Christian Today report– They have had enough of the terror and now Iraqi Christians are signing up to receive training to protect their homes and loved ones from the threat brought on by the Islamic State (ISIS).

According to a report by Newsweek, 3,000 Assyrian Christian men have registered for the Nineveh Plains Protection Units (NPU) while 500 are already being trained for combat. The NPU is a militia unit founded by the Assyrian Democratic Movement to counter the further advancement of ISIS forces on Assyrian lands.

“This is our last stand, if this fails then Christianity will be finished in Iraq,” said John Michael, a British American in Iraq.

In an interview with the Assyrian International News Agency, 26-year-old Nasser Abdullad shared that they joined the militia because government forces abandoned them last summer. “I want to defend our own lands, with our own force.”

Abdullah is among those who train the new recruits in the art of combat.

According to the Catholic Herald, the NPU is being supported by fellow Assyrians in the United States, Australia, and Sweden. The first to join are also reportedly receiving training from an American security company.

It remains unclear, however, whether the organisation could support the training of the rest of the recruits. Organisers expressed optimism that the US National Defense Authorization Act, passed last December by the US Congress could become a source of funds in the fight against the ISIS.

The USNDAA has earmarked roughly $1.6 billion funding for “local forces that are committed to protecting highly vulnerable ethnic and religious minority communities in Nineveh Plains and elsewhere.”

Of the territory, only Al Qosh, and three small villages remain free as most of the Christians have been forced out of the Nineveh Plains by ISIS attacks.

“It’s also important for the locals to send a message to ISIS that they are not going to allow the demographic change to become permanent. The Assyrians want their land back and they – as well as the Turkmen and the Yazidis – are sending a message that: ‘We are going to come back and we are not going to leave our villages and towns and our cultures to be destroyed. We want to come back to our homes and, no matter what we face, we’re willing to fight and take that back.’ I think that is a positive message for the entire nation,” Iraq expert Sajad Jiyad said.

Source: Christian Today

Christian Today report– The senseless murder of Jordanian pilot Mouath al-Kasaesbeh by ISIS militants has been denounced by religious leaders, who are praying for interfaith unity.

Muslim clerics across the world have repeatedly condemned the violence perpetrated by jihadists, and have no expressed “deep anger” over the killing of Kasaesbeh which was revealed in a video released on Tuesday.

The captured pilot was shown apparently being burnt alive in a cage by the extremist group. Jordan, which has participated in a US-led military campaign to bomb Islamic State positions, responded overnight by executing two al Qaeda convicts on death row.

Egypt’s top Muslim authority, the 1,000 year old Al-Azhar university revered by Sunni Muslims around the world, issued a statement expressing “deep anger over the lowly terrorist act” by what it called a “Satanic, terrorist” group.

The Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayeb, said the killers deserved to be “killed, crucified or to have their limbs amputated.”

In Qatar, the International Association of Muslim Scholars, headed by prominent cleric Youssef al-Qaradawi and linked to the Muslim Brotherhood that has influence across the region, called the burning of Kasaesbeh a criminal act.

“The Association asserts that this extremist organisation does not represent Islam in any way and its actions always harm Islam,” it said.

Islamic State posted a religious edict on Twitter, which said it is permissible in Islam to burn an infidel to death.

However, senior clerics across the Islamic world argued that inflicting death by fire was always banned under Islam.

“The Prophet, peace be upon him, advised against burning people with fire,” Sheikh Hussein bin Shu’ayb, head of the religious affairs department in southern Yemen, told Reuters in Aden.

Saudi cleric Salman al-Odah wrote on his Twitter account: “Burning is an abominable crime rejected by Islamic law regardless of its causes.”

“It is rejected whether it falls on an individual or a group or a people. Only God tortures by fire,” he added.

Even clerics sympathetic to the jihadist cause said the act of burning a man alive and filming the killing would damage ISIS.

“This weakens the popularity of Islamic State because we look at Islam as a religion of mercy and tolerance. Even in the heat of battle, a prisoner of war is given good treatment,” said Abu Sayaf, a Jordanian Salafist cleric also known as Mohamed al-Shalabi who spent almost ten years in Jordanian prisons for militant activity including a plot to attack US troops.

“Even if the Islamic State says Mouath had bombed, and burnt and killed us and we punished him in the way he did to us, we say, OK but why film the video in this shocking way?” he told Reuters. “This method has turned society against them.”

The director of the Catholic Center for Studies and Media in Amman, Jordan’s capital, said churches in the region are horrified at the recent events.

Special Masses and prayers are being held, as “Christian churches in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan convey their deep sorrow and sadness over the martyrdom of pilot Muath Kasasbeh,” Father Rifat Bader said in a statement on Wednesday.

“As the churches denounce this heinous crime against humanity, they ask all citizens to reinforce their national unity under the Hashemite leadership, led by King Abdullah II,” he continued.

“The churches will hold prayers as well in the first week of February for harmony among religions, so that religions will constitute a factor conducive for peace, harmony and unity among the people rather than a factor leading to division, killing, oppression and dispute.”

Church bells were rung at noon on Wednesday, and dedicated services were held at 6pm.

Source: Christian Today

Christian Today report– Jordan’s King Abdullah vowed a “relentless” war against Islamic State on their own territory on Wednesday in response to a video published by the hard-line group showing a captured Jordanian air force pilot being burned alive in a cage.

Jordan hanged two Iraqi jihadists, one a woman, on Wednesday and vowed to intensify military action against Islamic State.

“We are waging this war to protect our faith, our values and human principles and our war for their sake will be relentless and will hit them in their own ground,” state television quoted the king as saying during a security meeting.

US officials said on Wednesday that the United Arab Emirates had withdrawn from flying air strikes in the US-led coalition campaign against Islamic State after the Jordanian pilot’s plane went down over Syria in December.

Jordan, which is part of the US-led alliance, had promised an “earth-shaking response” to the killing of its pilot, Mouath al-Kasaesbeh, who was captured after his F-16 crashed.

Government spokesman Mohammad al-Momani said on Wednesday: “We are talking about a collaborative effort between coalition members to intensify efforts to stop extremism and terrorism to undermine, degrade and eventually finish Daesh.” Daesh is used as a derogatory Arabic term for Islamic State.

He said it was a continuation of Jordan’s long standing policy in fighting hard-line Islamist militants and that King Abdullah, who cut short a trip to the United States, headed a meeting with senior security officials on Wednesday.

“All the state’s military and security agencies are developing their options. Jordan’s response will be heard by the world at large but this response on the security and military level will be announced at the appropriate time,” Momani said.

Islamic State had demanded the release of Sajida al-Rishawi in exchange for a Japanese hostage whom it later beheaded. Sentenced to death for her role in a 2005 suicide bomb attack in Amman, Rishawi was executed at dawn.

Jordan also executed a senior al Qaeda prisoner, Ziyad Karboli, an Iraqi man who was sentenced to death in 2008.

The Jordanian pilot was the first from the coalition known to have been captured and killed by Islamic State.

Jordan is a major US ally in the fight against hardline Islamist groups and hosted U.S troops during operations that led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It is home to hundreds of US military trainers bolstering defences at the Syrian and Iraqi borders, and is determined to keep the jihadists in Syria away from its frontier.

CALLS FOR REVENGE

The fate of Kasaesbeh, a member of a large tribe that forms the backbone of support for the country’s Hashemite monarchy, has gripped Jordan for weeks.

Some Jordanians had criticised the king for embroiling them in the U.S.-led war that they said would provoke a militant backlash but the pilot’s killing produced a wave of outrage and calls for revenge.

Jordan’s authorities have not commented on how many missions the air force has carried out against Islamic State.

In a televised statement to the nation, the king urged national unity and said the killing was a cowardly act of terror by a criminal group that has no relation to Islam.

Muslim clerics across the Middle East, even those sympathetic to the jihadist cause, also expressed outrage, saying such a form of killing was considered despicable by Islam.

President Barack Obama’s nominee for defence secretary Ashton Carter on Wednesday vowed to understand and resolve reported delays in US arms sales to Jordan.

Obama has sought to attract a broad coalition, drawing on as many regional countries as possible, to avoid the appearance that the campaign is just an endeavour involving Western powers.

The US officials who said the UAE had withdrawn from the air campaign spoke on condition of anonymity. “I can confirm that UAE suspended air strikes shortly after the Jordanian pilot’s plane went down, but let me be clear that UAE continues to be an important and valuable partner that is contributing to the coalition,” one official said.

There was widespread shock and anger across Jordan at the brutality of the pilot’s killing, which drew international condemnation.

The European Union combined a statement of solidarity with Jordan over the killing of the pilots with criticism of its immediate execution of two Iraqi jihadists.

