ISIS Massacres Hundreds in Palmyra

Syrian state TV says about 400 civilians were massacred since Wednesday. Other reports say most of the victims were Shabiha militiamen.

The Islamic State (aka ISIS) group has reportedly murdered hundreds of people after seizing the ancient town of Palmyra (Tadmor) last week. The organization seized full control of the town Wednesday.

Syrian state TV has reported that about 400 civilians were massacred by the group since Wednesday, while activists in Palmyra said that ISIS fighters hunted down President Bashar al-Assad's troops and loyalists, killing up to 300 of them.

Nasser, of the Palmyra Media Center – a monitoring group on the ground – told Al Jazeera that most of those murdered were Syrian government troops captured by the fighters after taking over the town.

"Shabiha (a term used to describe a state-sponsored militia), including men and women, were the ones targeted and killed," he said.

Meanwhile, the Syrian military is deploying troops in areas near Palmyra in an apparent preparation for a counter-attack to retake it.

Talal Barazi, the governor of the central province of Homs, which includes Palmyra, confirmed to the Associated Press on Sunday that government forces intend to launch a counter-attack. "There are plans, but we don't know when the zero hour for a military act in Palmyra [sic]," Barazi said.

The capture of Palmyra has stoked fears that ISIS might try to destroy the well-preserved, 2,000-year-old Roman-era city on the town's edge – as they have destroyed other archaeological treasures in Syria and Iraq.

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Muslims Demand Turkey Convert Hagia Sophia Into Mosque

Breitbart.com reports: “A large rally in Istanbul demanded the government change the historic Hagia Sophia church, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, into a mosque. The Humanitarian Relief Foundation (İHH) led the rally through the Sultanahmet district.  Many people carried signs that said, ‘Hagia Sophia needs to be reopened as a mosque’ and ‘Let our lives be sacrificed for Islam.’  The idea to change the church into a mosque begun to gain momentum in April after Pope Francis recognized the slaying of 1.5 million Armenians as genocide. Liam Deacon at Breitbart London chronicled the history of Hagia Sophia. The Ottoman Empire did convert the church into a mosque in 1453. After the empire fell, the new Turkish government transformed it into a secular museum.  ‘Frankly, I believe that the Pope’s remarks will only accelerate the process for Hagia Sophia to be reopened for [Muslim] worship,’ Professor Hizli, a senior government cleric, said in a written statement on April 15th.  He decried the Pope’s comments as a ‘modern reflection of the crusader wars launched in these lands for centuries,’ and suggested that Turkey’s role as a ‘standard bearer’ for the Muslim world provoked criticism from non-Muslims.  The latest blow was using the church to celebrate Islam during Easter holy week…”

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Turkey, U.S. sign deal to train, equip Islamists against Syria

Turkey will provide an equal number of trainers to work alongside their American military counterparts, said an official at the U.S. military’s Central Command.

Reuters said that the agreement is “to train and equip Syrian moderates to fight the Islamic State.” Yet, the same Reuters report said, “Turkey hopes the training will also bolster the weakened and divided Syrian opposition in their war against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.”

It is highly doubtful that these “moderate” Islamists will fight the Islamic State (ISIS). In fact, according to WorldNetDaily,“moderate” Syrian rebels trained in 2012 by U.S. military instructors later joined the Islamic State.

WorldNetDaily was first to report the U.S., Turkey and Jordan were running a training base for the Syrian rebels in Jordan in 2012 and 2013. Again, the same Jordan will train similar Islamists.

Why use an alleged war against ISIS to expand training for Islamists who eventually join ISIS? Reuters said that Saudi Arabia also offered a site for such training. Saudi Arabia is notorious for its total ban on Christianity. In contrast, Syria, whose president the U.S., Turkey and Saudi Arabia want to overthrow, has been known for its tolerance for a Christian community that has existed in Syria for 2,000 years.

U.S.-supported Syrian rebels have been known for atrocities against Christians in Syria.

It seems that a bigger Republican presence in the U.S. Congress has increased pressure to support these “moderate” Islamists fighting Assad.

Even though Obama, the Republicans and the mainstream media insist on calling these Islamic rebels “moderate,” Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan was forthright:“The term ‘moderate Islam’ is ugly and offensive — Islam is Islam.”

Actually, if the Syrian rebels were “moderate,” Saudi Arabia would never support them. William Murray, president of the Religious Freedom Coalition, said“the only way to stop the tide of Islamic terror in the Middle East and the world is to shut down the funding state of that terror, Saudi Arabia.”

Turkey would never train Syrian rebels to fight ISIS. According to WorldNetDaily, Turkey backs ISIS to eliminate Assad. And Pat Buchanan, a former Reagan adviser, told in WorldNetDaily: “Depose Assad, welcome Muslim Brotherhood.”

