MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

No word on whether the child was Christian, but they accused the 15-year-old boy of “polytheism”, a false charge that Muslims often use to describe the Christian belief in the Triunity of God …

Reuters – “Members of an al Qaeda-linked Islamist group in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo executed a 15-year-old boy in front of his parents on Sunday as punishment for what the group regarded as a heretical comment, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Mohammad Qataa was shot in the face and neck a day after being seized, said the pro-opposition monitoring group, which is based in Britain and uses a network of observers across Syria.

‘The Observatory cannot ignore these crimes, which only serve the enemies of the revolution and the enemies of humanity,’ said the group’s leader Rami Abdulrahman.

A photo released by the Observatory showed Qataa’s face with his mouth and jaw bloodied and destroyed, as well as a bullet wound in his neck.

The Observatory, which based its report on witness accounts of the killing, said Qataa, who was a street vendor selling coffee in the working-class Shaar neighborhood, had been arguing with someone when he was overheard saying: ‘Even if the Prophet Mohammad comes down (from heaven), I will not become a believer.’

The gunmen, who belong to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a militant group that started off known as the Nusra Front, took Qatta on Saturday and brought him back alive in the early hours of Sunday to his wooden stand, with whiplash marks visible on his body.

‘People gathered around him and a member of the fighting brigade said: ‘Generous citizens of Aleppo, disbelieving in God is polytheism and cursing the prophet is a polytheism. Whoever curses even once will be punished like this.’

‘He then fired two bullets from an automatic rifle in view of the crowd and in front of the boy’s mother and father, and got into a car and left,’ the report said.” Read more.

Flashback: Syria: Islamist Rebel Strength Growing, Historic Evangelical Church Of Aleppo Destroyed With Explosives – “The historic Arabic Evangelical Church of Aleppo, in the Jdeideh district (the old town), was mined with explosives and blown up ‘by armed men, for pure sectarian hatred’: This is what Pastor Ibrahim Nasir, spiritual leader of the Arabic Evangelical Church in Aleppo says, in a statement sent to Fides Agency, referring to the explosion which occurred two days ago. Rev. Ibrahim Nasir expressed ‘bitterness and sadness of all Syrian citizens’ for an act that makes Christians ‘inconsolable’.” Read more.

Syria: More Al Qaeda-Inspired Groups Joining Rebels, ‘Islamic State’ Declared In Aleppo – “Fears of the growing influence of Al Qaeda-inspired groups inside Syria increased Monday with the release of video claiming the embattled city of Aleppo is now an ‘Islamic state’ and that 13 radical factions jointly rejected the country’s new opposition coalition. The statement appears to be a reaction to the Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces, the newly formed alliance of opposition groups trying to overthrow President Bashar Assad’s regime… Jabhat al-Nusra, an organization that Western intelligence officials have linked to Al Qaeda and that has claimed responsibility for a string of bombings in Aleppo and the capital, Damascus, is purportedly one of the 13 groups…” Read more.