Christian Family of 8 Massacred by Isis for not Converting to Islam

With Islamic extremists’ ongoing purge of Christians from northern Iraq, horrific news reports continue to capture the intense abuse and persecution that believers face. And a story recently shared by Canon Andrew White, the vicar of Baghdad, shows just how brutal the tragic crisis is.

White, an Anglican faith leader at St. George’s Church in Baghdad, posted on his Facebook page August 1 that he saw a photo “too awful to show” — an image that depicted the horrors being perpetuated by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, an extremist group that has taken control of Mosul, among other regions.

“You know I love to show photos but the photo I was sent today was the most awful I have ever seen. A family of 8 all shot through the face laying in a pool of blood with their Bible open on the couch,” he wrote. “They would not convert it cost them [their] life. I thought of asking if anybody wanted to see the picture but it is just too awful to show to anybody.”

In this Tuesday, July 22, 2014 photo, a sign is posted at a checkpoint belonging to the Islamic State group, captured from the Iraqi Army, at the main entrance of Rawah, 175 miles (281 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad, Iraq. Arabic reads,”Islamic State, the Emirate of Anbar, City of Rawah.” (AP Photo)

He continued, “This is Iraq today. The only hope and consolation is that all these dear people are now all with Yesua in Glory.”

The graphic story surrounding this photo is only one of the latest to come from a region that is being overtaken by extremists bent on creating an Islamic state known as a “caliphate.”


White, who is also founder of the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East, an organization that promotes interfaith relations, told his followers that they can help by praying “for the protection of … all the Christians” in Iraq. He also encouraged donations to his organization, which is working to help afflicted Iraqis.

“Pray for our Perseverance that we and our people will not give up the spiritual fight before us,” White added.

As previously reported, believers in Mosul were given an ultimatum last month: convert to Islam, pay a tax or be put to death. It is possible that the family White saw in the photo paid the price for their refusal to comply.

Last month, His Beatitude Ignatius Ephrem Joseph III Younan, overseer of Assyrian Christians around the globe, also spoke out about the crisis, accusing many in the West of turning a blind eye to their plight.

“We are so saddened that the civilized world doesn’t really care,” Younan said. “Surely there are other dramatic problems — wars around us in the Middle East… Gaza or Syria but here it’s … genocide … just because they are Christians.”

An Iraqi displaced family, who fled violence in the northern city of Tal Afar, walks past tents at Khazer refugee camp near the Kurdish checkpoint of Aski kalak, 40 km West of Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq on July 27, 2014. (AFP PHOTO/SAFIN HAMED)

The Agence France Presse and Lebanon’s The Daily Star reported Wednesday that extremists are waging fresh attacks on Christians in north Iraq.

According to the outlet, sources claim that the towns of Tal Kayf, Bartella and Qaraqosh — some of the locations places where displaced Christians from Mosul fled last month — have now come under attack by ISIS. Indeed, Qaraqosh has fallen and Christians are fleeing.

Christian leaders in Iraq have reportedly selected August 9 as a day of prayer for those suffering at the hands of the radical terror group. Please join us in prayer, and include the Yasidi people as well who are trapped on a mountaintop and are dying from exposure. (See link just above).

Humanitarian Catastrophe in the Making as Christians and Yazidis Flee Their Homes

This is a duplicate of a post by the same name on my other blog.

Up to a quarter of Iraq's Christians are reported to be fleeing after Islamic militants seized the minority group's biggest town.

The Islamic State (IS) group captured Qaraqosh overnight after the withdrawal of Kurdish forces.

IS has been gaining ground in northern Iraq since June, and also controls some of Syria.

The US has warned that the situation for Iraq's minority groups threatens to become a "humanitarian catastrophe".

``We are gravely concerned for their health and safety," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

But he refused to confirm a New York Times report that the US is considering air strikes to help the Yazidi community, another minority group in northern Iraq that has been targeted by IS.

