generalspeaking

Convert or Flee Jihad

"We had to go through an area where they had set up a checkpoint. [IS militants] asked us to get out of the car. We got out. They took ... our things, our bags, our money, everything we had on us."
"I don't know what is going to happen to us. Our future is uncertain."
Zaid Qreqosh Ishaq, 27-year-old Iraqi Christian

"One of the gunmen told us, 'You can leave now, but do not ever dream of returning to Mosul again'."
Noel Ibrahim, Irbil, Iraq

One of the world's oldest Christian communities has been given the option of converting to Islam, pay a religious tax, or face death. Mosul, where they have lived since, it must seem to them, time immemorial, is now off limits to Christians. And this certainly does express Islam at its very most basic concept of Christianity like Judaism representing an earlier, imperfect version of Islam, both of which must depart from their false notions of worshipping god, and surrender to Islam, so that they may properly recognize the one true god.

Suffering the consequences of spurning the opportunity to surrender to Islam may represent a stark choice to the Syriac Christians, ancient in their belief and dedicated to their faith that sustained them through thousands of years of upheaval. But although ISIS is considered to represent Islamist fanatics, the precept of either persuading infidels to transfer their religious faith or tax them or slaughter them as a solution to their existence in an majority Islamic community does represent the fundamentals of Islam.


"They said there is no place for Christians in the Islamic state. Either you become Muslim or you leave", one distraught refugee said, among the last 1,500 of Mosul's Christian families to leave and still suffer the ignominy of being looted of all their possessions at the ISIS checkpoints they had to pass as they fled for their lives. Finding shelter in areas between Mosul and Irbul, capital of the Kurdistan regional government controlled by Peshmerga Kurdish fighters, they mourn the loss of their homes.

"It is up to God whether we return or not. They have not [yet] burned the churches, but they did set fire to the pictures and the books and broke the windows", said Father Boutrous Moshi from Qaragoush, south-east of Mosul.

Of the remaining 25 Christian families in Mosul, most cannot travel for medical reasons, finding sanctuary with Muslim neighbours. The monks living in the 1,800-year-old Mar Behnam Monastery some 25 kilometres south of Mosul were forced to flee to Qaraqoush. "Even here in Qaraqoush, we do not feel safe because IS militants are only a few kilometres away", said Father Sherbil Issou sorrowfully, a priest from Mosul.
Monks at the 4th-century Mar Behnam monastery, a major pilgrimage site run by the Syriac Catholic church, were allowed to take only the clothes they were wearing.

Labels: Christianity, Iraq, ISIS, Islamists, Violence Human Rights

posted by Pieface @ Friday, July 25, 2014