The devastating conflict in Ethiopia is intensifying. Forces from the embattled region of Tigray are ramping up operations and taking aim at key cities closer to the capital. CBS News foreign correspondent Debora Patta joined “CBSN AM” from Johannesburg with the latest.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on November 2, 2021
💭 Iraq’s former information minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, known as “Comical Ali”, kept broadcasting until the last minute while Baghdad was being destroyed around him during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Despite bombs blowing up, dropped by American jets around them, despite having tanks rolling into the streets of Baghdad, despite behind him while he is having an interview the statue of Saddam Hussein falling over, he said, there’s nothing to see here.
17,000 Sign Petition Demanding BBC Removes from iPlayer its ‘Pleasure Marriages‘ Expose on how Iraqi Muslim clerics sell young girls for sex because it’s ‘disrespectful’ to Shia Islam
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on March 27, 2017
In a new video, a number of Christians living in Iraq expressed their admiration for U.S. President Donald Trump, and their hope that he will make good on promises to assist them and come down hard on the Islamic State.
Asked “What do you think of Donald Trump?” several members of the clergy as well as lay Christians answered that they sensed a positive change after the Obama years, and felt that they were finally being noticed.
Father Immanuel, a Syriac Catholic priest in Mosul, said simply: “I love Trump because he understands this Christian matter in Iraq.”
Archbishop Bashar Warda, the Chaldean Catholic bishop of Erbil, said that he was “really encouraged to see that someone at least is thinking of the Christians and giving, not a priority, but at least attracting attention.”
“For me,” the Archbishop said, “I would say this is probably the first time that an American politician like a president would say, ‘No, there are some people who are dying or are suffering because of their faith and we have to think seriously about that.’”
Though in different words, a common thread running through the responses was the belief that Trump actually cares about persecuted Christians in the Middle East and would do something about it.
Yohanna Toways, a Christian refugee from Qaraqosh, said that Christian and Yezidi minorities had actually prayed to God for Donald Trump to win the election.
“We have confidence in Trump,” Toways said. “Before he was elected, all the Christians and the Yezidi are praying [for him] to win, all of them, and now that he is the president we have the hope he will be the savior of these minorities by his strong decisions. I think he can help us.”
People also said that Trump offered hope to local Christians, after eight years of a president who did nothing for them.
“People here were more than disappointed with Obama, because he did nothing. So the view of Obama was terrible,” said John Neill, a volunteer aid worker for the Archdiocese of Erbil.
“I think people here are feeling excited about Trump, that he will do something,” Neill continued. “He stated in his election speech that he would do something about Daesh. That is an indication that he will go further and help the minorities in Iraq to get back their lives.”
“If Trump cannot give them hope, then what hope is there?” he added.
Similar sentiments were expressed Father Benedict Kiely, the founder of www.nasarean.org, a Christian aid group that has promoted awareness of Christian persecution in ISIS-dominated territory, especially through the spread of the Arabicنsymbol used to mark the homes of Christians.
“Many people said in our interviews with them that they had hope because he is a strong man,” he said. “God bless him. Let’s be strong and help these people. He promised during the election I remember specifically to be the president for the Christians.”
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on November 23, 2016
CHRISTIAN defence forces have captured suspected Islamic State militants hiding in a Catholic monastery in Iraq during the battle to reclaim Mosul in northern Iraq.
Known as the Iraqi Christian forces Kataeb Babylon – or Babylon Brigades – the group has been working to reclaim the city of Mosul from ISIS fanatics.
The extremists were captured near the Mar Benham Syriac Catholic monastery in the town of Khidr Ilyas southeast of Mosul on Tuesday.
Iraqi fighters battling to oust the Islamist death cult – also know by its Arabic acronym Daesh – from Mosul captured the Catholic Mar Benham monastery over the weekend, allowing its priests to return after a two-year absence.
Dating back to the fourth century AD, the monastery lies just 20 miles south of Iraq’s second city, which became a bastion of the jihadi group which swept across northern Iraq in 2014.
ISIS filmed the destruction of part of the church in 2015 when it detonated a bomb outside the building, part of a wave of terror on religious and archaeological sites that do not fit with the group’s twisted ideology.
They also burned a collection of books about Christian theology, scraped off inscriptions written in Syriac – the language used by Jesus – and demolished sculptures of the Virgin Mary and the monastery’s patron saint.
Duraid Elias, commander of the Babylon Brigades, told Reuters: “Their fundamental goal was to destroy Christian history and civilisation in the Nineveh plains.”
ISIS had converted Mar Behnam, Iraq’s largest monastery, into a headquarters for the Hisba — morality police, which enforced strict rules against such things as smoking, men shaving their beards and women baring their faces in public.