Because of the extreme violence, rapes and slaughters against Syrian Christians by Syrian rebels, CBNNews said in a headline: “Syrian Christians: “Why Is America at War with Us””

You can ask on behalf of these Christians:

Why Is Obama at War with Syrian Christians?

Why Are Republicans at War with Syrian Christians?

If the U.S. were serious about a real war against ISIS, it would not be helping Turkey and Saudi Arabia to overthrow Assad, the only Islamic dictator in the Middle East who is fighting ISIS and protecting Christian minorities.

If the U.S. were serious about a real war against ISIS, it would be helping to overthrow Islamic dictatorships in Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

The U.S.-Turkey agreement to expand training of Islamists in Syria will only expand persecution against Christians.

What can you do? If you are an American Christian, you have a responsibility to speak up, because your tax money is being used to fund U.S. military trainers and their Islamist trainees against Syria. Because of these wicked policies, there is blood in the hands of American taxpayers. The Obama administration, with Republican assistance, makes your tax-money an accessory to the murder of Christians.

Contact right now your representative and senator and say: “I do not want my money shedding Christian blood in Syria! Please, stop it!”

Because this is an international crisis involving Syrian Christians and their families, international Christians can also help by contacting the members of U.S. Congress to condemn Turkey for its support for ISIS and Syrian rebels and condemn Saudi Arabia for its blatant anti-Christian ban.

You can contact the U.S. House of Representatives: http://www.house.gov/

You can also contact the U.S. Senate: http://www.senate.gov/

The U.S. Congress should also be encouraged to praise the Syrian government for being the Muslim government that most protects Christian minorities in the Middle East.

If the U.S. wants to defeat ISIS, it should sign an agreement with Syria. If the U.S. wants nothing to do with Syria, it should do as President James Madison said, “To cherish peace and friendly intercourse with all nations having correspondent dispositions; to maintain sincere neutrality toward belligerent nations and to exclude foreign intrigues and foreign partialities.”

If it is hard for a Christian America to support Syria for the sake of persecuted Christians, it should be impossible for her to support Turkey or Saudi Arabia.

Turkey was responsible for the worst genocide against Christians in the 20th century.

Saudi Arabia has a total ban on Christianity.

America should have a total ban on agreements with both radical Islamic nations.

 

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Judicial Watch: Defense, State Department Documents Reveal Obama Administration Knew that al Qaeda Terrorists Had Planned Benghazi Attack 10 Days in Advance

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it obtained more than 100 pages of previously classified “Secret” documents from the Department of Defense (DOD)and the Department of State revealing that DOD almost immediately reported that the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was committed by the al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood-linked “Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman” (BCOAR), and had been planned at least 10 days in advance. Rahman is known as the Blind Sheikh, and is serving life in prison for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other terrorist acts. The new documents also provide the first official confirmation that shows the U.S. government was aware of arms shipments from Benghazi to Syria. The documents also include an August 2012 analysis warning of the rise of ISIS and the predicted failure of the Obama policy of regime change in Syria.

The documents were released in response to a court order in accordance with a May 15, 2014, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against both the DOD and State Department seeking communications between the two agencies and congressional leaders “on matters related to the activities of any agency or department of the U.S. government at the Special Mission Compound and/or classified annex in Benghazi.”

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Iraqi Christian Leader Denied US Visa

Religious freedom activists are calling on the US State Department to reverse its decision to deny a visa to an influential Iraqi Christian leader, Sister Diana Momeka, who planned to visit the US this spring to advocate for persecuted Christians in the Middle East.

Today, Johnnie Moore, co-chair of the 21 Martyrs Campaign, and Samuel Rodriquez, president of the NHCLC/CONEL, a large association of Hispanic Christians, issued the call after the organization's conference in Texas this week. Momeka was to be a member of a delegation of Iraqi religious leaders visiting Washington, DC.

“Sister Momeka is a gift to the world and a humanitarian whose work reminded me—when I met her in Iraq—of Mother Teresa,” said Moore, author of Defying ISIS and a key partner with the 21 Martyrs Campaign, created following the beheadings of 21 Coptic Christians in Libya earlier this year. "It is incomprehensible to me that the State Department would not be inviting Momeka on an official visit to the United States, as opposed to barring her from entry.”

Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute was also critical of the decision. In an online commentary, she wrote, “Earlier this week, we learned that every member of an Iraqi delegation of minority groups, including representatives of the Yazidi and Turkmen Shia religious communities, has been granted visas to come for official meetings in Washington—save one.

“The single delegate whose visitor visa was denied happens to be the group’s only Christian from Iraq. Sister Diana Momeka of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Catherine of Siena was informed on Tuesday by the US consulate in Erbil that her non-immigrant-visa application has been rejected.” Shea said the nun told her that her status as a displaced person was the reason she was given for the visa denial.

