In this mailing:
- Guy Millière: The New Jihad: More Threatening Than Ever
- Kenneth R. Timmerman: Life Returning Slowly to Christian Homeland in Iraq
by Guy Millière • November 1, 2018 at 5:00 am
It is important to emphasize that radical Islamists use means other than terrorism to gain ground.
This week, the unelected judges of the European Court of Human Rights submitted to the demands of Sharia blasphemy laws and decided not to allow criticism of Muhammad, lest Muslim feelings be hurt. The court actually chose hurt feelings over freedom of expression and truth as a defense.
"As someone who has known what it is to live without freedom, I watch in amazement as those who call themselves liberal and progressive – people who claim to believe so fervently in individual liberty and minority rights – make common cause with the forces in the world that manifestly pose the greatest threats to that very freedom and those very minorities... We need to say to Muslims living in the West: if you want to live in our societies, to share in their material benefits, then you need to accept that our freedoms are not optional". — Ayaan Hirsi Ali, 2016.
Following the destruction of the Islamic State, awareness of the danger embodied by radical Islam has been largely erased in Europe. Knife attacks and the slaughter of passers-by in France or Britain were not treated by the mainstream media as more important than road accidents. Pictured: Police officers and soldiers secure the site of a terror attack, in which a police officer was shot and killed, on April 20, 2017 in Paris, France. (Photo by Aurelien Meunier/Getty Images)
When the Barcelona terror attack took place August 17, 2017, as horrible as it was (13 deaths, 130 injured), the jihadists did not consider it a success. They had a more lethal project. They wanted to drive vans packed with explosives into the of the Sagrada Familia basilica and two other tourist areas of the city. That, however, was the last major jihadist attack in a Western country. The Manchester attack had taken place two month earlier, on May 22, 2017; the attack in Nice, France, had taken place on July 14, 2016; and the in Orlando attack, in Florida, on June 12, 2016.
The destruction of the Islamic State under President Donald J. Trump has not only deprived jihadists of what had become a rear base and training camp; it also deprived them of the idea that they could quickly defeat the West.
by Kenneth R. Timmerman • November 1, 2018 at 4:00 am
"Something specific occurred here that requires a specific response. It is called genocide... It is important for these communities to understand that they have a superpower behind them. This is a White House priority. Our goal is to help those communities return to their historic lands." — Max Primorac, Special Representative for Minority Assistance Programs at USAID, who is responsible for aiding Christians and Yazidis targeted by ISIS.
While roughly a third of the Christians who fled from ISIS in 2014 are returning, the future of their communities in northern Iraq needs political support and a surge of security and economic development. For Christians worldwide, this is our homeland. This is where we began. These are the people we need to protect and help to prosper.
A fighter from the Nineveh Protection Units (NPU), a Christian militia, is pictured on November 8, 2016 in a church that was destroyed by the Islamic State in Qaraqosh, Iraq. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
QARAQOSH, Iraq — Christians are gradually returning to their historic homeland in northern Iraq, after three years of ISIS occupation.
The lucky ones managed to flee before the ISIS onslaught in the pre-dawn hours of August 6, 2014, and returned to find their houses intact. Most, however, are facing tremendous damage to their homes and families from a war that pitted neighbor against neighbor, community against community, tearing apart bonds forged over generations.
Yohanna Younis Towaya, 54, a prominent businessman and farmer, returned to find his home burned and looted. "One wall, next to my father's house, was completely blown out but we repaired it," he says. His father's house, next door, he says, has been flattened by an allied air strike: ISIS fighters turned it into a fighting post.
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