Christian Heritage News

 By Diana Chandler - Posted at Baptist Press : NINEVAH PLAINS, IRAQ (BP) – Christians largely remain displaced from the once vibrant Nineveh Plains eight years after the Islamic State decimated the region, a Christian charity working in the area said. Of the estimated 100,000 or more Christians who fled their homes in the 2014 invasion, perhaps 20,000 have returned to date since repatriation efforts began in 2017, Max Wood, chairman of the nondenominational American Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East (American FRRME), told Baptist Press. “It was very peaceful until ISIS came along. It’s got its own charm. It’s just horrible that so many people have had to flee that area in 2014,” Wood said after the eighth anniversary of the invasion that refugees remember as The Black Day. “We learned about The Black Day from working with refugees in Jordan.” About 200 refugees gathered at the American FRRME’s Olive Tree Center in Madaba, Jordan, Aug. 6 in prayer, dance, poetr

By Cornelis Van Dam - Posted at the Reformed Perspective : AN IRAQI FLAG FLIES OVER THE DAMAGED SYRIAC ORTHODOX CHURCH OF ST. EPHRAIM, IN MOSUL, IRAQ - Reformed Perspective A LOOK AT ISIS, AND ITS PAST, TO GET AN UNDERSTANDING OF ITS FUTURE About four years ago the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) appeared to have come out of nowhere, creating havoc with its unspeakable brutality and dramatically transforming the political landscape of the Middle East. In short order it had millions under its control in a territory comparable to that of Great Britain, with footholds in Libya, northern Nigeria, and elsewhere as well. However, it now looks as if the days of ISIS are numbered, with coalition forces having taken the city of Mosul from ISIS in July, and now having the momentum as they seek to destroy ISIS. GONE FOR GOOD? But will the battle against what ISIS represents, and its dreams of a caliphate, truly be over if ISIS is wiped off the map of the Middle East? That does not

Posted at Morning Star News: Tanta, Egypt, in the Nile Delta. (Wikipedia) Blasts in Tanta and Alexandria kill at least 44 people. (Morning Star News) – Bomb attacks on two Coptic churches holding Palm Sunday services in Egypt today killed at least 44 people and injured more than 100 others, according to reports. The first bomb exploded in the Nile Delta city of Tanta, at St. George’s Church about 60 miles north of Cairo, killing at least 27 people and wounding 78 others, according to wire reports. Hours later, a suicide bomber was stopped at the door of St. Mark’s Cathedral in the coastal city of Alexandria, where he detonated explosives that reportedly killed at least 17 people and injured 48 others. Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for the attacks. Read more here.

By JAMES GORDON MEEK, MEGAN CHRISTIE, BRIAN EPSTEIN and BRIAN ROSS - Posted at ABC News: Kayla Mueller - Martyr for Christ (Photo Courtesy of the Mueller Family) American hostage Kayla Mueller was tortured, verbally abused, forced into slave labor for ISIS  commanders in Syria and raped by the group's top leader, but her fellow hostages say she never surrendered hope, she selflessly put the welfare of fellow captives above her own and she even stood up to executioner " Jihadi John " to defend her Christian faith. Four former hostages who shared cells with Mueller, speaking publicly for the first time about their shared ordeal for ABC News' "20/20" broadcast, "The Girl Left Behind," airing Friday, say the Prescott, Arizona, humanitarian aid worker was a courageous 25-year-old who inspired them. Their ISIS guards were overseen by the British tough Mohammed Emwazi, who would later be dubbed Jihadi John, as he carried out the beheadings an

Posted at Christians Voice: Kayla Mueller was an American aid worker who was enslaved for three years by the Former Islamic State (ISIS) and was killed during the Jordanian air strikes in early 2015. Her fellow captives, who were released, claim that Kayla held on to her faith while the captors tried to convert her to Islam. This 25 year old girl has been kept as a slave and was reportedly subjected to verbal abuse, tortured and was raped by one of the ISIS leaders. Former hostage Daniel Rye, one among the captives, started to say ,” Oh, this is Kayla, and she has been held all by herself. And she’s much stronger than you guys. And she’s smarter. She converted to Islam”; For which Kayla’s response was,”No, I didn’t!“. Kayla Mueller defended her faith on Christ, responding bravely to the most dangerous human beings on this earth. everyone were surprised by her bravery. “I would not have had the guts to say that..." Read more...

