Islamic State carves jihadist hub in heart of Middle East

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <div class="relatedPhoto landscape" id="articleImage" style="clear: left !important; margin: 0px 0px 10px; position: relative; width: 580px;"> <img alt="A militant Islamist fighter uses a mobile to film his fellow fighters taking part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province June 30, 2014. REUTERS/Stringer" border="0" src="http://s4.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20140812&t=2&i=963531392&w=580&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&r=LYNXMPEA7B0NY" style="display: block; width: 580px;" /><div class="rolloverCaption" id="captionContent" style="bottom: 0px; clear: both; float: left; left: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: -10px; padding-right: 20px; position: relative; width: 590px; z-index: 2;"> <div class="rolloverBg" style="background-image: none; clear: both; float: left; padding-bottom: 0px; width: 610px !important;"> <div class="captionText" style="height: 60px; padding: 10px; position: relative;"> <div style="padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A militant Islamist fighter uses a mobile to film his fellow fighters taking part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province June 30, 2014.</span></div> <div class="credit" style="margin-top: 5px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">CREDIT: REUTERS/STRINGER</span></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="relatedRai" id="relatedInlineVideo"> </div> <div class="columnLeft" style="clear: left; 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margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; width: 300px;"> <div class="assetBuddy" name="breaking news - Iraq"> <span modulename="E0812141148_475056" name="trackingEnabledModule" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><div class="module" style="float: left; margin: 0px 0px 20px; width: 300px;"> <div class="moduleHeader" style="background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat repeat; border: medium none; float: left; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; width: 300px;"> <h3 style="border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: medium; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"> <a href="http://www.reuters.com/subjects/breaking-news-iraq" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;">IRAQ</a></h3> </div> <div class="moduleBody" style="float: left; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; width: 300px;"> <div class="gallery feature" style="float: left; padding: 0px; width: 300px;"> <div class="photo" style="float: left; margin: 0px 10px 4px 0px; position: relative;"> <a href="http://www.reuters.com/subjects/breaking-news-iraq" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="President Barack Obama gestures as he speaks to the media on the situation in Iraq on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington August 9, 2014. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas" border="0" src="http://s3.reutersmedia.net/resources/media/global/assets/images/20140811/20140811_5891177620140811105808.jpg" style="border: none; outline: none;" title="President Barack Obama gestures as he speaks to the media on the situation in Iraq on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington August 9, 2014. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas" /></a></div> <h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 20px;"> <a href="http://www.reuters.com/subjects/breaking-news-iraq" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;">The Iraq Crisis: As it happens</a></h2> </div> </div> </div> </span></div> </div> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">(Reuters) - Ridiculed at first, the new power which has seized a third of Iraq and triggered the first American air strikes since the U.S. troop withdrawal in 2011 – has carved itself a powerful and possibly lasting presence in the Middle East.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The bombing of fighters of the Sunni Islamic State is unlikely to turn around Iraq and its fragmented condition has given the self-proclaimed caliphate the opportunity to establish a hub of jihadism in the heart of the Arab world.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    To confront the Islamic State storming through the villages of eastern <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/syria?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;">Syria</a></span> and western Iraq, an international coalition sanctioned by the <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/subjects/united-nations?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;">United Nations</a></span> would need to be set up, analysts in and outside the Gulf region said.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The jihadist army, whose ambition for a cross-border caliphate between the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers was not initially taken seriously by their opponents, is now brimming with confidence, emboldened by blood and treasure.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    The warriors of the new caliphate are exploiting sectarian and tribal faultlines in Arab society, petrifying communities into submission and exploiting the reluctance of Washington and the West to intervene more robustly in the civil war in <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/syria?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;">Syria</a></span>.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    Unlike Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, which set its sights on destroying the West, the Islamic State has territorial goals, aims to set up social structures and rages against the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 between Britain and <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/france?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;">France</a></span> that split the Ottoman empire and carved borders across the Arab lands.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">President <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/people/barack-obama?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;">Barack Obama's</a></span> decision to step back into the Iraq quagmire nearly three years after withdrawing U.S. troops, with limited air strikes in the past few days against the Islamic State, arises in part because of inertia over Syria.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    A failure to arm the mainstream, mostly Sunni, rebellion against Bashar al-Assad’s authoritarian rule opened space for the Islamic State, which has now surged back into a broken Iraq, raising its black flag in town after town, the analysts said.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    Almost a year ago, in a last-minute change of mind, Obama decided against bombing Assad amid accusations of nerve gas attacks on rebel enclaves. That decision, many believe, has proved costly both in Syria and in neighboring Iraq.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    It reinvigorated Assad, helped in the quashing of Syria’s moderate rebels and empowered the militant Islamists who became a recruiting magnet for disenchanted Sunnis in Syria and Iraq.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    </span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">GROWING CALIPHATE</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Well financed and armed, IS insurgents have captured large swathes of territory in a summer offensive, as the Iraqi army – and now Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the self-governing north - have crumbled in the face of its onslaught, massacring Shi'ites and minority Christians and Yazidis as they advance.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The military campaign has been accompanied by a social media blitz showing crucifixions, beheadings and other atrocities. To many, the business of the Islamic State is killing infidels, and it is better at it that any of its forerunners including al Qaeda, which has renounced its offshoot as too brutal.