A remote corner of the complex was filled with dozens of satellite dishes the commander said had been confiscated from residents nearby.
The Babylon Brigades are Christian fighters who form part of the anti-ISIS alliance to retake Mosul.
They often travel with large wooden crosses in their pickup trucks and black headbands declaring devotion to Jesus or the Virgin Mary.
And they plan to continue fighting to rid the terror group from other Christian sites in Iraq.
The Babylon Brigades commander said: “We are proving to the world that Christians are not weak. We are stronger than they imagined.
“There are others. We are going one by one: for every Christian house they blew up, we blow up a house next to it,” he said from atop the monastery, pointing out one such pair of buildings.
“This is war. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on October 16, 2016
My Note:Three years ago, I met a Christian Syrian family from Aleppo who told me about their longtime Muslim neighbors who appeared peaceful for ages but who, once the jihad came to town, exposed their true colors: They told of how Muslim neighbors they knew all their life turned all of a sudden on the Christians after the Jihadists took control of their town. They say the following regrettably, and tears in their eyes:
„We ate, celebrated and mourned together and we thought we are one people, it never occurred to us that our Muslim neighbors suddenly would betray us , they wanted to kill and get rid of us because we are Christians, they confiscated our Churches and houses that were built by our forefathers thousands of years ago, they took everything from us, now we will never trust Muslims again, they all are of the devil.“
So, why should the world now care about Aleppo, after a Christian genocide took place right in front of our very own eyes? Yes, nobody cared about it then, three years ago, the mainstream media didn’t care either what happened to the Christians. Why should we care what happens to the children of the demonic murderers? Every one of them is complicit of exterminating the Jews, the Christians and the Yazidis. Ask yourselves, why hasn’t such picture got enough attention or gone viral?
Christian Missionaries In Aleppo Crucified And Beheaded
“At several steps on their path to death by beheading and crucifixion last month, 11 indigenous Christian workers near Aleppo, Syria had the option to leave the area and live. The 12-year-old son of a ministry team leader also could have spared his life by denying Christ…”
The Christian Aid Mission account of the fate of Aleppo’s indigenous Christian missionaries is harrowing and humbling. While Western politicians debate whether or not to risk World War III by creating a safe haven in northern Syria and imposing a no-fly zone over Aleppo – with the expectation (/certainty) of US/European forces, sooner or later, having to shoot down a Russian bomber or Syrian fighter jet – we’re hearing a lot about Assad’s (lesser) evil, ISIS barbarism and the pervasive demonic contempt for the human spirit. Women are stoned, men burned alive, girls raped and gays hurled from tall buildings. It is an image of hell.
We’re not hearing much about Aleppo’s Christians: the mainstream media don’t care very much what happens to them:
..The Syrian ministry workers in those villages chose to stay in order to provide aid in the name of Christ to survivors.
“I asked them to leave, but I gave them the freedom to choose,” said the ministry director, his voice tremulous as he recalled their horrific deaths. “As their leader, I should have insisted that they leave.”
They stayed because they believed they were called to share Christ with those caught in the crossfire, he said.
“Every time we talked to them,” the director said, “they were always saying, ‘We want to stay here – this is what God has told us to do. This is what we want to do.’ They just wanted to stay and share the gospel.”
While we drink our Fair Trade coffee and pray for the recovery of our gay pride flags, our brothers and sisters in Christ are risking everything to share the gospel with those who are being lost. They suffer hell on earth to keep people out of hell for eternity. What experience of Jesus have they had which we do not? What God-consciousness do they possess which we have not? What inner life fires them to such certainty, peace and the assurance that to die is gain?
On Aug. 28, the militants asked if they had renounced Islam for Christianity. When the Christians said that they had, the rebels asked if they wanted to return to Islam. The Christians said they would never renounce Christ.
The 41-year-old team leader, his young son and two ministry members in their 20s were questioned at one village site where ISIS militants had summoned a crowd. The team leader presided over nine house churches he had helped to establish. His son was two months away from his 13th birthday.
In front of the team leader and relatives in the crowd, the Islamic extremists cut off the fingertips of the boy and severely beat him, telling his father they would stop the torture only if he, the father, returned to Islam. When the team leader refused, relatives said, the ISIS militants also tortured and beat him and the two other ministry workers. The three men and the boy then met their deaths in crucifixion.
“All were badly brutalized and then crucified,” the ministry leader said. “They were left on their crosses for two days. No one was allowed to remove them.”
The martyrs died beside signs the ISIS militants had put up identifying them as “infidels.”
What manner of demon slices off a boy’s fingertips in the pursuit of religious conversion? What father’s agony can bear being forced to renounce his Saviour in order to spare his son? They are not infidels, but saints, sanctified by the Blood of the Lamb, made holy by being in Christ, the sanctifier. Their eschatological mission transcended race, religion, sex and social status: their loyalty to Christ made them love their enemies, seeking the image of God in the ravaged faces of hate.