About 50,000 Yazidis are thought to have been trapped in the mountains after fleeing the town of Sinjar - although the UN says some of them have now been rescued.

The United Nations Security Council is due to meet in emergency session later on Thursday to discuss the situation.

Tens of thousands of religious minorities have been forced to flee since IS, a Sunni Muslim group formerly known as Isis, launched its onslaught.

IS says it has created an Islamic state in the territory it controls.

In other developments:

A suicide bombing in a Shia Muslim area of Baghdad killed at least 14 people
IS said it had captured the strategic Mosul dam on the Tigris river - a claim denied by Kurdish forces who insist they are still in control
At least six people died in a car bomb attack near a Shia mosque in the northern city of Kirkurk

A majority of Nineveh inhabitants left their homes overnight, according to Fraternite en Irak, an international Christian organisation based in Paris.

As many as 100,000 people are believed to be fleeing toward the autonomous Kurdistan Region.

Pope Francis has made an impassioned appeal to the international community to do much more to address the crisis.

A Vatican statement said the Pope had appealed for "all necessary help" to be given to those forced to flee their homes, "whose fate depends entirely on the solidarity of others".

And Minority Rights Group International has warned that Iraq's multi-ethnic future is now at grave risk.

Kurdish forces, known as the Peshmerga, have been fighting the IS militants' advance for weeks.

The Peshmerga's commander in Qaraqosh reportedly told the town's archbishop late on Wednesday that the forces were abandoning their posts.

Several senior clergymen in Nineveh confirmed the town had fallen.

"It's a catastrophe, a tragic situation: tens of thousands of terrified people are being displaced as we speak," said Joseph Thomas, the Chaldean archbishop of the northern city of Kirkuk.

Eyewitnesses in Qaraqosh said IS militants were taking down crosses in churches and burning religious manuscripts.

The town - referred to as Iraq's Christian capital - is located 30km (19 miles) south-east of the city of Mosul, which was captured by IS in June.

Last month, hundreds of Christian families fled Mosul after the Islamist rebels gave them an ultimatum to convert to Islam, pay a special tax or be executed.

Iraq is home to one of the world's most ancient Christian communities, but numbers have dwindled amid growing sectarian violence since the US-led invasion in 2003.

Christians

The majority are Chaldeans, part of the Catholic Church
Numbers have fallen from around 1.5 million since the US-led invasion in 2003 to 350,000-450,000
In Nineveh, they live mainly in towns such as Qaraqosh (also known as Baghdida), Bartella, Al-Hamdaniya and Tel Kef

Yazidis

Secretive group whose origins and ethnicity are subject to continuing debate
Religion incorporates elements of many faiths, including Zoroastrianism
Many Muslims and other groups view Yazidis as devil worshippers
There are estimated to be around 500,000 Yazidis worldwide, most living in Iraq's Nineveh plains

Yazidi eyewitness: 'They want to slaughter us'

Iraqi volunteers have joined government forces to fight against IS militants

Iraqi volunteers who joined government forces to fight against Sunni jihadist militants of the Islamic State (IS) hold a position at a checkpoint in Udhaim.

IS is also thought to be behind a string of car bombs in Baghdad on Wednesday

Iraqi civilians gather the morning after a string of car bombs tore through busy shopping streets in several neighbourhoods in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Aug. 7, 2014.

Tens of thousands of people from the ancient Yazidi community
 have left their homes due to the IS offensive

An Iraqi Yazidi woman who fled the violence in the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, cries as she stands among others at a school where they are taking shelter in the Kurdish city of Dohuk, 05/08/14

Iraqi Christians who fled the violence in the village of Qaraqush, 07/08/2014
IS views both Christians and Yazidis as infidels

Meanwhile, the UN said it was mobilising resources to assist Yazidis rescued from Mount Sinjar over the past 24 hours.

Members of the ancient Kurdish ethno-religious community sought refuge there at the weekend.

Almost 200,000 civilians have been displaced from Sinjar town, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has warned.

