Free Republic

KOBANI, Syria (Reuters) - A community of Syrians who converted to Christianity from Islam is growing in Kobani, a town besieged by Islamic State for months, and where the tide turned against the militants four years ago. The converts say the experience of war and the onslaught of a group claiming to fight for Islam pushed them towards their new faith. After a number of families converted, the Syrian-Turkish border town’s first evangelical church opened last year. Islamic State militants were beaten back by U.S. air strikes and Kurdish fighters at Kobani in early 2015, in a reversal of fortune...

Mideast: The assault on a monastery and the murder of its priest by Syrian rebels is a stark reminder of the threat to Christians in the Middle East and that the enemy of our enemy is not necessarily our friend. The Vatican has confirmed the murder by beheading of Syrian Catholic priest Francois Murad in the town of Gassanieh in northern Syria by jihadists belonging to the al-Qaida-linked group Jabhat al-Nusra, or Al-Nusra front. This raises questions about our involvement in aiding Syrian groups opposed to the regime of Bashar Assad and whether our efforts will result in the same...

All of us in the free world owe Israel an enormous thank-you for defending freedom, democracy, and security against the Iranian cat’s-paw wholly-owned terrorist subsidiaries Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel is doing the Lord’s work. They are defending their own homeland and very existence, but they are also defending America’s homeland as our frontline democratic ally in the Middle East. Commentary’s Norman Podhoretz was exactly right when he coined the term World War IV to describe the global terror conflict. Repeatedly hostile actions by the totalitarians in Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, and North Korea are all connected. So are the recently...