MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

Convert, pay up, or die. This is “Allah’s” version of mercy and compassion …

Hadith, Sahih Muslim 1:33a, “The Messenger of Allah [Mohammed] said: ‘I have been commanded to fight against people till they testify that there is no god but Allah, that Mohammad is the messenger of Allah, and they establish [Islamic] prayer …”

Flashback: ISIS Commander: We Offer People The Chance To Convert To Islam And Worship Allah Before Killing Them

By Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch – “‘Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.’ (9:29)

Bishop Bob would say something about this, but the ‘Muslim-Christian dialogue’ meeting is tonight, and Imam Mahmoud is such a nice guy — did you hear the one he tells about the priest, the rabbi and the imam who walk into a bar? — and the hummus is so good over at Masjid Khalid ibn al-Walid…And anyway, Imam Mahmoud has assured the bishop that he condemns the persecution of Christians. What’s that? Did Bishop Bob ask him what programs Masjid Khalid ibn al-Walid had to teach Muslims to reject the understanding of Islam that led to the persecution? Oh, come now. You wouldn’t have expected him to be rude when everyone was being so nice, now, would you? A man doesn’t get to be a Cardinal by asking that kind of question. And that hummus — it’s out of this world!

‘Isis in Iraq: The trauma of the last six months has overwhelmed the remaining Christians in the country,’ by Patrick Cockburn, the Independent, November 23, 2014 (thanks to Thomas Pellow):

Two years ago Jalal Yako, a Syriac Catholic priest, returned to his home town of Qaraqosh to persuade members of his community to stay in Iraq and not to emigrate because of the violence directed against them.

“I was in Italy for 18 years, and when I came back here my mission was to get Christians to stay here,” he says. “The Pope in Lebanon two years ago had established a mission to get Christians in the East to stay here.”

Father Yako laboured among the Syriac Catholics, one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, who had seen the number of Christians in Iraq decline from over one million at the time of the American invasion in 2003 to about 250,000 today. He sought to convince people in Qaraqosh, an overwhelmingly Syriac Catholic town, that they had a future in Iraq and should not emigrate to the US, Australia or anywhere else that would accept them. His task was not easy, because Iraqi Christians have been frequent victims of murder, kidnapping and robbery.

But in the past six months Father Yako has changed his mind, and he now believes that, after 2,000 years of history, Christians must leave Iraq. Speaking at the entrance of a half-built mall in the Kurdish capital Irbil where 1,650 people from Qaraqosh have taken refuge, he said that “everything has changed since the coming of Daesh (the Arabic acronym for Islamic State). We should flee. There is nothing for us here.” When Islamic State (Isis) fighters captured Qaraqosh on 7 August, all the town’s 50,000 or so Syriac Catholics had to run for their lives and lost all their possessions.

Many now huddle in dark little prefabricated rooms provided by the UN High Commission for Refugees amid the raw concrete of the mall, crammed together without heat or electricity. They sound as if what happened to them is a nightmare from which they might awaken at any moment and speak about how, only three-and-a-half months ago, they owned houses, farms and shops, had well-paying jobs, and drove their own cars and tractors. They hope against hope to go back, but they have heard reports that everything in Qaraqosh has been destroyed or stolen by Isis. Christians who fled Mosul pray at a church in Qaraqosh Christians who fled Mosul pray at a church in Qaraqosh

Some have suffered worse losses. On the third floor of the shopping mall in Irbil down a dark corridor sits Aida Hanna Noeh, 43, and her blind husband Khader Azou Abada, who was too ill to be taken out of Qaraqosh by Aida, with their three children, in the final hours before it was captured by Isis fighters. The family stayed in their house for many days, and then Isis told them to assemble with others who had failed to escape to be taken by mini-buses to Irbil. As they entered the buses, the jihadis stripped them of any remaining money, jewellery or documents. Aida was holding her three-and-a-half month old baby daughter, Christina, when the little girl was seized by a burly IS fighter who took her away. When Aida ran after him he told the mother to get back on the bus or he would kill her. She has not seen her daughter since.

It is not the savage violence of Isis only that has led Father Yako to believe that Christians have no future in Iraq. He points also to the failure of both the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to defend them against the jihadis. Christians in Iraq have traditionally been heavily concentrated in Baghdad, Mosul and the Nineveh Plain surrounding Mosul. But on 10 June some 1,300 Isis fighters defeated at least 20,000 Iraqi army soldiers and federal police and captured Mosul. The army generals fled in a helicopter. In mid-July Christians in the city were given a choice by Isis of either converting to Islam, paying a special tax, leaving or being executed. Almost all Christians Read more…