Chris Seiple, head of the Institute for Global Engagement, had hoped to assist Momeka during her US visit. Seiple posted on Facebook, “In the same week that the State Deptment says it will take the engagement of religious leaders seriously (as announced in its quadrennial review two days ago), it refuses a visa to a persecuted Christian nun who has fled ISIS, Sister Diana.”

Momeka was displaced from her home at the hands of ISIS. Some 50,000 other Christians from the Iraqi city of Qaraqosh were also forced to flee. The State Department typically does not comment publicly on individual visa applications. She has visited the United States before, including a trip to Chicago to deliver a commencement address at the Catholic Theological Union in 2012.

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Muslim Congressmen Try to Boot Islam Critic Geert Wilders

WND.com reports: “As one of the world’s most prominent critics of Islam, Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders doesn’t go anywhere without his security detail of as many as six plainclothes police officers, and he rarely crosses international borders without causing political uproar, having already been banned in Britain at one time.

So it was of little surprise that three U.S. congressmen urged Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson to deny him a visa ahead of his planned visit to the U.S. this week, due to his alleged ongoing ‘participation in inciting anti-Muslim aggression and violence.’

Reps. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., and André Carson, D-Ind., who both are Muslim, along with Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., wrote a letter April 23 citing ‘the International Religious Freedom Act which allows the Department of State to deny entry to a foreign leader who is responsible for severe violations of religious freedom.’

Nevertheless, Wilders – who insists he doesn’t hate Muslims but believes Western civilization is threatened by adherents of the Islamic supremacy taught in the Quran – showed up on Capitol Hill Wednesday and spoke at two events at the invitation of Reps. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, and Steve King, R-Iowa…”

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Islamic State: Militants 'kill 300 Yazidi captives'

BBC News reports: “Several hundred Yazidi captives have been killed in Iraq by Islamic State (IS) militants west of Mosul, Yazidi and Iraqi officials say.

A statement from the Yazidi Progress Party said 300 captives were killed on Friday in the Tal Afar district near the city.

Iraqi Vice-President Osama al-Nujaifi described the reported deaths as ‘horrific and barbaric’.

Thousands of members of the religious minority group were captured last year.

It is not clear how they were killed, or why this has happened now, says the BBC's Middle East editor Alan Johnston.

Many are reported to have been held in Mosul, the main stronghold of IS after the militants swept through large areas of northern and western Iraq, and eastern Syria in 2014.

Yazidis, whose religion includes elements of several faiths, are considered infidels by IS…”

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You're Free to Toke Up. But Don't.

With the recreational use of marijuana now legal in Colorado and Washington (and the Obama administration disinclined to enforce federal laws against it), it's only a matter of time before it is completely legal coast to coast to toke up. This is a great opportunity—not to use pot, but to reflect on the true nature of Christian freedom.

We at Christianity Today believe Christians are absolutely free to use marijuana (where legalized). And, when it comes to pot in our particular cultural context, we think it would be foolish to use that freedom.

Those who grew up with unhealthy legalism in their communities need to hear the apostle Paul's message: Strictures about what to consume or not consume are a sign that we are weak in faith, not that we are strong (Rom. 14:1–12). The one whom the Son sets free is free indeed.

So all things are permitted. But not all things are helpful (1 Cor. 6:12). The Christian's freedom is a gift that leads to serving others, with care, attention, skill, and singleness of heart. It's a freedom that willingly sacrifices easy pleasures in order to serve. And by that standard, it's hard to imagine that pot will be helpful any time soon.

Most ethical decisions, certainly those about food and our bodies, are made not in isolation but in the midst of culture and history—in a community of persons, and within a story. Consider alcohol, a toxic substance for which the human liver serves as a poison control center. Alcoholic beverages are part of many cultures, partly because before modern refrigeration, alcohol's toxicity to bacteria made such beverages far safer to drink.

But alcoholic drinks do not function the same way in every culture. If you are Jewish, you are part of a community with a low propensity to alcoholism. And you are blessed with a rich history into which is woven the gift of wine, one of the glories of human beings' cultivation of the world over millennia. If you are Russian, you are part of a community with a devastating, tragic history of addiction to vodka. What is permitted for a Christian in both cases may be the same. But what is helpful may be radically different.

In our North American context, what is the function of pot? It is associated with superficially pleasant disengagement from the world. It connotes a kind of indolence and "tuning out" that is not an option for people who want to become agents of compassion and neighbor love, not to mention its association with all kinds of immaturity. Are these the eternal truths of pot, the only possible way marijuana can be used? No. But these cultural realities are still relevant for the discerning Christian.