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    Interspersed with footage of executions, and the marking out of local minorities for extermination, the message is that the Islamic State does not just preach; it acts mercilessly against its catalog of enemies.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">   Using captured territory in north and eastern Syria, nearly 35 percent of the country, as its rear base, the IS is now attacking northeastward into Iraqi Kurdistan and even west across the border of Lebanon.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    Its rapid advances are made possible by the disintegration of Syria and Iraq, alienation of Sunni communities willing to ally even with IS to resist governments they see as under the thumb of Shi’ite Muslims and their sponsor in <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/iran?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;">Iran</a></span>, and Sunni rage at U.S. and Western policy in the Middle East.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    “If you have tens of thousands of people who are willing to fight under its banner, that by itself tells you that the state system itself is really almost in tatters," says Fawaz Gerges, head of the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Obama justified his air strikes as humanitarian, to protect tens of thousands of refugees from the Yazidi community threatened with genocide, and defensive - to thwart any IS advance on Arbil, capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government where U.S. diplomats and special forces might be at risk.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    But as Washington starts provisioning poorly armed Peshmerga forces policing a 1,000-km (600-mile) border against the new caliphate, the strategic stakes are becoming clearer. The United States hopes to revitalize the Peshmerga, whose name means those who confront death but who were driven back by the IS onslaught.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    The United States has also lined up behind Haidar al-Abadi, a new Iraqi premier to replace its former ally Nuri al-Maliki – spurned by his Iranian backers and most of his own party as a liability whose sectarian policies helped drive Iraq’s Sunni minority into the jihadist camp. The political struggle exposed the treacherous political quicksand Obama now faces.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    Dr Hisham al-Hashimi, a Baghdad-based researcher into Iraq’s and the region's armed groups, said the Islamic State has found ways to compensate for its initial lack of manpower, estimated by most analysts at between 10,000 and 15,000 fighters before its rapid advance from Syria into Iraq.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    It may be overstretched by its sudden conquest of vast territory but has learned to use fear as a strategic weapon. “The more it terrorizes the people of those areas, the longer it can stay” in control, Hashimi said. “The caliphate exists and is growing now, in an environment where (Sunni opinion) rejects the central government, be that in Iraq or in Syria”.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">   </span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">SOCIAL EPIDEMIC?</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In Syria, more than three years of thwarted rebellion against Assad, built around the ruling family’s minority Alawite sect, a heterodox offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, has given the militants a base in the east and north and a following among the brutalized Sunni majority.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    In Iraq, the increasingly sectarian rule of Maliki caused anger in the Sunni minority, which held power until the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 deposed Saddam Hussein.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    The IS is well-resourced, with young volunteers, cash to buy weapons and pay wages, plus an arsenal of U.S.-supplied heavy weapons it captured from the Iraqi army in June, when it overran the mainly Sunni cities of Mosul and Tikrit.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    Aside from funding from sympathizers in the Gulf and tens of millions raised from theft, extortion and kidnapping, the Islamic State has oil. “In eastern Syria IS controls 50 of the 52 oil wells, while in the north and northwest of Iraq there are now 20 oil wells under the control of IS,” Hashimi said.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    Many experts cautioned against comparing IS with its predecessor, the al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq run by Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, which was at the heart of the anti-American insurgency and the Sunni-Shi’ite sectarian blood-letting of 2005-08. Sunni tribes finally rebelled against it.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    “These are not just barbarians who came here to steal what they could and then leave,” Hashimi says. “They are now fighting to establish a state, while Zarqawi fought to topple the central government – there is a big difference.”</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    The new caliphate declared by its Iraqi leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is filling the vacuum of imploding states and, unlike al Qaeda, are establishing a real social base, says Gerges.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    “The al Qaeda of Osama bin Laden was a borderless, transnational movement which has never been able to find a social base. The reason to take the IS ... seriously is because they are like a social epidemic, feeding on sectarian tensions and the social and ideological faultlines in Arab societies," Gerges said, adding that Syria's Nusra Front other militant Islamists were following a similar pattern.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"The phenomenon of the Islamic State is a manifestation of the weakening and dismantling of the Arab state as we know it.”</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">   </span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">RECRUITING MAGNET</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Gerges also called the militants' spectacular brutality – the crucifixions, stoning of women and now, according to Iraqi ministers, the burying alive of women and children from the Yazidi minority – all publicized over the Internet, as “a strategic choice”.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    IS has an extraordinary ability to multiply its numbers by recruiting and indoctrinating volunteers, feeding them their radical brand of Islam and training them militarily.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Mohsen Sazegara, one of the founders of Iran's Revolutionary Guards who is now a U.S.-based dissident, said the emergence of the Islamic State was a reaction by Sunni factions to Maliki and his anti-Sunni policies, which were defended by the Guards.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">   Maliki, Sazegara said, squandered the inheritance of the Sahwa, the U.S.-funded militia drawn from among the country's Sunni Muslim tribes who were a driving force in fighting al Qaeda predecessors to IS in Iraq after 2006.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The U.S. decision to hand over responsibility for the Sahwa to the Shi’ite-dominated Iraqi government in 2009 was a mistake, which alienated them and drove many to join IS ranks.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">   "U.S. General (David) Petraeus used the tribes in Iraq to fight the al Qaeda predecessors to IS. But Maliki upset the tribes. The hardline pro-Shi’ite policy of <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/iran?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;">Iran</a></span> and Maliki and those around him led to this Sunni extremism. Islamic State is one manifestation of that,” Sazegara said. </span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">  The success of the Islamic State has created a dilemma for all the Muslim neighbors and beyond from <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/saudi-arabia?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;">Saudi Arabia</a></span> to <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/libya?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;">Libya</a></span>.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    Riyadh, which until now has seen non-Arab, Shi’ite Iran as ultimately posing the greater threat, is worried that the Islamic State's territorial gains will radicalize Saudis who may eventually target their own government.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The conservative Sunni kingdom was so concerned by the Islamic State's advance in June and July that it moved tens of thousands of troops to the border with Iraq. Yet, Saudi officials say they do not believe the Islamic State is capable of posing any military threat to the mighty Saudi armed forces.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    By contrast, they regard Iran and its Shi'ite allies across the region as posing a far more sustained and dangerous threat to the kingdom's position in the Arab and Islamic world.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">SAUDI CONCERNS</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Since the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam’s Sunni-dominated rule, <span class="mandelbrot_refrag"><a class="mandelbrot_refrag" data-ls-seen="1" href="http://www.reuters.com/places/saudi-arabia?lc=int_mb_1001" style="cursor: pointer; outline: none medium; text-decoration: none;">Saudi Arabia</a></span> and its Gulf allies have not accepted the rise to power of the Shi’ite majority in Iraq.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Saudi Arabia has a strategic rivalry with Iran over the control of the Gulf but its Wahhabi version of Sunni Orthodoxy has always depicted Shi'ites as heretics and this has a huge resonance inside the kingdom and across the Gulf.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    Beyond any strategic rivalry the royal family is careful about contradicting the Wahhabi clerical establishment that underpins the monarchy.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    The Islamic State's victories against an Iraqi army run by a Shi'ite government, and against ethnic Kurdish forces seen as having encroached on Arab territory, have engendered a degree of sympathy and admiration among some Saudis, the analysts said.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    "The Islamic State's propaganda is that they are fighting the Shi'ites. This is the reason why sometimes some people have sympathy with them. But this sympathy is not substantial. It is only among those who are very extremist," said Mohsen al-Awaji, a reformist Saudi Islamist scholar. "We are very much afraid for our young people, who may believe in this propaganda."   </span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">However, most analysts agree that token U.S. air strikes are unlikely to turn the tide. It will be very hard for Washington to succeed unless the new Iraqi government radically addresses Sunni grievances by granting them a real share in power and persuading Sunni tribes to set up a new Sahwa to fight the IS.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Otherwise, the Islamic State will further expand and grow in numbers as it seizes more territory. For the moment, it is the militants who are pulling in the recruits. Video footage of long lines of young men waiting outside IS recruiting offices in Syrian and Iraqi towns shows their popularity.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A Syrian living in an area of Islamic State control near Raqqa, the movement's power base in Syria, said the group has carried out beheadings, levied the "jizya" tax on non-Muslims and settled foreign fighters in homes confiscated from minorities, former government officers and other people.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But despite that, it has still won a degree of respect among locals by, for example, curbing crime using its own version of law of and order. For youths without work, salaries offered by the Islamic State are one of the few sources of income.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The movement seems keen to sow its ideals among the young; one video distributed by the Islamic State features a preacher called Abdallah al-Belgiki - "The Belgian" - who says he traveled from Belgium to the caliphate with his young son.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">    Against a background of black jihadist flags, he asks the child, aged about 8, whether he would like to go home: "No," he replies. "I want to stay in the Islamic State ... I want to be a jihadi to fight the infidels and the infidels of Europe."</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">   At an IS training camp for boys, one fighter tells the camera: "This generation of children is the generation of the caliphate, this is the generation that will fight the Americans and their allies, the apostates and the infidels."</span></div> <span id="articleText" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span id="midArticle_start"></span><span id="midArticle_0"></span><span class="focusParagraph"></span><span id="midArticle_1"></span><span id="midArticle_2"></span><span id="midArticle_3"></span><span id="midArticle_4"></span><span id="midArticle_5"></span><span id="midArticle_6"></span><span id="midArticle_7"></span><span id="midArticle_8"></span><span id="midArticle_9"></span><span id="midArticle_10"></span><span id="midArticle_11"></span><span id="midArticle_12"></span><span id="midArticle_13"></span><span id="midArticle_14"></span><span id="midArticle_15"></span><span id="midArticle_0"></span><span id="midArticle_1"></span><span id="midArticle_2"></span><span id="midArticle_3"></span><span id="midArticle_4"></span><span id="midArticle_5"></span><span id="midArticle_6"></span><span id="midArticle_7"></span><span id="midArticle_8"></span><span id="midArticle_9"></span><span id="midArticle_10"></span><span id="midArticle_11"></span><span id="midArticle_12"></span><span id="midArticle_13"></span><span id="midArticle_14"></span><span id="midArticle_15"></span><span id="midArticle_0"></span><span id="midArticle_1"></span><span id="midArticle_2"></span><span id="midArticle_3"></span><span id="midArticle_4"></span><span id="midArticle_5"></span><span id="midArticle_6"></span><span id="midArticle_7"></span><span id="midArticle_8"></span><span id="midArticle_9"></span><span id="midArticle_10"></span><span id="midArticle_11"></span><span id="midArticle_12"></span><span id="midArticle_13"></span><span id="midArticle_14"></span><span id="midArticle_15"></span><span id="midArticle_0"></span><span id="midArticle_1"></span><span id="midArticle_2"></span><span id="midArticle_3"></span><span id="midArticle_4"></span><span id="midArticle_5"></span><span id="midArticle_6"></span><span id="midArticle_7"></span><span id="midArticle_8"></span><span id="midArticle_9"></span><span id="midArticle_10"></span><span id="midArticle_11"></span><span id="midArticle_12"></span><span id="midArticle_13"></span></span><br /> <div style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px;"> </div> <span id="midArticle_14"></span><br /> <div style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.235294); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.301961); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: black; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; orphans: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"> "The true ideology has been planted in these children."</div> </div>

Islamic State carves jihadist hub in heart of Middle East

A militant Islamist fighter uses a mobile to film his fellow fighters taking part in a military parade along the streets of Syria'...

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Something is happening in the spirit realm and God help us not to just know it but to do something about our lives

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <div class="inline-content inline-photo" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(213, 213, 213); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-top-width: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 20px;"> <h1 style="margin: 0px 0px 0.45em;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">After leveling Iraq’s Tomb of Jonah, the Islamic State could destroy ‘anything in the Bible’</span></span></h1> <div class="left social-tools-wrapper" style="float: left;"> <ul class="social-tools inline top" style="display: inline; margin-bottom: 5px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px;"> <li class="first tool facebook" style="border: 1px solid rgb(213, 213, 213); cursor: pointer; display: inline-block; margin: 0px 0px 30px -4px; padding: 0.8em 1.3em;"><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/25/after-leveling-iraqs-tomb-of-jonah-the-islamic-state-could-destroy-anything-in-the-bible/?tid=pm_national_pop#" style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="fa fa-facebook-square" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); display: inline-block;"></span></a></li> </ul> </div> <br /> <article><div class="inline-content inline-video" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(213, 213, 213); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-top-width: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 20px;"> <div class="posttv-video-embed" data-processed="1" data-uuid="ba9f429c-1396-11e4-ac56-773e54a65906" style="height: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-bottom: 56.25% !important; position: relative;"> <iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/c/embed/ba9f429c-1396-11e4-ac56-773e54a65906?e=null" style="height: 356px; left: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; width: 599px;"></iframe><em style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br /></em></div> <div class="posttv-video-embed" data-processed="1" data-uuid="ba9f429c-1396-11e4-ac56-773e54a65906" style="height: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-bottom: 56.25% !important; position: relative;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Video of the destruction of the Tomb of Jonah, also known as the Mosque of Jonah, by the Islamic State. </span></div> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Jonah’s main appearance in the Old Testament is short, but none too sweet.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As recounted in the Book of Jonah, God asked Jonah to preach. Not thinking himself cut out for the evangelizing game, Jonah ran away to sea.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But then Yahweh sent a great storm. When Jonah’s shipmates found out he was running from the Man Upstairs, they regretfully threw him overboard. Rather than let Jonah drown, God sent a great fish (or a whale, depending on the translation) to swallow him and — yuck — vomit him on dry land. Once saved, Jonah did preach to the people — but then got angry with God when He spared the wicked.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The end.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But as reluctant a prophet as Jonah was, his purported tomb in Mosul, Iraq, is a holy site for Muslims – even though it’s not likely the final resting place of a man purported to live in a fish’s tummy for three days. Instead, wrote Columbia University Near Eastern history PhD student <a href="http://gatesofnineveh.wordpress.com/2014/07/11/what-is-the-tomb-of-the-prophet-jonah/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">Christopher Jones</a>, the tomb is a sacred place “to meditate on the questions raised by the story of Jonah: questions of justice, obedience, providence, fairness and divine mercy.”</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Until this month, when it was destroyed by the Islamic State.</span></div> <div class="inline-content inline-photo" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(213, 213, 213); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgb(213, 213, 213); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; margin: 20px 0px; padding: 20px 0px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><img class="" data-hi-res-src="http://img.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2014/07/04329142.jpg" data-low-res-src="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=http://img.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2014/07/04329142.jpg&w=480" src="http://img.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2014/07/04329142.jpg" style="border: 0px; width: 599px;" /><br /><span class="pb-caption">Iraqis inspect the wreckage of the grave of the Nebi Yunus, or the prophet Jonah, in Mosul, Iraq, on July 24, 2014. (EPA)</span></span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/iraq-jihadists-blow-jonahs-tomb-mosul-official-220531959.html" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">Agence France-Presse</a> confirmed rumors of the tomb’s fate with an Iraqi official. The official said Islamic State forces closed the mosque and took an hour wiring it with explosive charges. Then:</span></span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Boom.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Jonah’s tomb “has been turned to dust,” the official said.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Islamic State isn’t new to this. As it establishes a caliphate to spread its ultraconservative faith, it’s destroyed cultural artifacts including Sunni, Shia and Sufi sites, <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/isis-destroys-shiite-mosques-and-shrines-iraq-257683" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">according to Newsweek</a>, and replaced the crosses on Mosul’s Syrian Orthodox cathedral with black flags.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Why?</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“It indicates they are going for total eradication not just of their enemies but even of the possibility of people living together under their rule,” Sam Hardy, a professor at the American University of Rome and author of the blog <a href="http://conflictantiquities.wordpress.com/about-contact-employ/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">Conflict Antiquities</a>, told The Washington Post in a phone interview.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Sometimes the practitioners of a new religion feel compelled to recognize a place as sacred, and develop their own reasons to continue to venerate it,”<a href="http://gatesofnineveh.wordpress.com/2014/07/11/what-is-the-tomb-of-the-prophet-jonah/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">Jones wrote</a>. “Other times, they choose to demonstrate the superiority of their own religion over other belief systems by destroying their sacred spaces and building their own in their place.”</span></div> <div class="inline-content inline-photo-right" style="border: 0px none; clear: right; float: right; margin: 0.5em 0px 10px 20px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; width: 300px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><img alt="A combination photo of the 55-metre-high Buddha statue in Bamiyan, central Afghanistan in December 18, 1997 (left) and after its destruction on March 26, 2001. It has been ten years since the statue was destroyed by the Taliban on March 2, 2001. REUTERS/Muzammil Pasha, Sayed Salahuddin/Files (AFGHANISTAN - Tags: RELIGION POLITICS ANNIVERSARY)" src="http://img.