|
In this mailing:
- Raymond Ibrahim: "We Are
Never Heard": Persecution of Christians, May 2019
- Amir Taheri: Iran's Trojan
Army Faces Challenge in Iraq
by Raymond Ibrahim • July 21,
2019 at 5:00 am
- "The assailants
asked the Christians to convert to Islam, but the pastor and
the others refused." So "they called them, one after
the other, behind the church building where they shot them
dead." — World Watch Monitor, Burkina Faso, May 2, 2019.
- "When the next
wave of violence begins to hit us, will anyone on your
campuses hold demonstrations and carry signs that say 'We are
all Christians'?" — Rev. Bashar Warda, Archbishop of
Irbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, in an address delivered
in London.
- " [A] new form
of persecution is on the rise—Christian girls are being
targeted by Muslim men... Influential leaders are literally
training young men to target Christian girls to impregnate
them"... "[T]hey're forced into marrying that daughter
into a Muslim family.... Once girls are married into the
Muslim families, they're often cut off from or abandoned by
their families and they face even more difficult
circumstances. In some cases, girls are the second or third
wife of their persecutor and they have few freedoms." —
Mission Network News; Lindsey Steele; May 22, 2019. —
Indonesia.
- "The mob began
shouting outside our home asking for our family to exit our
home and receive divine retribution for our sin. It did not
seem very divine—we just saw raging evil violent people ready
to kill us." — British Pakistani Christian Association;
May 21, 2019 — Pakistan.
The May 14
torture and murder of an 86-year-old Greek Christian man on the
island of Imbros, in Turkey, is believed to have been a hate crime.
Pictured: The island of Imbros. (Image source: by rock/Wikimedia
Commons)
The Slaughter of Christians
Burkina Faso:
A number of fatal Islamic terror attacks on Christians and their
churches took place or were reported in May:
by Amir Taheri • July 21, 2019 at
4:00 am
- Although some of the
groups involved have exclusively Iraqi roots, the
"mobilization" as a whole could be regarded as
Iran's Trojan army in Iraq.
- From its first days,
the Khomeinist regime in Tehran regarded most Arab nations as
artificial states created by colonial powers around an army of
natives they had created as a means of controlling the
population. Thus, revolutionary Iran had to disband or at
least weaken those armies by creating Arab revolutionary
armies loyal to the ayatollah.
- Iraq has an
excellent chance, perhaps a unique one, to rebuild itself as
an independent and progressive power in the Middle East. However,
it cannot do so by repeating the colonial method of
nation-building: creating a state around an army subservient
to an outside power.
By the end
of July, Iraq is set to face what may be the biggest challenge it
has faced in its post-liberation history: the full integration of
Shiite militias into the regular national army. But, will that
actually happen? Pictured: An Iraqi Army unit in Mosul, on June 23,
2017. (Photo by Martyn Aim/Getty Images)
By the end of July, Iraq is set to face what may be
the biggest challenge it has faced in its post-liberation history:
the full integration of Shiite militias into the regular national
army. But, will that actually happen?
This is not the first time that the Iraqi
leadership, this time in the person of Prime Minister Adel Abdul
Mahdi, announces the integration. Abdul-Mahdi's predecessor Haidar
al-Abadi issued similar statements on at least two occasions, each
time under pressure from Washington, before meekly retreating.
No one knows exactly how many groups are involved,
as figures vary between 5 and 10 in the umbrella organization known
as Hashd al-Shaabai (Popular Mobilization). However, one
thing is certain: although some of the groups involved have
exclusively Iraqi roots, the "mobilization" as a whole
could be regarded as Iran's Trojan army in Iraq.
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment