Tag: Islamic State

US declares ISIS campaign ‘genocide’

March 17, 2016 Genocide, Iraq, Islamic State, Syria, USA

The US government has declared that Islamic State has committed genocide against Christians and other religious groups. Secretary of State John Kerry said on behalf of the government that Islamic State was “genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology and by actions”. It follows the declaring atrocities committed by ISIS in Iraq . . . Read More

US lawmakers accuse IS of genocide

March 15, 2016 Barack Obama, Bashar al-Assad, Genocide, Iraq, Islamic State, Syria, USA, Yazidis

The U.S. House of Representatives has joined the growing number of voices in Western capitals accusing the so-called Islamic State of genocide. In a 393-0 vote 14 March, the House declared “the atrocities perpetrated by ISIL against Christians, Yazidis, and other religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq and Syria constitute . . . Read More

ISIS burns Christian books

March 14, 2016 Iraq Education, Iraq, Islamic State, Mosul, Sharia

ISIS has released a video purporting to show its religious police burning hundreds of Christian books, according to . The video footage shows a militant throwing pamphlets, bearing a cross on the front cover, onto a bonfire. It was posted on 13 March by its news agency, Amaq, with the . . . Read More

Gunmen kill 4 nuns and 12 others in Yemen

March 7, 2016 Yemen Aden, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Ansar al-Sharia, Hodeidah, Houthis, Islamic State, Kidnapping, Sana'a, Taiz, Tom Uzhunnalil

Four Catholic nuns from the late Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity were among 16 victims killed by six unidentified gunmen at a home for the elderly in Yemen’s southern port city of Aden. The four missionary nurses were serving breakfast to the home’s 80 residents on 4 March when armed . . . Read More

Egypt sentences ‘anti-Islam’ teens to 5 years

February 25, 2016 Egypt Blasphemy, Copts, Egypt, Gad Younan, Islamic extremism, Islamic State, Minya

Three Egyptian Christian students accused of “offending Islam” were sentenced today (25 Feb.) to five years each, Coptic news site Watani said. Muller Atef, Albert Ashraf and Bassem Amgad were given jail terms, while a fourth, Clinton Maged, is due to be remanded in a juvenile facility for five years, according . . . Read More

Iraq’s Christian homes ‘grab’ continues

February 24, 2016 Iraq Baghdad, Iraq, Islamic State, Louis Raphael I Sako, Nineveh Plains

Homes and businesses left behind by Iraq’s Christians are being illegally taken, as hostile forces continue to scrape off the last vestiges of two millennia of Christian presence in the country. “ISIS has displaced 120,000 Christians from Mosul and the Nineveh Plains, destroying monasteries, churches and homes to erase their memory. . . . Read More

Syrian Christians favour Assad to bring peace

February 23, 2016 Syria Bashar al-Assad, Civil War, Islamic State, Syria

Supporting President Assad may be the only hope of Christians surviving during and after Syria’s civil war, writes John Pontifex for . On a recent trip to Syria for Aid to the Church in Need, he found Christians considered it better to support the current leadership than face the threat . . . Read More

Islamic State releases 43 Assyrian hostages

February 22, 2016 Syria Assyrians, Islamic State, Kidnapping, Syria

The so-called Islamic State has released 43 Assyrian Christians – the remaining hostages of the . The group is on its way to Tel Tamr, a town close to the villages they were abducted from, according to Younan Talia of the Assyrian Democratic Organization. Talia said the release came after . . . Read More

Living as a Christian in the Islamic State

February 18, 2016 Syria Islamic State, Raqqa

When John, a Syrian Christian, chose to stay in Raqqa after the Islamic State took control of the city in 2014, he had no idea how he would survive. Thousands abandoned the city, believing it better to save their lives than live at the centre of the Islamists’ new “caliphate”. . . . Read More

Uncertain future for Canada religious freedom post

February 17, 2016 Andrew Bennett, Canada, Europe, Human rights, Islamic State, Lord Alton, Minorities, Religious freedom, UK

Canada’s ambassador for religious freedom has had his contract extended for another month, but the post may still be abolished. Andrew Bennett became Canada’s first ambassador for religious freedom when he was appointed three years ago, but Canada’s new Foreign Affairs Minister, Stéphane Dion, said religious freedom should not be . . . Read More

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