Yazidi survivor won't return to Iraq for fear of new 'genocide'

Farida Abbas Khalaf, one of thousands of Yazidi women abducted, raped and brutalised by Islamic State group fighters, says the jihadists' departure has not made it safe to return to Iraq.
"Everything is still the same. The same people who joined (IS) are still in those neighbourhoods. How can we return and trust them again?" Khalaf said in an interview with AFP this week.
"Who will guarantee that genocide will not happen again, by perpetrators using another name?" she asked, speaking through a translator.
Khalaf was 18 when IS fighters arrived in her once peaceful village of Kocho in Iraq's northern Sinjar region on August 3, 2014.
Speaking on the sidelines of a summit for human rights defenders in Geneva, the young woman with long black hair and sorrowful eyes said she and her family never expected to be attacked.
"We hadn't harmed anybody, we hadn't offended anybody... We just wanted to live in peace," she said.
But the Kurdish-speaking Yazidis, who follow a non-Muslim faith, became particular targets of hatred for the Sunni Muslim IS extremists that seized Sinjar in 2014 and unleashed a brutal campaign against the minority that the United Nations has called a "genocide".


When IS jihadists descended on the village, they gave the Yazidis two weeks to convert to Islam -- or risk the consequences.
Khalaf, who has written a book about her experience titled: "The Girl Who Beat ISIS", described what happened when those two weeks were up.
- Taken to slave market -
"They gathered all of us in the village and they asked us to convert. We refused, and they started killing the men," she told AFP.
"That one day alone they killed more than 450 men and boys."
Khalaf's father and one of her brothers were among those killed, and she was abducted.
"When we were taken, they did everything to us. They raped women and girls as young as eight," she said.
Khalaf was taken to one of IS's infamous slave markets, where Yazidi women and girls were sold and traded as sex slaves across the jihadists' self-proclaimed and since-crumbled "caliphate" in Syria and Iraq.

Continued

How long does it take to trust in Christ?

By Greg Laurie

Have you ever lost anything in the ocean? You can pretty much you kiss it goodbye. You probably won’t ever see it again.
Years ago I was scuba diving, and I was cruising along at about 15 feet below the surface. I could see the ocean floor, which was about 30 feet below the surface. I went out a little further, and the ocean floor dropped to 60 feet. I went to a depth of 30 feet and ventured out even further, until the ocean floor was at about 80 feet below the surface. Then I came to a ledge that dropped off, and I could no longer see the bottom of the ocean. I took one look into that dark abyss, turned around and went back the way I came. That is a long way down. If you drop something there, you will never see it again.

The Bible says of God, “You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19 NKJV). God will take our sin and throw it into the deepest part of the sea. He will take our iniquities and cast them into the depths of the ocean. God also promises, “For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more” (Hebrews 8:12 NKJV). Isn’t that good news? God will forgive your sin. He will forget your sin. We should not choose to remember what God has chosen to forget. It is forgiven.
The Bible tells the story of two thieves on the cross. They were being crucified on the same day Jesus was. The word thief the Bible uses is a much more intense word. They were not just men who stole things. They probably were murderers and insurrectionists revolting against Roman tyranny. That is why Rome would hang people like that on crosses.

Read more

Famous Jerusalem church closed over taxes

(AP) — JERUSALEM — The leaders of the major Christian sects in Jerusalem closed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built on the traditional site of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, for several hours on Sunday to protest an Israeli plan to tax their properties.
The Christian leaders responsible for the site issued a joint statement bemoaning what they called a “systematic campaign of abuse” against them, comparing it to anti-Jewish laws issued in Nazi Germany.

The Christians are angry about the Jerusalem municipality plans to tax their various assets around the city and a potential parliament bill to expropriate land sold by the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. The churches, which are major landowners in the holy city, say it violates a long standing status quo.
The Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic and the Armenian Apostolic leaders said the moves seemed like an attempt to “weaken the Christian presence in Jerusalem.”
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a major place of worship in Jerusalem’s Old City. Christians revere it as the site where Jesus was crucified and where his tomb is located, and its closing is highly unusual.
The Jerusalem municipality said it would continue to care for the needs of Jerusalem’s Christians and maintain their full freedom of worship. It said the church, just like other sacred sites in the city, is exempt from municipal property taxes and that will not change.


Read more

Verse of the day

28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female – for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (‭Galatians‬ ‭3‬:‭28‬ NET)