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2014/07/BUDDHAS01_1299357901_14_0_1592758172-300x227.jpg" style="border: 0px; height: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" /><br /><span class="pb-caption">Left: the 55-metre-high Buddha statue in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, on Dec. 18, 1997. Right: After its destruction on March 26, 2001. (REUTERS/Muzammil Pasha, Sayed Salahuddin)</span></span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Of course, governments and religions have destroyed antiquities since, well, antiquity. Romans destroyed Jerusalem’s Second Temple not long after Christ. During the Crusades, Christians destroyed mosques. The Nazis destroyed <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/24/tired-of-selling-guns-and-drugs-try-art-theft-the-third-most-profitable-criminal-endeavor/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">degenerate art</a>. And the Taliban destroyed the<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/28/AR2011022803105.html" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001</a>.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The problem: In Iraq, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/in-northern-iraq-gains-by-islamic-state-threaten-centuries-old-christian-town/2014/07/19/7088f3b6-0f53-11e4-8c9a-923ecc0c7d23_story.html" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">the Islamic State is advancing.</a> If it’s willing to destroy anything other religions — even other Muslims — hold sacred, what’s next?</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Basically pretty much anything in the Bible,” Hardy said.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">What can be done?</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“If we didn’t intervene when they were killing people, it would be kind of grotesque to intervene over a building,” Hardy said.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Perhaps the Islamic State will stop on its own?</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“You think tactically they’d avoid provoking enemies,” Hardy said, but Islamic State forces “seem happy to do that. Possibly they are doing stuff to get media attention.”</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Mission accomplished.</span></div> </article><br /> <div class="post-body-sig-line" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(213, 213, 213); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgb(213, 213, 213); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 20px;"> <span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/pb/justin-moyer" style="text-decoration: none;"></a></span></span></div> <h1 style="margin: 0px 0px 0.45em;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="font-size: large;">In northern Iraq, gains by Islamic State threaten centuries-old Christian town</span></span></h1> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> </div> <div class="left social-tools-wrapper" style="float: left;"> <ul class="social-tools inline top" style="display: inline; margin-bottom: 5px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px;"> <li class="first tool facebook" style="border: 1px solid rgb(213, 213, 213); cursor: pointer; display: inline-block; margin: 0px 0px 30px -4px; padding: 0.8em 1.3em;"><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/in-northern-iraq-gains-by-islamic-state-threaten-centuries-old-christian-town/2014/07/19/7088f3b6-0f53-11e4-8c9a-923ecc0c7d23_story.html#" style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="fa fa-facebook-square" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); display: inline-block;"></span></a></li> </ul> </div> <br /> <h2 class="deck" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; widows: auto;"> <div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px; margin-top: 0px;"> </div> </div> </h2> <div class="inline-content inline-video" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(213, 213, 213); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-top-width: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 20px;"> <div class="posttv-video-embed" data-processed="1" data-uuid="889e8220-104a-11e4-ac56-773e54a65906" style="height: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-bottom: 56.25% !important; position: relative;"> <iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/c/embed/889e8220-104a-11e4-ac56-773e54a65906?e=null" style="height: 356px; left: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; width: 599px;"></iframe></div> <div class="inline-video-caption" style="margin: 4px 0px 0px;"> <span class="pb-caption" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Hundreds of Christians are driven out of Mosul after being issued an ultimatum by Islamic State fighters to either convert to Islam pay a religious tax, or face the sword. (Reuters)</span></div> <div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; color: #333333; font-family: FranklinITCProLight, HelveticaNeue, 'Helvetica Neue Light', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"> <span class="pb-caption" style="color: #6e6e6e; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span></div> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="dateline">BAKHDIDA, Iraq —</span> In the center of this hardscrabble Christian town there’s a 12th-century church where visitors can peer into an underground passageway that once allowed the faithful to hide from Muslim marauders.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The tunnels below have since crumbled, but the threat still looms on northern Iraq’s surrounding plains.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When advancing Islamic State militants launched mortar attacks in late June, nearly all of Bakhdida’s 50,000 residents <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/iraqi-christians-seek-safety-with-kurds-as-thousands-flee-isils-advance/article19346793/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">fled overland</a> to Irbil, the capital of the Iraqi region of Kurdistan, for protection. Were it not for Kurdish pesh merga forces that swept in to beat back the onslaught, this historic Christian enclave, known to locals as Qaraqosh, would be deserted.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In recent days, most people have come back to their homes. But dire water and fuel shortages, electrical blackouts and a lack of work are strangling returnees who must also grapple with the mental strain of living within firing range of al-Qaeda-inspired Sunni jihadists.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">With Iraq at risk of fracturing along sectarian fault lines, local leaders fear the loss of one of the world’s oldest Christian communities and its heritage as more and more residents move to Kurdish cities and neighboring countries. On Friday, the exodus was accelerated when the Islamic State<a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/07/iraq-christians-told-convert-face-death-2014718111040982432.html" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">decreed</a> that Christian holdouts in the city of Mosul must convert to Islam or pay a special tax — with death as a “last resort.’’