Then there is the question of how Christians' use of marijuana would affect those most susceptible to the idolatries of our culture. A great inequality of our time is between those whose affluence provides plentiful buffer zones for indulging in minor vices without major consequences, and those who are most vulnerable to consumer culture at its worst, tempted to depend on substances to numb the pain of lives robbed of dignity and meaningful work.

Why should Christians flaunt their freedom in matters of such grave consequence for the poor? It is hard to imagine a more direct application of Paul's admonition to the Corinthians: "Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak" (1 Cor. 8:9).

Christians despise no created thing. The marijuana plant is a part of a world that was declared good by its Maker every step along the way. But enjoying the world's delights, including its panoply of aromas, flavors, sights, and sounds, must always remain subordinate to image bearing lest it become idolatry. Image bearing involves relationship, so our use and enjoyment of creation should foster relationship. Image bearing invites us to deeper knowledge and mastery of the world, so our use and enjoyment should lead to deeper capacities and competence. Image bearing offers us gifts of attention and skill, the capacity to contribute to "the glory and honor of the nations" (Rev. 21:26).

Is marijuana a cultivated celebration of the created world, one that enhances and sharpens image bearing in all its dimensions? Or does it merely substitute for the consolations and comforts of life lived truly and honestly before God and other people? In our cultural context, the answer seems pretty clear, and the way to true freedom is clear as well.

Andy Crouch is CT executive editor.

Source: Christianity Today

With Children in Foxholes

   

 

In America, I mocked politicians who plundered for votes by shaking hands and plopping kisses on baby’s plump cheeks. Who do they think they’re fooling? Now, after more than a decade of working in Sudan and South Sudan, I’d take those friendly baby-kissing politicians in a heartbeat.

In a region where armed forces drop bombs on the sick and helpless, the leaders don’t clean up their acts and put on a smiling face for elections, which took place last week in Sudan.

President Omar al-Bashir and the governing National Congress Party declined dialogue with the opposition, and he has shown no sign of ceasing the kind of violence that resulted in a 2009 indictment by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for allegedly directing a campaign of mass killing, rape, and pillage against civilians in Darfur. He’s the first sitting president to face such charges.

Al-Bashir has continued his bombing campaign against the rebels, who say their recent offensive is an effort to support election boycotts. Verified attacks in February and March killed 10 people and injured 61 more, including 16 children.

I recently returned from a month-long trip to the Nuba Mountains region of Sudan, where the organization I lead, Make Way Partners, supports an orphanage for 450 children. In my 30 days on the ground, we only had three without bombs.

The day before I left, the kids gathered to sing one last round of songs to celebrate our time together. When they finished, they waited for me to give a final address, reminding them to obey their teachers, do their lessons, and open their hearts to the goodness of God.

Just as they settled down under their school tree to sit and listen, they shot right back up, whirring past me like dervish dust devils. I hadn’t even detected the sound before their stampede, but in the distance, the thunder of Antonov AN24s rolled toward us. The planes sucked up the blue space of sky over our orphanage.

I helped four-year-old Kaka up from being trampled by the bigger kids. I spotted 10-year-old Rabi, whose right leg was blown off by one of these same machines the year before. His single crutch propelled him up the hillside. The staff directed each child into a foxhole, where we stayed as Antonovs circled us for more than an hour.

When they passed out of sight, we called the children out to take shade under nearby trees. When the planes returned, we didn’t have to tell them to dive back in, the thunder told them for us. We had no water, and the 130-degree heat took its toll.

More Martyrs: ISIS Executes Dozens of Ethiopian Christians in Libya

Once again, ISIS has orchestrated and filmed the dramatic mass killing of African Christians who refuse to deny their faith.

This time, the approximately 28 men targeted by the Libya affiliate of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (also known as Daesh) were Ethiopian Christians. In February, the killing of 21 mostly Egyptian Christians drew widespread horror and fears of future massacres, but also led to Egypt's largest Bible outreach.

Describing the 30-minute propaganda video released Sunday, Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) explained:

The exact numbers of victims in the latest incident cannot be confirmed. The video of the executions, entitled “Until there came to them clear evidence”, switches between a scene on a beach in eastern Libya, where an estimated 15 men in orange boiler suits are beheaded by masked militants in camouflage, and a scene in a desert area in southern Libya where similarly dressed Daesh members execute a similar number of men in black boiler suits by shooting them in the head. A subtitle refers to both groups of victims as "worshippers of the cross belonging to the hostile Ethiopian church."

The video also includes scenes depicting the destruction of churches in Syria and Iraq and condemns the doctrine of the Trinity as a form of apostasy. Prior to the executions, an English-speaking masked narrator dressed in black warns that "the nation of the cross" must either embrace Islam, pay the jizya tax or face death.

The New York Times reports more details on the video, as does CNN. Regarding how Mosul Christians were told to convert to Islam or pay a protection tax, the speaker in the video says, "The Christians never cooperated."

 

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