Those trapped on the mountain are facing dehydration, and 40 children are reported to have died already.

"This is a tragedy of immense proportions, impacting the lives of hundreds of thousands of people," said UN spokesman David Swanson.

"Many of the displaced are in immediate need of essential life-saving humanitarian items, including water, food, shelter and medicine."

Why is God allowing such suffering to occur? Perhaps He is removing all the Christians and Yazidis from Iraq before Babylon is destroyed again? 

Please pray for these people who are obviously in great physical and emotional distress. Ask your prayer group, if you have one, to pray for them.

Republicans Lie More Than Democrats…And The Credibility Gap Is Widening

The nonpartisan Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University has released findings from a new study that reveal Republicans are significantly more likely to lie than Democrats.

This is confirmation of the theory I've had for a few years now, that in the 1970s and 1980s and part of the '90s, left leaning people were more likely to exaggerate or lie than conservatives. But in the 1990s that began to change, possibly with the advent of Fox News and right wingnuts doing radio talk shows.

The right-wingnuts, or Republicans have been lying to conservative people for 20 years now and their lies are getting worse and worse. And the Worse thing about it is that Christian people do not question the unholy rhetoric. They actually believe what is mostly untrue. What a sad state of affairs.

Their lies mean that the liberals can refute what they say without making up stuff or even exaggerating. This makes the Democrats look morally superior, morally superior to Christians. How can that be allowed to stand?

Christian, challenge questionable statements made by Hannity and his like. Don't allow the right wingnuts to brainwash you with lies. God hates liars!

This isn’t the first time such a study has been completed.  The University released a study last May which found Republicans were three times as likely to lie than Democrats.

But what this study distinguishes two very important trends.

Republicans more likely to lie than Democrats.
The credibility gap between Republicans and Democrats is actually widening during Obama’s presidency.

Using data gathered by Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-check site PolitiFact.com, the study compares the veracity of 100 statements involving factual claims made by the parties at different periods through the lifetime of the Obama Whitehouse.

 In the first four months of President Obama’s second term — 46 of the claims were made by Democrats, and 54 were made by Republicans.  While 32% of Republican claims were “false” or “pants on fire,” just 11% of the Democratic claims were rated as such.  Furthermore, a paltry 11% of Republican statements were found “entirely true,” compared to 22% on the Democratic side.

This means almost 9 in 10 things that Republicans stated as facts during this period were likely complete fairy tales.

Or, as CMPA President Dr. Robert Lichter put it:

“While Republicans see a credibility gap in the Obama administration, PolitiFact rates Republicans as the less credible party.”

But while Republicans have been breaking every code of conscience in efforts to link Obama to a series of scandals, they have actually widened that credibility gap, their percentage of false claims rising to 60%.

PolitiFact editor Bill Adair responded to the study in an email to Politico’s Dylan Byers:

PolitiFact rates the factual accuracy of specific claims; we do not seek to measure which party tells more falsehoods.

The authors of this press release seem to have counted up a small number of our Truth-O-Meter ratings over a few months, and then drew their own conclusions.

We’ve rated more than 7,000 statements since we started in 2007. We are journalists, not social scientists. We select statements to fact-check based on our news judgment — whether a statement is timely, provocative, whether it’s been repeated and whether readers would wonder if it is true.

So, it’s official: Republicans lie more than Democrats…and their credibility is dwindling away over time.

The Awkwardness of Being on Both Sides of a War

"Today we declare the end of the split and regaining the unity of the homeland," PA President Mahmoud Abbas said in televised remarks Monday.

The unification of the Palestinian Authority governing the West Bank and Hamas governing the Gaza strip has essentially paved the way for the PA to support Hamas. This is a problem for the USA.

In a post last week I reported (The Ugly Complexities of Political Prostitution) on the awkwardness of the US selling billions of dollars worth of weapons to Qatar, an American ally in the Persian Gulf but also committed to the destruction of Israel. 

