Al-Kassasbeh was horrifically murdered by ISIS, Mr. Obama, speaking at a prayer breakfast, went through the usual theatre — these people are not Muslims, Islam is peace, etc., but then took a strange sideswipe at Christians.
He had this to say: “And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.” My first qualification here would be to point the obvious, that in those times of the Crusades, Muslims were committing terrible deeds in the name of Allah. This was not a one-sided clash of blades and bludgeons. This is hardly a trivial point. My second is that the burden of his remarks are so very odd. Is it a very strange turn of thought to have, the day after someone was burned to death in a cage by Islamist fanatics, that Mr. Obama thinks Christians are about to mount their “high horse” and are making the claim that the barbarism of this week is “unique to one place.” Hardly unique, Mr. President. Check Boko Haram for the last couple of months. Or the Taliban any month you choose. There is no high horse. Christians are not climbing on it. And no one has claimed religious violence is unique. The whole line of thought is not so much a straw man as the logical equivalent of an entire thatched roof of those stuffed puppets. He also called up slavery as being done, by some, in the name of Christ, as if the practice owed something very particular to Christian belief, ignoring that the ignominy of slave-trading has been practiced since ancient days by peoples of varying faiths, to the everlasting shame of them all.
The Americans, to their equally everlasting credit, fought a civil war and ended slavery, and it was the greatest of presidents, and the country’s greatest true moralist, who conducted that war. It was Lincoln who posed the searing observation in the Second Inaugural address that, “It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.” The key to that sentence lies in the word “dare.” In the most powerful line of that same address, this deeply religious President, gave his — may we call it Christian? — view of slavery. If the war should continue, said Lincoln “till all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword…” it could be seen as a judgment of God.
In sum, far from seeing a Christian warrant for slavery, Lincoln, in that profound address, pictured it as a deep woe upon the Republic, an “offence” against God, and the devastations of the Civil War as a providential unfolding. Oscar Wilde, if I may obtrude the playwright into so serious a subject, once wrote that listening to Chopin he felt “as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own.” That’s the same feeling one could get from listening from the tone and tenor of Mr. Obama’s prayer meeting remarks. In his impulse to absolve Islam, he offers a rebuke to Christianity. He enfolds the most extreme acts of ISIS and other branches of radical Islam into a story of Christian hypocrisy. He goes back a thousand years to indict, at least partially, Christianity, and ignores yesterday in order to maintain that all of Islam is peaceful. There have been many sins committed by many faiths, and there are tragedies even now underway. But it is a very displaced analysis that seeks to offer corrections to Christianity during a period of Islamic turmoil, and seeks out forgotten sins to ignore those so very close to mind.
Minority Report: 10 Mideast Minorities Whose Futures May be Uncertain: Sophie Chamas, National Post, Jan. 15, 2015— Since 9/11, North Americans’ familiarity with the Middle East has gradually deepened.
Iraq Crisis: The Last Christians of Dora: Richard Spencer, Telegraph, Dec. 22, 2015 —There will be no last stand for the besieged Iraqi Christians of Dora.
Yemen's Last Jews Eye Exodus After Islamist Militia Takeover: Mohammed Ghobari, Yahoo News, Feb. 15, 2015—A few worried families are all that remain of Yemen's ancient Jewish community, and they too may soon flee after a Shi'ite Muslim militia seized power in the strife-torn country this month.
The Last of the Arab Jews: Lucette Lagnado, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 13, 2015—By the hundreds, they gathered for a pre-wedding party on a resort island in Tunisia. Here, in the heart of the Muslim world, the crowds were speaking Arabic. The band was Arab too, playing boisterous Arabic melodies.
Our Arab Allies Understand What Obama Doesn’t: Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post, Feb. 16, 2015 —Were President Obama to acknowledge forthrightly that “extremists” are out to kill Jews (whether in Europe or in genocidal fashion once nuclear weapons are obtained) and then Christians and other “nonbelievers,” he would be obliged, in turn, to recognize the ideological underpinnings of the Islamic jihadists.
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