</span></div> <div class="inline-content inline-video" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(213, 213, 213); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgb(213, 213, 213); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; margin: 20px 0px; padding: 20px 0px;"> <div class="posttv-video-embed" data-processed="1" data-uuid="d928b990-0f5f-11e4-b0dd-edc009ac1f9d" style="height: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-bottom: 56.25% !important; position: relative;"> <iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" src="http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/c/embed/d928b990-0f5f-11e4-b0dd-edc009ac1f9d?e=null" style="height: 356px; left: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; width: 599px;"></iframe></div> <div class="inline-video-caption" style="margin: 4px 0px 0px;"> <span class="pb-caption" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Five car bombs kill at least 26 people in mainly Shi'ite districts of Baghdad on Saturday. Sunni insurgents are within striking distance of Baghdad. (Reuters)</span></div> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Bags are packed; people are leaving for good because it’s almost impossible to live here right now,” said Louis Marcus Ayub, 54, a Syrian Catholic member of the Bakhdida city council. “If there is no political solution, we’re in danger of disappearing.”</span></div> <div class="wp-inline-bb pb-centered-bb has-subscribe-promo" id="slug_inline_bb" style="background-position: 123px -398px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; clear: both; float: none !important; height: 250px; margin: -20px auto 30px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 300px;"> <div id="google_ads_iframe_/701/wpni.world_6__container__" style="border: 0pt none;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><iframe frameborder="0" height="250" id="google_ads_iframe_/701/wpni.world_6" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" name="google_ads_iframe_/701/wpni.world_6" scrolling="no" style="border-width: 0px; vertical-align: bottom; width: 300px;" width="300"></iframe></span></div> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Iraqi Christians have endured greater <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2010/11/24/november-26-2010-disappearing-christians-of-iraq/7568/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">persecution</a> since the 2003 U.S. invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. In the sectarian conflict that followed, a surge of harassment, church bombings and other deadly attacks caused the population to shrink from 1.5 million to about 400,000.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In 2008, a <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95343489" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">wave of violence</a> targeted Christians living in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city and an ancient hub of Christianity in the region. Without a militia of their own, thousands found safe haven in Bakhdida, about 19 miles to the southeast.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When Islamic State militants staged a lightning attack June 10 on Mosul and took over the city, fresh waves of Christians fled to Bakhdida; only this time, militants stayed on their heels. In less than 48 hours, a flurry of mortar rounds and stories of kidnapping and murder of their co-religionists in Syria combined to empty the town.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“They want to kill us,” said Martin Jameel, 25, a shopkeeper who had just come back from Ainkawa, a Christian suburb of Irbil full of displaced families, to check on his goods. “We have no oil, no weapons. We are not Muslims, so they think we are enemies.”</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, Yohannna Petros Mouche, was one of the few who stayed behind. He understood that many families had left “to lead dignified lives,” but he’s resolved not to go.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“If we all leave, it sends the message that there is nowhere safe for Christians to live in Iraq — and this worries me,” he said, gripping the pewter cross that hung heavy from his neck.</span></div> <div class="wp-inline-bb pb-centered-bb has-subscribe-promo" id="slug_inline_bb_2" style="background-position: 123px -398px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; clear: both; float: none !important; margin: -20px auto 30px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 300px;"> <div id="google_ads_iframe_/701/wpni.world_10__container__" style="border: 0pt none;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><iframe frameborder="0" height="250" id="google_ads_iframe_/701/wpni.world_10" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" name="google_ads_iframe_/701/wpni.world_10" scrolling="no" style="border-width: 0px; vertical-align: bottom; width: 300px;" width="300"></iframe></span></div> </div> <div class="inline-content inline-graphic" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(213, 213, 213); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgb(213, 213, 213); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; margin: 20px 0px; padding: 20px 0px;"> <span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/map-how-isis-is-carving-out-a-new-country/1095/" style="text-decoration: none;"><img class="" data-hi-res-src="http://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/03/National-Enterprise/Graphics/w-isis-Iraq-Syria_7-2-14_promo.jpg?uuid=ZXqcLAMFEeSGbpQiagK8jQ" data-low-res-src="http://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_400w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/03/National-Enterprise/Graphics/w-isis-Iraq-Syria_7-2-14_promo.jpg?uuid=ZXqcLAMFEeSGbpQiagK8jQ" src="http://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/03/National-Enterprise/Graphics/w-isis-Iraq-Syria_7-2-14_promo.jpg?uuid=ZXqcLAMFEeSGbpQiagK8jQ" style="border: 0px; width: 599px;" /></a><br /><span class="pb-caption">How ISIS is carving out a new country</span></span></span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“I’m not a vagabond. This is my home, and I will die here if necessary.”</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The seminary he overseas in Bakhdida had already become a way station for 35 Christian families and clergy from Mosul. According to Father Amanoel Adel Kalloo, one of the displaced, the city’s Christian community has plunged from about 3,000 to between 200 to 300 since the Islamic State takeover.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">On two trips back to the city to collect belongings, he saw that the homes of religious leaders had been ransacked and taken over by militants, he said.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Muslims renting property from Christians have been ordered to pay the Islamic State instead, and employers have been told to lay off all Christian workers. For the first time in 1,600 years, there is no Sunday Mass.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">While lives have so far been spared, Kalloo said the early July disappearance of two women who ran an orphanage, along with three children under their care, has stoked anxieties. He believes the rebel group was behind the abduction, but no one has yet received any information on their condition or whereabouts.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In Bakhdida, residents are grateful to Kurdish forces that have established a security perimeter around the city, allowing some breathing room for people to return. The Kurds have since outfitted a local Christian “protection committee” with bulletproof vests and assault rifles to patrol the streets.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">No hostilities have been exchanged in more than two weeks, but if Islamic State militants go on the offensive again, “we will defend them [the Christians] until the last drop of blood,” vowed Capt. Mohammad Kamal Nader, a pesh merga officer in charge of the security at the town’s main checkpoint. “It is our duty.”