The USA also supplies Israel with weapons, so there is a serious possibility that one day a war between Israel and Qatar could be fought entirely with American weapons. This is pure bliss for American arms manufacturers - they must be smiling all the way to the bank.

Now, with the PA-Hamas merger, the USA has again put itself in the absurd situation of funding both sides of a war, not a possible war or a future war, but a current war. America funds the Palestinian Authority to the tune of more than $400 million.

Abbas has appointed an interim government over Gaza with no significant links to Hamas. Obama is gambling that this government is real and will take over power and authority from Hamas. That looks seriously doubtful right now though it may have some validity in the long term. 

It seems very unlikely that Hamas would simply hand over control of Gaza with no way to significantly influence the new government. I am pretty sure they still have considerable influence though it may not be obvious.

In any event, it is quite probable that some of that $400 million dollars will seep into Gaza and be used against Israel. Some reporters, unfortunately, make it sound like President Obama is buying weapons and shipping them to Gaza. Hyperbole, if not outright lies, are an unfortunate habit of the anti-Obama movement. Truth seems to have no place in politics anymore, if it ever did.

Is the PA likely to become more like Hamas, or is Hamas more likely to adopt Mahmoud Abbas' pragmatic ways? Let me put it this way; if a clean man jumped on the back of a filthy pig, would the pig suddenly become clean?

Meriam - Alive and Well and Living in New Hampshire, Nightmare Over

A SUDENESE woman jailed and sentenced to death for marrying a Christian arrived in America this morning (Aug 1) to start her new life.

ALL SMILES: Meriam Ibrahim arrives at an airport in Manchester,
New Hampshire, with husband Daniel Wani

Meriam Ibrahim, 27, arrived in Manchester, New Hampshire, with husband Daniel Wani and her two children Martin and Maya and was greeted by a huge crowd of supporters.

It brought to an end an 18-month ordeal which began when she was denounced to the authorities by her family for having abandoned Islam.

She was also accused of adultery for marrying Daniel, a Christian Sudanese man with US citizenship who lives in Manchester.

Ibrahim was sentenced to death by hanging and 100 lashes on May 15, 2014 while eight months pregnant after a Sudanese court, enforcing Sharia law, concluded that she must be Muslim because her father is Muslim.

She strenuously denies this and insists she was raised a Christian.

After the conviction Ibrahim was given three days to renounce her faith or face death. She refused to do so. She gave birth to her youngest child, a daughter, while shackled to the floor in a Sudanese jail cell.

Her treatment by the Sudanese authorities in Khartoum triggered global outrage.

It took prolonged negotiations to secure Ms Ibrahim’s release, initially involving South Sudan, where she was born.

The cause was then taken up by the Italy, the holders of the EU presidency, and backed by the Pope.

She was taken to Rome where, after being greeted by Pope Francis in the Vatican, she was allowed a few days to recuperate.

"It is an exciting day, we are really happy," said Lual Deng, president of the Sudanese Community in Manchester.

In New Hampshire, Manchester's close-knit 500-strong southern Sudan community was overjoyed at her return.

Ms Ibrahim was finally released on June 23, but detained when she tried to leave Sudan three days later.

Welcome to your new home, Meriam. I pray much joy and many blessings on your new life. Thank you for being such a great example of faith and courage. Hope you are not too disillusioned with the pettiness and absurdity of American politics and the politicization of the church.

6 Months Later, Iran Still Enriching Uranium

A senior Iranian nuclear negotiator has dismissed allegations of Iran’s consent to scale down its uranium enrichment program.

“Any agreement about Arak or Fordow [nuclear facilities] is denied. No agreement has so far been reached about the issues under discussion [with six world powers], including these two sites, and the differences still remain,” ISNA quoted Abbas Araqchi, who is also a deputy to the Iranian foreign minister, as saying.

Wendy R Sherman

He was reacting to July 29 remarks by the US lead nuclear negotiator Wendy Sherman to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about “tangible progress in key areas, including Fordow, Arak and IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) access.”