Eight other ministry team members, including two women, were taken to another site in the village that day (Aug. 28) and were asked the same questions before a crowd. The women, ages 29 and 33, tried to tell the ISIS militants they were only sharing the peace and love of Christ and asked what they had done wrong to deserve the abuse. The Islamic extremists then publicly raped the women, who continued to pray during the ordeal, leading the ISIS militants to beat them all the more furiously.
As the two women and the six men knelt before they were beheaded, they were all praying.
“Villagers said some were praying in the name of Jesus, others said some were praying the Lord’s prayer, and others said some of them lifted their heads to commend their spirits to Jesus,” the ministry director said. “One of the women looked up and seemed to be almost smiling as she said, ‘Jesus!’”
After they were beheaded, their bodies were hung on crosses, the ministry director said, his voice breaking. He had trained all of the workers for their evangelistic ministry, and he had baptized the team leader and some of the others.
Thus is the vocation of Christian missionaries: without their sacrifice, the whole truth cannot be known. Their fears are real and their grief is great, but the zeal to proclaim the glory of the Risen Christ is more real and far greater. Is there any joy to be found in the torture and murder of a 12-year-old boy? Is the loss of any young life not worth a headline somewhere? Is our world so distorted and deformed that the crucifixion and beheading of Aleppo’s Christian missionaries doesn’t rend the hearts of anyone but their families and fellow missionaries?
These are the real martyrs; the very special dead. May their presence and power rend the veil between earth and heaven. We need their faces and stories in our petty, mundane lives. We might then see Jesus through the molehills.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on May 2, 2015
All but one of the members of an Iraqi delegation of minority groups—comprising representatives of the Yazidi and Turkmen Shia religious communities—have been granted visas to come for official meetings in Washington. The lone member denied a visa was the only Iraqi Christian in the group, a Catholic nun.
Nina Shea, director of Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, reported Thursday that the U.S. State Department prevented a persecuted Iraqi Catholic nun named Sister Diana Momeka, “an internationally respected and leading representative of the Nineveh Christians who have been killed and deported by ISIS,” from coming to Washington to testify.
Sister Diana is a member of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Catherine of Siena, a Catholic order of nuns that traces its presence in Iraq back to the thirteenth century.
The nun is uniquely qualified to testify to Islamic State atrocities in Iraq. When Mosul was overrun by Islamic extremists in June 2014, about 500,000 civilians left the city en masse, in an effort to escape the siege. At that time, the only group that chose to remain in Mosul was the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena, “a congregation of Iraqi sisters that has witnessed generation upon generation of war and carnage.”
On Tuesday, however, the U.S. consulate in Erbil told Sister Diana that her visa application had been denied, stating that she was unable “to demonstrate that [her] intended activities in the United States would be consistent with the classification of the visa.”
The nun told Nina Shea she was informed she was rejected because she is an “IDP,” an Internally Displaced Person. In other words, the State Department suspected that the Catholic nun could be secretly intending to stay in the United States.
Never mind that Sister Diana already had meetings set up with the Senate and House Foreign Relations Committees, the State Department, USAID, and several NGOs, or that she submitted several documents attesting to her character, as well as the temporary nature of her stay in the U.S.
She is, in fact, contracted to teach at the Babel College of Philosophy and Theology in Erbil, Kurdistan, for the 2015–16 academic year.
Moreover, Sister Diana had already been permitted to visit the United States, and she delivered the commencement address at Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union in 2012.
According to Shea, the nun has become internationally known as a spokesperson for the over 100,000 Christians driven into Kurdistan under the ISIS “convert or die” policy. Former Congressman Frank Wolf (R. – Va.) met her in Kurdistan a few months ago and agreed to sponsor her trip to the U.S. to tell her story.
“The U.S. continues to screw the Christians of the Middle East, especially the defenseless Assyrians-Chaldeans-Syriacs of iraq and Syria. It started with the British and continued unabated with the U.S. They thought these two super powers were Christian and would stand behind them. They turned out to be the Devil and they do everything they can to erase the glorious Assyrians. They are responsible for ISIS who is not only driving these people out of their homes but also erasing their heritage by blowing up places like Nimrud, Khorsabad, etc. There will be hell to pay one day”
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on March 20, 2015
— Jihadis used explosives to destroy Mar Benham monastery in Bakhdida
— Blast reduced the ancient building to rubble according to local residents
— ISIS seized control of the monastery last summer, expelling resident monks
— The ancient building was built by Assyrian king Senchareb 1,600 years ago
Barbaric Islamic State militants have dealt yet another blow to Christian history in Iraq by using explosives to destroy the 4th Century Mar Benham monastery.