</span></div> <div class="wp-inline-bb pb-centered-bb has-subscribe-promo" id="slug_inline_bb_3" style="background-position: 123px -398px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; clear: both; float: none !important; margin: -20px auto 30px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 300px;"> <div id="google_ads_iframe_/701/wpni.world_9__container__" style="border: 0pt none;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><iframe frameborder="0" height="250" id="google_ads_iframe_/701/wpni.world_9" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" name="google_ads_iframe_/701/wpni.world_9" scrolling="no" style="border-width: 0px; vertical-align: bottom; width: 300px;" width="300"></iframe></span></div> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">For now, the overwhelming concern is water. Area taps have run dry since the Islamic State took Mosul and cut off the town’s Tigris River water supply amid 100-degree-plus temperatures.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">All water now has to be trucked in from outside at great expense.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Adding to people’s woes are electricity blackouts for the better part of each day. The main hospital is short of doctors who have stopped coming from Mosul. And without funds to pay town employees, heaps of garbage are piling up along sidewalks that remain largely empty throughout the day.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Bashar Toma, a 50-year-old mason, was among those preparing to leave. Last month, a pair of Islamic State mortars crashed onto the roof of the six-bedroom home Toma had painstakingly built to accommodate his children.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He thanked God that no one was hurt. But the constant psychological stress of living less than three miles from an aggressive and well-armed rebel force — whose forward positions are visible from his roof — has become too much to bear for the lifelong resident.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In the morning, Toma would move his family to a cramped apartment in Irbil.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“It hurts my heart to leave,” he said, “but I fear it will only get worse here.”</span></div> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-size: large;"><b>What Jihadists are Doing in Syria and Iraq While Gaza Grabs the Headlines</b></span><br /> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">By Ishaan Tharoor</span></div> <div class="inline-content inline-photo" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(213, 213, 213); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-top-width: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 20px;"> <br /> <br /> <article><div class="inline-content inline-photo" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(213, 213, 213); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-top-width: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 20px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; width: 599px;"><img class="" data-hi-res-src="http://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_908w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/05/Foreign/Images/Nic6346128.jpg" data-low-res-src="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=http://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_908w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/05/Foreign/Images/Nic6346128.jpg&w=480" src="http://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_908w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/05/Foreign/Images/Nic6346128.jpg" style="border: 0px; width: 599px;" /></span><br /><span class="pb-caption">An image grab taken from a propaganda video released on July 5, 2014, by al-Furqan Media allegedly shows the leader of the Islamic State  jihadist group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a.k.a Caliph Ibrahim, adressing Muslim worshippers at a mosque in the militant-held northern Iraqi city of Mosul.  (AFP PHOTO/HO/AL-FURQAN MEDIA)</span></span></div> </article></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The world is transfixed by the conflict in Gaza, as the death tolls of both Palestinians and Israelis killed in the fighting continue to rise. It has animated global public opinion and <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/07/22/how-the-gaza-conflict-is-being-fought-in-8-cities-across-the-world/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">sparked protests</a> in myriad far-flung cities.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But as the rockets and bombs fall, a deadlier war next door rolls on. The Syrian civil war has claimed 170,000 lives in three years; this past weekend's death toll in Syria was greater than what took place in Gaza. By some accounts, the past week may have been <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28454655" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">the deadliest</a> in the conflict's grim history. Meanwhile, the extremist insurgents of the Islamic State (also <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/06/18/isis-or-isil-the-debate-over-what-to-call-iraqs-terror-group/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">known as ISIS</a>), have continued their ravages over a swath of territory stretching from eastern Syria to the environs of Baghdad, Iraq's capital; the spike in violence in Iraq has led to more than <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/18/iraqi-civilian-death-toll-5500-2014-isis" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">5,500 civilian deaths</a> in the first six months of this year.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Over the weekend, Islamic State militants battled forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over a gas field in central Syria. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, some 700 people have died in just two days of fighting, <a href="http://syriahr.com/en/index.php?option=com_news&nid=2361&Itemid=2&task=displaynews#.U9A-1vldXTo" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">including employees</a> working at the facility.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Hundreds of miles away in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, activists and observers <a href="http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/19/iraq-isis-abducting-killing-expelling-minorities" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">report</a> a ferocious campaign against religious minorities waged by the Islamic State, which earlier declared <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/06/30/the-new-islamic-caliphate-and-its-war-against-history/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">the establishment of a "caliphate"</a> in the lands it controls. The jihadists, who espouse a puritanical, intolerant brand of Sunni Islam, have instituted strict sharia law. According to the Associated Press, the militants have even forced shopkeepers in Mosul to <a href="http://english.alarabiya.net/en/variety/2014/07/22/Veil-your-mannequins-ISIS-tells-Iraqi-shopkeepers.html" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">place veils</a> over the mannequins in their storefront windows.