Kasaesbeh’s father said the two executions were not enough and urged the government to do more to avenge his death.

“I want the state to get revenge for my son’s blood through more executions of those people who follow this criminal group that shares nothing with Islam,” Safi al-Kasaesbeh told Reuters.

Islamic State has seized large areas of Iraq and Syria, Jordan’s neighbours to the north and east.

In the pilot’s home village of Ay, mourners said Jordanians must rally around the state. “Today we put our differences behind us and rally behind the king and nation,” said Jabar Sarayrah, a shopkeeper.

DAWN EXECUTION

The prisoners were executed in Swaqa prison, 70 km (45 miles) south of Amman, just before dawn, a security source who was familiar with the case said. “They were both calm and showed no emotions and just prayed,” he added without elaborating.

Rishawi, in her mid-forties, was part of an al Qaeda network that targeted three Amman hotels in suicide bombings in 2005. She was meant to die in one of the attacks – the worst in Jordan’s history – but her suicide bomb belt did not go off.

Only two other prisoners are on death row in Jordan – Mohammad Hassan al Sahli, a Syrian who was convicted of plotting and executing a rocket attack in August 2005 against a U.S. navy vessel and the Israeli port city of Eilat, and Jordanian Muamar Jaghbeer, a leading al Qaeda operative.

There are at least 250 Islamist militants in prison, almost half of them were arrested in the past year and are Islamic State sympathisers.

Jordan said on Tuesday the pilot had been killed a month ago. The government had been picking up intelligence for weeks that the pilot was killed some time ago, a source close to the government said.

“The horror of the killing, the method of killing is probably going to generate more short-term support for the state,” said a Western diplomat. “But once that horror dies down, inevitably some of the questions revert on Jordan’s role in the coalition.”

The Syrian government condemned the killing and urged Jordan to cooperate with it in a fight against Islamic State and the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front in Syria. The United States has ruled out Syria as a partner in the campaign against Islamic State, describing President Bashar al-Assad as part of the problem.

The executed woman came from Iraq’s Anbar province bordering Jordan. Her tribal Iraqi relatives were close aides of the slain Jordanian leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, from whose group Islamic State emerged.

Islamic State had demanded her release in exchange for the life of Japanese journalist Kenji Goto. However, Goto was beheaded by the group, video released last Saturday showed.

Jordan had insisted that they would only release the woman as part of a deal to free the pilot.

Source: Christian Today

Christian Today report– Dozens of people have been arrested after clashing with police while protesting against a spate of church attacks in India’s capital, Delhi.

Hundreds of Christians gathered in the Indian capital on Thursday to demand greater protection amid concern about religious intolerance.

Church attacks have been on the rise in India for the past two months. Five have been targeted in Delhi since December, with incidents including arson, vandalism and burglary.

St Sebastian’s Church in East Delhi was burnt to the ground on December 1. Traces of kerosene were found inside the premises and police later confirmed it was a case of intentional arson.

In the wake of that attack, Cardinal Oswald Gracias, Archbishop of Mumbai, said he was “completely shocked and deeply saddened”.

“The arson attack on Saint Sebastian church in Delhi must be condemned in the strongest possible terms,” he told AsiaNews. “This act of deliberate torching of a sacred place of worship is completely unacceptable and cannot be condoned. People are revolted and feel vulnerable whenever the miniscule Christian community is targeted.”

Cardinal Gracias urged the police and local authorities to “prevent the recurrence of such traumatic incidents” and those protesting yesterday repeated this call.

Holding placards reading “Enough is Enough, What are police doing?” and “I am proud to be an Indian Christian”, demonstrators attempted to march from one of Delhi’s largest cathedrals to the residence of home minister, Rajnath Singh, but were stopped by police.

“All that we are asking is ‘What are the police doing? What is the government doing?’,” one protester told Reuters. Many people believe extremist Hindu groups to have carried out the attacks, but police insist there is no evidence and say they have stepped up security efforts.

India is currently 21 on the World Watch List, which ranks the most difficult countries to be a Christian. There were more than 600 attacks on Christian and Muslim groups in the first 100 days of the new government’s rule, despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi promising greater protections for minority groups.

Modi’s rise to power has led right-wing activists to declare India a nation of Hindus, though a fifth of the population identify with other faiths.

Last month, President Obama highlighted the tensions surrounding freedom of religion during a trip to India.

“Your Article 25 [of the constitution] says that all people are ‘equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion’,” Obama told a town hall address in New Delhi.

