What You Should Know About ISIS' Wrath On The Last Of Christians And Minorities
First they came for the Christians, then they came for the Yezidi's. ISIS is eliminating the minorities from Iraq and with it Iraq's history.
By Sadho Ram — 06 Aug 2014, 05:23 PM — Updated about 10 years ago
In July 2014, Radical Islamists told Christians in Mosul, Iraq, to pay a protection tax or convert to Islam. If they did neither they were threatened with death. The majority of the people chose to leave.
Iraqis attending Mass in June at a church in Al Qosh, where many Christians have fled after being intimidated into leaving their homes in Mosul.
Image via nyt.comMen, women and children piled into neighbors’ cars, some begged for rides to the city limits and hoped to get taxis to the nearest Christian villages. They took nothing more than the clothes on their backs, according to several witness.
nytimes.com
The order from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria came after Christians decided not to attend a meeting that ISIS had arranged for Thursday night to discuss their status. “We were so afraid to go,” said Duraid Hikmat, an expert on minorities who had done research for years in Mosul. He fled two weeks ago to Al Qosh, a largely Christian town barely an hour away
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Since 2003, when Saddam Hussein was ousted, Mosul’s Christians, one of the oldest communities of its kind in the world, had seen their numbers dwindle from over 30,000 to just a few thousand, but once ISIS swept into the city in early June, there were reports that the remaining Christians had fled.
nytimes.com
Now, for the first time in the history of Iraq (roughly about 2,000 years), there are no Christians left in Mosul
Friar Gabriel Tooma at the Chaldean Church of the Virgin Mary of the Harvest, part of a seventh-century monastery overlooking Al Qosh, Iraq
Image via nyt.comInterviews on Friday with Christian elders and leaders suggest that in fact many had hung on, hoping for an accommodation, a way to continue the quiet practice of their faith in the city that had been their home for more than 1,700 years. Chaldeans, Assyrians and other sects, including Mandeans, a Gnostic community who revere John the Baptist, could still be found in Iraq, and many made their home on the plains of Nineveh in the north of the country, an area mentioned in the Bible’s Book of Genesis.
telegraph.co.ukFriday’s edict, however, was probably the real end. While a few scattered souls may find a way to stay in secret, the community will be gone.
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A YouTube video shows ISIS taking sledgehammers to the tomb of Jonah, something that was also confirmed by Mr. Hikmat. The militants also removed the cross from St. Ephrem’s Cathedral, the seat of the Syriac Orthodox archdiocese in Mosul, and put up the black ISIS flag in its place. They also destroyed a statue of the Virgin Mary, according to Ghazwan Ilyas, the head of the Chaldean Culture Society in Mosul, who spoke by telephone on Thursday from Mosul but seemed to have left on Friday.
nytimes.com
According to a United Nations report on civilian casualties in Iraq, Christians are among several minorities who are being systematically expelled or killed by ISIS
A Muslim says farewell to his Christian friend forced to leave after ISIS kicks out Christians
Image via twimg.comAmong them are Yazidis, a tiny sect that has survived for centuries and whose theology fuses elements of Islam, Christianity and Zoroastrianism; Shabaks, who are often described as Shiites whose language is close to Persian and who take beliefs from different traditions; and Shiite Turkmen.
nytimes.com
The Yazidis and the Shabaks are being persecuted in the Sinjar area west of Mosul, according to the United Nations and interviews with members of both communities. The United Nations has documented scores of abductions and killings as well as the destruction of shrines.
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And now, the Yezidis, a religious minority that number 300,000 – 700,000 in Kurdistan, is facing extermination as the Islamic State (IS), formerly ISIS, spread its Caliphate through northern Iraq
Displaced families from the minority Yazidi sect, fleeing the violence in the Iraqi town of Sinjarl west of Mosul, arrive at Dohuk province, August 4, 2014
Image via themalaymailonline.comOver the course of the past few days over 200,000 members of the Yazidi community were displaced in north of Iraq. Yet another gift from ISIS of tens-of-thousands of displaced people fleeing in terror and yet another minority belonging to an age-old community in Northern Iraq uprooted. Just like that.
digitaljournal.comOn 3 August 2014, ISIS advanced to Sinjar, which is one of very few cities in the world the Yezidis call home. The terrorists identify the Yezidis as "devil worshippers." Persecution against the 4,000-year-old religion is not new, but ISIS might eliminate them from the earth.
Earlier on Sunday, the Islamic State captured the town after driving away the Kurdish forces in the region. Witnesses claim that the militants are executing dozens of Yazidis for refusing to convert to Islam.
The Gulf News report claimed that 67 young men were shot dead by the militants. Besides executing the Yazidis, the Al Qaeda offshoot, is also reportedly taking Yazidi women for "jihad" marriage.
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Thousands have fled the Sinjar town as Islamic State militants forced the Kurdish forces guarding the frontiers to retreat
Image via ibtimes.co.inMohammed al-Khuzai, an official with the Iraqi Red Crescent Society told NYTimes that ISIS took more than 100 Yazidi families to the airport at the nearby town of Tal Afar, where it executed the men. "ISIS killed all the men," Khuzai said, "and are planning to keep the women for jihad marriage."
nytimes.com
The ISIS did not even spare the children
Displaced families from the minority Yazidi sect, fleeing the violence in the Iraqi town of Sinjar north of Iraq August 4, 2014
Image via alarabiya.netReports have also come in claiming that the Islamic State militants have forcefully taken away a large number of children from the Yazidi town. A resident told McClatchy DC that militants were taking away young children from their families.
According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), 40 children from Sinjar were killed in the attack
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
Image via nydailynews.comNorthern Iraq’s Yazidi minority has lost 40 children following a jihadist attack in the Sinjar region, the United Nations Children's Fund said Tuesday. "According to official reports received by UNICEF, these children from the Yazidi minority died as a direct consequence of violence, displacement and dehydration over the past two days," a statement said.
alarabiya.net"Families who fled the area are in immediate need of urgent assistance, including up to 25,000 children who are now stranded in mountains surrounding Sinjar and are in dire need of humanitarian aid, including drinking water and sanitation services," UNICEF said.
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Pictures posted on the Internet by members of the Yazidi community show little clusters of people gathering on the cave-dotted flanks of a craggy canyon in the Sinjar mountains.
alarabiya.net
Displaced Iraqis from the northern town of Sinjar flee to the mountains, seeking refuge after Islamic State extremists seized their hometown and vowed to execute them.
Image via nydailynews.com
Yazidi leaders and rights activists have said the very existence of the multi-millennial community on its ancestral land was at risk as a result of the latest violence and displacement.
breitbart.com
Earlier this week, the UN children's agency expressed "extreme concern" over reports that 40 children from Iraq's Yazidi minority died after an offensive by Jihadists
The UN Security Council on Tuesday condemned attacks by jihadists in northern Iraq, warning those responsible could face trial for crimes against humanity, amid fears the besieged Yazidi minority could be wiped out. Iraqi helicopters dropped supplies to thousands of desperate people hiding in mountains from Islamic State (IS) fighters, as officials warned that the Yazidi in the town of Sinjar, near the Syrian border, risked being massacred or starved into extinction.
A Yazidi lawmaker broke down in tears during a parliament session as she urged the government and the international community to save her community from Islamic militants
“Over the past 48 hours, 30,000 families have been besieged in the Sinjar mountains, with no water and no food,” said Vian Dakhil. “Seventy children have already died of thirst and 30 elderly people have also died,” she said.
themalaymailonline.com
Dakhil said 500 Yazidi men had been killed by the militants since they took over Sinjar and surrounding villages on Sunday. "Their women were enslaved as 'war booty.'"
“We are being slaughtered, our entire religion is being wiped off the face of the earth. I am begging you, in the name of humanity.”
digitaljournal.comThe UN Security Council said ISIS militants posed a threat not only to Iraq and Syria, but to "regional peace, security and stability"
“Widespread or systematic attacks directed against any civilian populations because of their ethnic background, religion or belief may constitute a crime against humanity, for which those responsible must be held accountable,” said a Security Council statement read by British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant.
themalaymailonline.com
According to BBC, the weekend offensive by IS prompted Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki to order the air force to provide support to the Kurds on 4 August 2014
It was the first sign of co-operation between Baghdad and the Kurdish region since Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, was taken over by IS in June. Correspondents said it indicated a degree of rapprochement in the face of the country's deteriorating security crisis. Militants seized large swathes of northern Iraq in June and declared the land they control in Syria and Iraq a "caliphate".
Meanwhile, as the Christians left Mosul last month, ISIS painted the Arabic letter that means "Nasrani," from Nazrene, a word often used to refer to Christians, on their homes. Next to the letter, in black, are the words: "Property of the Islamic State of Iraq."
The militants have also told Muslims who rent property from Christians that they no longer need to pay rent, said a businessman who rents from a Christian. The landlord now lives in Lebanon. Many Christians interviewed expressed a sense of utter abandonment and desolation as well as a recognition that the sound of church bells mingled with the Muslim calls to prayer, the ultimate symbol of Mosul’s tolerance, would likely never be heard again.
nytimes.com
“We are not thinking of going back to Mosul, we have left homes with our memories,” said Omar who had just arrived in Bartella and did not give his surname. “It is a sad time for Christians.”
breitbart.com