Posted on 02/03/2016 4:36:52 AM PST by SJackson
Originally published by the Gatestone Institute.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
When a 1,400-year-old Iraqi Christian monastery was destroyed by the Islamic State (ISIS) most of the world condemned the demolition -- except for spokesman for the U.S. military's Operation Inherent Resolve, Col. Steve Warren.
"Thousands [of Iraqi Christians] have been killed, hundreds of thousands have been forced to flee," noted CNN's Wolf Blitzer in an interview with Col. Warren last week. "There is legitimate fear - you're there in Baghdad - that the long history of Christians living peacefully, productively in Iraq, is coming to an end. How worried should we be about the Christian community in Iraq?"
The response: "Wolf, ISIL doesn't care if you're a Christian ... We've seen no specific evidence of a specific targeting towards Christians."
Wrong: Roughly two-thirds of Iraq's 1.5 million Christian citizens have been killed or forced to flee the country by ISIS and its jihadi predecessors over the past decade--and this has everything to do with their religious identity.
In Iraq and everywhere else it has conquered, ISIS has, at a minimum, rigorously enforced on pain of death Islam's dhimmi laws, which require Christians to pay extortion money (jizya) and agree to live by a set of degrading rules.
Often, ISIS fighters skip these formalities and simply torture to death Christians who refuse to convert to Islam, sometimes releasing the footage online for propaganda purposes. Most notable are two videotaped mass executions of 21 Egyptians and 30 Ethiopians in Libya last spring, but there have been many lesser-known cases. When a group of Iraqi Christian children refused to renounce Christ in 2014, saying "No, we love Jesus," ISIS decapitated and mangled their bodies. Last summer in Aleppo, Syria, ISIS tortured, mutilated, publicly raped, beheaded and crucified 12 Christians for refusing to convert. Escaped eyewitnesses have reported ISIS places Iraqi and Syrian Christians in cages or coffins and sets them on fire.
ISIS has frequently kidnapped Christians and demanded ransom payments for their release, often forcing female captives into sexual slavery. A 12-year-old girl, raped by an Islamic State fighter, was told that "what he was about to do was not a sin" because she "practiced a religion other than Islam." ISIS has even sent operatives disguised as refugees into U.N. refugee camps in Jordan to kidnap young Christian girls to sell or use as slaves.
The Islamic State is committed to expunging all physical traces of Christianity in areas it conquers, demolishing dozens of ancient churches--in Syria alone, up to 400 churches have been destroyed since the war--not to mention countless crucifixes, statues, graves, and other relics. It ordered the University of Mosul to burn all books written by Christians and decreed that all schools in Mosul and the Nineveh Plain that bore Christian names (some since the 1700s) be changed.
As for the occasion of Warren's comments--ISIS' destruction of a 1,400 year-old monastery--this is nothing new. Last summer ISIS set fire to a 1,800 year-old church in Mosul and bulldozed a 1,600 year-old monastery in Homs for "worshipping a God other than Allah."
In short, Christians are certainly experiencing "specific targeting" by the Islamic State. While ISIS has also killed Muslims who get in its way, only non-Muslims--chief among them Christians--are being enslaved, raped, and forced on pain of death to convert to Islam. Although Islamic law, or Sharia, legitimizes the killing, enslavement, and rape of non-Muslims, it prohibits treating fellow Muslims accordingly.
Few informed observers dispute that the Iraqi Christian community is gravely and specifically threatened by ISIS. According to the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial, ISIS persecution of Christians "fits the definition of ethnic cleansing." Even David Saperstein, the United States ambassador at large for religious freedom, acknowledges that it is "primarily Christians" being persecuted in Iraq for their faith.
For the official spokesman of the U.S. military's fight against ISIS to make such clueless and callous remarks to the contrary is deeply disconcerting. But perhaps Col. Warren is not to blame--perhaps he's just a military man doing his best to comply with demands from politicians upstairs that he say nothing to acknowledge the suffering of Mideast Christians.
If you'd like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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Now I crossed the threshold and realize our military could turn on us quickly.
nobody wants to be the mutineer and will obey orders.
At least i’ll have company at the compound.
A century ago the middle eastern Christian population was nearly 40%. Today its somewhere short of 2%.
Incredible! I guess those photos of them whacking off the heads of a bunch of people near the beach was actually of ‘just Muslims’ then?
This colonel must be bucking up for a star and he needs to bank some political capital. It’s either that or ‘we’ as he says just aren’t looking for any evidence that “we haven’t seen.”
Americans now have a military that
arms al Qaeda, protects ISIS,
and is ready to exterminate Americans
on Order from the First crypto-Moslem.
They say that, but who believes them?
Very true.
The military is not allowed to act or speak their own thoughts. They must follow the lead from the Commander in Chief. If the C-in-C orders them on a suicide mission their lot is not to wonder why. Their lot is to do and die.
Focus and uniformity is a great strength of our military, but given anti-American leadership it is a great danger to the American people. This is why I voted for John McCain and Mitt Romney even though they are both odious liberal defecation. They are not anti-American and will not sacrifice the American military like Carter, Clinton and now Obama did.
Bmp4L8R
The reason why the military is covering for ISIS and not dedicated to destroying them is because it is our terrorist organization that is a proxy for bringing down Assad.
Covert origins of ISIS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMjXbuj7BPI
Origins of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJPOtPl-0NI
If Col. Warren still has a soul, he should have lost it for perpetrating that lie and covering for the mass murder of Christians.
Will someone please show this simple fool some “evidence”?
What an embarrassment our pentagon has become
Wow! This guy has lost all touch with reality. IMHO. Must be one of Obama’s boys.
But a few killngs, in the line of duty by police upon black criminals, means that there’s a “war on blacks” by LE, even though the rate of deaths of blacks by LE has been going down. The media plays it up as if police are out just gunning down black males by the hundreds for no reason at all. But the targeting of Christians by ISIS is played down, “not a real problem”, even though ISIS is torturing and killing Christians, including women and children.
Evil, despicable administration and its lackey media.
Anyone else recall Obama’s litmus test of officers from a few years back?
“Would you fire on Americans?”
This goes hand in hand.
Especially with West Point putting out that study that conservatives are terrorists.
Yes, good point, even though when there’s a murder in the name of religion, it’s always, always Muslim on Christian or non-Muslim in this country. But the Muslims and the media almost trample each other in their rush, before the victims’ bodies are cold, to explain how “Islamophobia” is the problem and Muslims are the real victims.
Why is it, that whenever someone calls ISIS “ISIL,” they immediately follow up with a defense of “ISIL?”
Oye Vey:-(
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