“It [Iran] promised not to fuel or install remaining components at the research reactor in Arak…. It allowed inspectors to have daily access at the Natanz enrichment facility and the underground plant at Fordow,” said Sherman who is the deputy US secretary of state.

Araqchi said, “The only criterion for the Islamic Republic of Iran has been the country’s needs and throughout negotiations [with the world powers], decisions will be made only based on the country’s needs.”

Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China – plus Germany are to resume their negotiations to discuss ways to reach a final agreement over Tehran’s nuclear energy program in September.

The right to enrich uranium, the Arak heavy water reactor and sanctions against Tehran are among the bones of contention between Iran and the six countries.

What is the point of negotiating with these people. You will come to an agreement and they will deny it just like they did in January - US Side Deal with Iran Being Denied. Meanwhile, they keep enriching their uranium and will soon have an atomic bomb to drop on Israel. 

Is the US Playing into the Hands of Iran?

Constitutional Court Strikes Down Uganda's Controversial Anti-gay Law

Uganda's Constitutional Court has annulled tough anti-gay legislation signed into law in February.

It ruled that the bill was passed by MPs in December without the requisite quorum and was therefore illegal.

Homosexual acts were already illegal, but the new law allowed for life imprisonment for "aggravated homosexuality" and banned the "promotion of homosexuality".

Several donors have cut aid to Uganda since the law was adopted.

Uganda is a deeply conservative society where many people oppose gay rights and the sentence for homosexual acts has always been life imprisonment.

Earlier drafts of the anti-homosexuality act made it a crime not to report gay people - which would have made it impossible to live as openly gay - but this clause was removed.

However the legislation that was passed in parliament was "null and void", the presiding judge at the Constitutional Court said, as not enough lawmakers had been present to vote on the bill.

The law, which was signed by President Yoweri Museveni in February, toughened up existing laws.

Lesbians were covered for the first time and those found living in a same-sex marriage could have been sentenced to life imprisonment.

The challenge to the law was brought by 10 petitioners, including academics, journalists, both ruling and opposition MPs, human rights activists and rights groups.

"The retrogressive anti-homosexuality act of Uganda has been struck down by the constitutional court - it's now dead as a door nail," the AFP news agency quotes prominent journalist Andrew Mwenda, one of the petitioners, as saying.

Ugandan human rights activists stand at the packed
Constitutional Court in Kampala , Uganda - 30 July 2014

Kosiya Kasibayo, a lawyer for the state, said a decision had not been made on whether to appeal against the ruling in the Supreme Court, the Associate Press news agency reports.

The BBC's Catherine Byaruhanga in the capital, Kampala, says supporters of the anti-gay laws have been angered by the ruling of the five judges.

They wonder whether their decision has anything to do with the president's visit to Washington next week for the US-Africa Summit, she says.

In June, the US imposed sanctions on the East African nation, including travel restrictions on Ugandan officials involved in serious human rights abuses.

The White House also cut funds to a number of programmes it is running with the Ugandan authorities.

Several European nations - including Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Sweden - had earlier cut aid.

But the Ugandan authorities have defended the law in the past, saying President Museveni wanted "to demonstrate Uganda's independence in the face of Western pressure and provocation".

Pastor Martin Ssempa, a vocal backer of the anti-homosexuality legislation, told the BBC his supporters would be asking parliament to investigate the impartiality of the judiciary.

Uganda's anti-homosexuality act:
Life imprisonment for gay sex, including oral sex
Life imprisonment for "aggravated homosexuality", including sex with a minor or while HIV-positive
Life imprisonment for living in a same-sex marriage
Seven years for "attempting to commit homosexuality"
Between five and seven years in jail or a $40,700 (£24,500) fine or both for the promotion of homosexuality
Businesses or non-governmental organisations found guilty of the promotion of homosexuality would have their certificates of registration cancelled and directors could face seven years in jail.