The ancient building, built by Assyrian king Senchareb 1,600 years ago, stood in the Christian-dominated town of Bakhdida, just 20 miles south east of oil rich ISIS stronghold Mosul.
Locals took to social media to share images of the massive blast, which reduced the ancient monastery to little more than vast piles of rubble.
The attack was later confirmed by Kurdish journalists familiar with developments in the city.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on February 27, 2015
Last week, the attention of the world was riveted to a deserted beach in northern Libya, where a group of twenty one Coptic Christians were brutally beheaded by masked operatives of the ISIS movement.
In the wake of the executions, ISIS released a gruesome video entitled “A Message in Blood to the Nation of the Cross.” I suppose that for the ISIS murderers the reference to “the Nation of the Cross” had little sense beyond a generic designation for Christianity. Sadly for most Christians, too, the cross has become little more than an anodyne, a harmless symbol, a pious decoration.
I would like to take the awful event on that Libyan beach, as well as the ISIS message concerning it, as an occasion to reflect on the still startling distinctiveness of the cross.
In the time of Jesus, the cross was a brutal and very effective sign of Roman power. Imperial authorities effectively said, “If you cross us (pun intended), we will affix you to a dreadful instrument of torture and leave you to writhe in agonizing, literally excruciating (ex cruce, from the cross) pain until you die. Then we will make sure that your body hangs on that gibbet until it is eaten away by scavenging animals.”
The cross was, basically, state-sponsored terrorism, and it did indeed terrify people. The great Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero once described a crucifixion but only through a convoluted circumlocution, for he couldn’t bring himself to characterize it directly. After putting down the great slave uprising of Spartacus, the Roman government lined the Appian Way with hundreds of crosses so as to dissuade any other would-be revolutionaries. Pontius Pilate had much the same intention when he nailed dozens of Jewish rebels to the walls of Jerusalem. That same Pilate arranged for Jesus to be crucified on Calvary Hill, a promontory situated close to one of the gates of ancient Jerusalem, guaranteeing that his horrific death would not be missed by the large Passover crowds moving in and out of the city.
From the crucified Jesus, all of the disciples, save John, fled, precisely because they wanted with all their hearts to avoid his dreadful fate. After Good Friday, the friends of Jesus huddled in terror in the Upper Room, petrified that they might be nailed up on Calvary as well. The disciples on the road to Emmaus were, understandably, heading out of Jerusalem, away from danger, and they were utterly convinced that Jesus’s movement had come to naught. In a word, the cross meant the victory of the world, and the annihilation of Jesus and what he stood for.
And this is why it is surpassing strange that one of the earliest Apostles and missionaries of the Christian religion could write, “I preach one thing, Christ and him crucified!” How could Paul — the passage is taken from his first letter to the Corinthians — possibly present the dreadful cross as the centerpiece of his proclamation? He could do so only because he knew that God had raised the crucified Jesus from the dead, proving thereby that God’s love and forgiveness are greater than anything in the world. This is why his exaltation of the cross is a sort of taunt to Rome and all of its brutal descendants down through the ages: “You think that scares us? God has conquered that!” And this is why, to this day, Christians boldly hold up an image of the humiliated, tortured Jesus to the world. What they are saying is, “We are not afraid.”
How wonderful this is, by the way, in light of the Charlie Hebdo tragedy and the controversy over the Dutch cartoonist’s mocking depictions of the prophet Muhammad. Christians don’t fuss particularly about insults to Jesus, for we reverence a depiction of the insulted Christ as our most sacred icon. We can say, with Paul, “I am certain that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither height nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39), for we know that the world killed Jesus but God raised him from the dead.
Just before their throats were cut, many of the murdered Coptic Christians could be seen mouthing the words “Jesus Christ” and “Jesus is Lord.” The first of those phrases is a rendering of the Aramaic Ieshouah Maschiach, which means “Jesus the anointed one” and which hearkens back to King David, the paradigmatic anointed figure of the Old Testament. The second phrase is one that can be traced to St. Paul’s kerygmatic cry Iesous Kyrios (Jesus Lord!), which was intended to trump a watchword of the time, Kaiser Kyrios (Caesar is Lord). In short, both declarations assert the kingship of Jesus, but what a strange kingship! The new David reigns, not from a throne, but from a cross; the one who trumps Caesar doesn’t lead an army, but embodies the divine forgiveness.
The ISIS barbarians were actually quite right in entitling their video “A Message Written in Blood.” Up and down the centuries, tyrants and their lackeys have thought that they could wipe out the followers of Jesus through acts of violence.
But as Tertullian observed long ago, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. And they were furthermore right in sending their message to “the Nation of the Cross.” But they should know that the cross taunts them.
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