“In both our countries, in all countries, upholding this fundamental freedom is the responsibility of government, but it’s also the responsibility of every person.”

Source: Christian Today

Christian Today report- Islamic State militants continue to defy international humanitarian laws by selling abducted Syrian and Iraqi children as sex slaves, torturing them, and crucifying and burying them alive, a United Nations watchdog reported on Wednesday.

The abducted children are mostly from Christian communities and some are Shi’ites and Sunnis.

“We are really deeply concerned at the torture and murder of those children, especially those belonging to minorities, but not only from minorities. The scope of the problem is huge,” UN Committee expert Renate Winter told the press.

According to Reuters, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child said that the militants have been using Iraqi boys aged under 18 as suicide bombers, bomb makers, informants or human shields to protect facilities against US-led air strikes.

“We have had reports of children, especially children who are mentally challenged, who have been used as suicide bombers, most probably without them even understanding,” Winter said. “There was a video placed [online] that showed children at a very young age, approximately eight years of age and younger, to be trained already to become child soldiers.”

Human Rights Watch has previously reported the torture and beating of abducted Kurdish children. There were reportedly 250 children taken from Kobani. Testimonies of some who managed to escape showed the conditions they were kept under.

“I was once put inside the tire and beaten. They sometimes found excuses to beat us for no reason…They made us learn verses of the Quran and beat those who didn’t manage to learn them. When some boys tried to escape, the treatment got worse and we were all punished and given less food,” a 16-year-old boy reports.

ISIS has been spreading terror across Syria and Iraq persecuting Christians to convert to Islam and killing those who refused. On one occasion four children, all under 15, were beheaded after refusing to denounce their faith in Jesus.

After further investigation by the UN body, they called on Iraqi authorities to take all drastic measures to rescue children from the hands of the ISIS militant group.

“There is a duty of a state to protect all its children. The point is just how are they going to do that in such a situation?” Winter said.

Source: Christian Today

Christian Post report- Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill revealed that over 60 churches were recently damaged by heavy fighting in the Donetsk and Horlivka dioceses in Ukraine. The patriarch called for an end to the bloodshed between Ukraine and pro-Russian rebels, which he said has led to suffering and persecution of Christians.

“The whole civilian population of Donbas is suffering from the humanitarian disaster and armed conflict there together with the devout members of our church, whose parishes and cloisters make up a majority of religious communities in the region,” Kirill told senior clergy, as translated by Interfax-Religion.

Western leaders have blamed Russia for directly supporting the rebels who’ve taken over a number of cities in eastern Ukraine, which has lead to the deaths of over 5,000 people. Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, has denied all accusations of involvement in the conflict.

Kirill has often expressed his support for Putin, but has also spoken out many times against the war in Ukraine, urging all sides to come to a peaceful solution.

The Russian Church leader also accused schismatic organizations, such as the Kiev Patriarchate, of taking away churches and making life more difficult for believers.

“In the past year alone, schismatics seized illegally at least 18 churches in the Rivne, Vinnytsya, Ternopol, Lvov and other regions. It should be noted that there were many more unsuccessful attempts to seize churches, which attests not only to schismatics’ persistence, but also to the courage and the firmness of the faith of the Ukrainian Orthodox Christians,” he said.

The Christian Science Monitor noted the religious tensions between the Russian and Ukraine church organizations, and said that the Ukrainian Orthodox-Moscow Patriarchate, which is the Russian Orthodox branch in Ukraine, is losing many members.

Other Orthodox churches in the war-torn country, such as the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, have been providing assistance to Ukrainian soldiers fighting the pro-Russian rebels.

There have been attempts by the different churches to come together in faith, however.

In December, Archbishop Isichenko of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church said: “After wandering in the twilight of empires, the Eastern Churches, like the ancient sages, rediscover the leading star of freedom in Christ. Will the Church be able to get free from misleading patronage of earthly powers on their way toward this dawn — that’s the fundamental question that the year of 2014 has left.”

Fighting between government and rebel forces has only been intensifying in recent weeks after a failed truce. The U.S., which has heavily blamed Russia for the hostilities, has said that it’s considering sending lethal aid to Kiev in its battle against the separatists.

“The West needs to bolster deterrence in Ukraine by raising the risks and costs to Russia of any renewed major offensive,” eight former senior American officials said in an independent report. “That requires providing direct military assistance — in far larger amounts than provided to date and including lethal defensive arms.”

Source: Christian Post