</span></div> <div class="wp-inline-bb pb-centered-bb has-subscribe-promo" id="slug_inline_bb" style="background-position: 123px -398px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; clear: both; float: none !important; height: 250px; margin: -20px auto 30px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 300px;"> <div id="google_ads_iframe_/701/wpni.world/worldviews/blog/worldviews_6__container__" style="border: 0pt none;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><iframe frameborder="0" height="250" id="google_ads_iframe_/701/wpni.world/worldviews/blog/worldviews_6" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" name="google_ads_iframe_/701/wpni.world/worldviews/blog/worldviews_6" scrolling="no" style="border-width: 0px; vertical-align: bottom; width: 300px;" width="300"></iframe></span></div> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Their other activities are far less amusing. On Thursday, a UN official told the BBC that the Islamic State had <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28466434" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">issued a fatwa</a>, ordering female circumcision for all girls and women between the ages of 11 and 46. But according to at least <a href="https://twitter.com/LeilaFadel/status/492292473272561665" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">one journalist</a>, who spoke with residents in Mosul, that report may be false.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Even then, the Islamic State has moved rapidly away from earlier proclamations encouraging coexistence. They ordered all Christians to either convert or leave towns and cities where the Islamic State holds sway by July 19. Otherwise, they would face execution. That edict triggered a sad exodus of Christian minorities in Iraq's embattled Nineveh plains, once the heartland for some of the world's most ancient Christian communities. The militants have <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/19/world/middleeast/isis-forces-last-iraqi-christians-to-flee-mosul.html" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">defiled historic tombs</a>, seized monasteries, kidnapped nuns and killed other minorities.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In total, more than 600,000 Iraqis were driven from their homes in June alone, a direct result of the Islamic State's dramatic advance through the country. (See the map below to get a sense of how Iraq's many upheavals have shaken its population since the 2003 U.S. invasion.)</span></div> <div class="has-subscribe-promo borB1S borT1S marB26 padB10 padT10"> </div> <div class="inline-content inline-photo inline-photo-center" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(213, 213, 213); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgb(213, 213, 213); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; margin: 20px 0px; padding: 20px 0px; text-align: center;"> <div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><img alt="Two Million Iraq Displacement v4" src="http://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/files/2014/07/iraqrefugeemap.jpg" style="border: 0px; max-width: 600px; width: 599px;" /></span></div> <div class="pb-caption" style="margin: 0px auto; max-width: 600px; text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Courtesy of the International Rescue Committee.</span></div> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A report from Human Rights Watch published last week <a href="http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/19/iraq-isis-abducting-killing-expelling-minorities" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">documented</a>recent murders, abductions and attacks suffered by religious and ethnic minorities in and around Mosul:</span></div> <blockquote class="citation" style="border-left-width: 0px; margin: auto; padding: 0px; text-align: center; width: 509px;"> <div style="margin-bottom: 22px; text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Since capturing Mosul on June 10, 2014, the armed Sunni extremist group has seized at least 200 Turkmen, Shabaks, and Yazidis, killed at least 11 of them, and ordered all Christians to convert to Islam, pay “tribute” money, or leave Mosul by July 19.<br /><br />On June 29, ISIS abducted two nuns and three Christian orphans, whom it held for 15 days. Around that same time, ISIS issued orders barring Yazidi and Christian employees, as well as ethnic Kurds, from returning to their government jobs in Mosul, two regional government officials and a priest told Human Rights Watch.<br /><br />Virtually all Turkmen and Shabaks – tens of thousands of families – have fled their communities near Mosul as a result of ISIS raids, in which the fighters seize local men and pillage homes and places of worship, residents of those villages said. Mosul’s few remaining Christian families also have fled, local priests said.</span></div> </blockquote> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">On Sunday in Baghdad, the country's foremost Christian cleric, the Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako, lamented in a special sermon the fate of his flock. "How in the 21st century could people be forced from their houses just because they are Christian, or Shi'ite or Sunni or Yazidi?" he <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/21/isis-genghis-khan-iraq-chaldean_n_5603939.html?ir=Religion" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">asked</a>. "Christian families have been expelled from their houses and their valuables were stolen and ...their houses and property expropriated in the name of the Islamic State."</span></div> <div class="wp-inline-bb pb-centered-bb has-subscribe-promo" id="slug_inline_bb_2" style="background-position: 123px -398px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; clear: both; float: none !important; margin: -20px auto 30px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 300px;"> <div id="google_ads_iframe_/701/wpni.world/worldviews/blog/worldviews_7__container__" style="border: 0pt none;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><iframe frameborder="0" height="250" id="google_ads_iframe_/701/wpni.world/worldviews/blog/worldviews_7" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" name="google_ads_iframe_/701/wpni.world/worldviews/blog/worldviews_7" scrolling="no" style="border-width: 0px; vertical-align: bottom; width: 300px;" width="300"></iframe></span></div> </div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He went on to make a chilling, grand historic proclamation: "This has never happened in Christian or Islamic history. Even Genghis Khan or Hulagu didn't do this," he said. Hulagu Khan was the Mongol warlord whose horde swept through Mosul en route to sacking Baghdad in 1258, a bloody slaughter that snuffed out <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Abbasid_Caliphate.html" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">the proud Abbasid caliphate</a> that had flourished there since the 8th century. Baghdad would take hundreds of years to reemerge as a political center. Sako may be indulging in hyperbole, but he echoes the sense of fear and uncertainty now gripping the region.</span></div> <div style="margin-bottom: 24px;"> <span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In the face of these traumas, some construe the heated attention on casualties in Gaza to reflect a kind of <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/07/obsessing-about-gaza-ignoring-syria-and-most-everything-else/374898/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">anti-Israeli bias</a>. That's a bit much: the thorny Israeli-Palestinian crisis is at the heart of regional geopolitics and polarizes the conversation in ways the upheavals further east just don't. No one, for example, is <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2014/07/23/the-most-vile-op-ed-you-will-read-about-gaza/?hpid=z3" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">trying to make excuses</a> for the loss of civilian life in Iraq or Syria. But many more should be aware of how alarming the situation has grown.</span></div> </div>

Something is happening in the spirit realm and God help us not to just know it but to do something about our lives

After leveling Iraq’s Tomb of Jonah, the Islamic State could destroy ‘anything in the Bible’ Video of the destruction of the T...

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