By Raymond Ibrahim: While Christianity continues to be physically erased from the Middle East, lesser known is that its historical role and presence is also being expunged from memory. Last month a video emerged showing Islamic State members tossing hundreds of Christian textbooks, many of them emblazoned with crosses, into a large bonfire. As one report put  it, ISIS was “burning Christian textbooks in an attempt to erase all traces of” Christianity from the ancient region of Mosul, where Christianity once thrived for centuries before the rise of Islam. As usual, ISIS is ultimately an extreme example of Islam’s normative approach. This was confirmed during a recent conference in Amman, Jordan hosted by the Jerusalem Center for Political Studies. While presenting, Dr. Hena al-Kaldani, a Christian, said that “there is a complete cancelation of Arab Christian history in the pre-Islamic era,” “many historical mistakes,” and “unjustifiable historic leaps in our Jordanian curricu

Posted at RaymondIbrahim.com: Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamic extremist group, has killed more people in the name of jihad than the Islamic State (ISIS), according to the findings of a new report . Since 2000, when twelve Northern Nigerian states began implementing or more fully enforcing Islamic law, or Sharia, “between 9,000 to 11,500 Christians” have been killed. This is “a conservative estimate.” In addition, “1.3 million Christians have become internally displaced or forced to relocate elsewhere,” and “13,000 churches have been closed or destroyed altogether.” Countless “thousands of Christian businesses, houses and other property have been destroyed.” The report alludes to a number of other factors that connect the growth of the Nigerian jihad to the growth of the global jihad. The rise of anti-Christian, Islamic supremacism “did not emerge in Northern Nigeria until the 1980s, when Nigerian scholars and students returned from Arabic countries influenced by Wahhabi and Salaf

Posted at RaymondIbrahim.com :  Editor’s note: The following account was written for RaymondIbrahim.com by an American teacher in the Muslim world. I recently called a relative in the USA to get her view of the current republican and democratic primaries. Our conversation quickly turned to Islam and its existential threat to the free world and I was happy to see that she clearly understands the dangers posed by the so-called “religion of peace”. When I asked about her neighbors thoughts on Obama’s plan to bring in more Muslim refugees from Syria into the USA, she answered that most people she knew were against the idea, but that there was still a substantial number of individuals that agreed with the President. She said that they pitied the poor women and children they saw on our major news networks and fell for Obama’s narrative that those women and children are no more a danger to our lives than ordinary tourists. Sadly, those people are being very naïve regarding the dan

By Raymond Ibrahim As Western politicians and other talking heads insist that the Islamic State (“ISIS”) has “ nothing whatsoever to do with Islam ,” not only does ISIS correctly implement Islamic law —whether by demanding jizya from subjugated Christians or by sexually enslaving “infidel” women—but even the “caliphate’s” arcane jihadi tactics belong to Islam. ISIS’ indoctrinated jihadi children - RaymondIbrahim.com Consider a recently exposed “recruitment” tactic of ISIS: abducting, indoctrinating, and beating young children in order to mold them into explosive-vest wearing “martyrs” who hurl themselves onto “infidels”: The children who managed to escape describe how they were indoctrinated into the jihadi group’s radical brand of Islam and taught that they should execute their “unbeliever” [infidel] parents…. “We weren’t allowed to cry but I would think about my mother, think about her worrying about me and I’d try and cry quietly,” he [an escapee] said… Some children

Christian Headlines By Veronica Neffinger  - Posted at Christian Headlines : The Council of Europe has officially recognized the Islamic State’s persecution of religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East as genocide. Christian Today reports that the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe passed a resolution entitled “Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq.” The report states that ISIS has “perpetrated acts of genocide and other serious crimes punishable under international law.” The resolution passed 117 votes to one. Under international law, genocide is considered the severest crime. The designation of genocide also has actual implications for Christians and other minorities being persecuted by ISIS as it will put pressure on the United Nations Security Council to also issue a genocide resolution which will encourage countries to take action to stop the genocide. Read more...