"I admire and greatly respect all those of you who find it in your hearts to pray for those who persecute you and, following the example of Christ, seek forgiveness for your enemies," he said.

The Prince's message was inspired by his recent meetings with Christian Church leaders from the Middle East.

The meetings were facilitated by the international charity Aid to the Church in Need.

His message forms part of his ongoing dialogue with Church leaders in the United Kingdom.

The Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Vincent Nichols responded, saying:

"We should deplore the persecution of any human being. And he [Charles] is right to draw attention to the fate of Christians, especially in the Middle East.

"It's also worth remembering today that people will walk through villages like Qaraqosh (in Iraq) which were destroyed by Daesh [IS] and they will celebrate again the Easter mysteries."

Charles is a longtime advocate for persecuted Christians.

He said he has "met many who have had to flee for their faith and for their life - or have somehow endured the terrifying consequences of remaining in their country".

Their plight moves and humbles him because of their "truly remarkable courage and by their selfless capacity for forgiveness, despite all that they have suffered.

"I have also heard that in the darkness there are small shafts of light, signs of resurrection and of hope that slowly but surely Christians who have had to flee from their homelands are beginning to return and to rebuild their shattered homes."

According to the Nineveh Reconstruction Committee, 37,031 Christians have returned to the Nineveh Plains over the last 12 months.

However, about four times as many are still in the Kurdish areas in northern Iraq.

They fled there after IS took over the Niniveh Plains area in 2014.

Source

• Crux Now
• The Tablet
• Image: Abouna

He said the attacks are part of the "war on infidels" IS is fighting.

He also claimed his group was responsible for the suicide bombings that struck two Coptic Christian churches on Palm Sunday. Forty-seven people died and many more were injured.

Speaking in an interview published in the IS al-Nabaa newsletter last week, the spokesperson urged all Muslims to work as jihadists.

They should focus on "legitimate targets" like churches and security posts, as well as "places where crusader nationals of western countries gather".

If Muslims don't join jihadist groups, they should carry out "lone wolf attacks," he said.

He also said Muslims who don't attack Christians are antagonistic to the Islamic religion, are apostate and had better "hurry up and repent".

Coptic Christians in Egypt have been targeted by IS jihadists for several decades.

The Palm Sunday attacks prompted Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to declare a state of emergency for the next three months.

Source

• ABC News
• Crux
• Image: Citizens

"Our people feel it keenly when religious freedom is denied to anyone anywhere," said Reagan boldly in the heart of Communist oppression.

"And hope with you that soon all the many Soviet religious communities that are now prevented from registering, or are banned altogether … will soon be able to practice their religion freely and openly and instruct their children in and outside the home in the fundamentals of their faith."

That historic moment occurred in the waning days of a dying Soviet empire. But to date, no American president, Republican or Democrat, has replicated it in the other regions of the world where religious repression is commonplace.

Clearly, President Obama has not taken up the torch, as he has shown little, if any, interest in international religious liberty.

His first State Department ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom wasn't confirmed until April 2011 — 27 months into his first term.

This disinterest is reflected in the administration's disregard for the religious nature of much of international terror:

• When ISIS beheaded 21 men on a Libyan beach, the White House said in a statement, "The United States condemns the despicable and cowardly murder of twenty-one Egyptian citizens in Libya."
  "Citizens," not Christians whose faith led to their death.
• When a Taliban faction deliberately targeted Christians in an Easter attack in Pakistan, a spokesman for the president's National Security Council said, "The United States condemns in the strongest terms today's appalling terrorist attack in Lahore, Pakistan."
  An attack on whom is unclear. Not to the Taliban: They issued a statement saying they specifically had aimed at killing Christians. Continue reading

Sources

• Religion News Service, from an article by Tony Perkins and Frank Wolf.
• Image: Copts United

But this way of thinking leads down the same route IS has taken.

Let me explain.

Ever since the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, there hasn't been a single central authority that all Muslims have unanimously agreed on.

The first generation of Muslims didn't just disagree, they battled over the succession to leadership of the community.

The result of this division was the formation of the main Sunni and Shi'a theological traditions we see to this day. But the blood spilt over the issue also resulted in a general sense of concern about the consequences of political and theological differences.

A consensus quickly emerged over the need to respect differences of opinion. And it was considered important to "disassociate" oneself from anyone who had differing views on these key issues.

But as long as the person in question affirmed the basic tenets of Islam, such as the unity of God and the prophecy of Muhammad, he or she was still considered a Muslim.

Similar detractors

The one dissenting theological view on this matter was held by a group known as the Kharijites. It adopted the view that dissenting or corrupt Muslim leaders, by their actions, had become "apostates" from Islam altogether.

Sub-factions of this group increasingly extended their definition of apostasy to include any Muslim who didn't agree with them. They declared these Muslims infidels who could be killed or enslaved.

The brutality of these extreme Kharijites never attracted more than a minority of Muslims, and other Kharijites adopted a more peaceful position more in line with the emerging consensus.

Widespread horror at the early divisions of the Muslim community and the terrors unleashed by Khariji extremism ensured that Islam generally embraced a pluralistic approach to differences of opinion.

This emerged hand in hand with a culture of scholarship, based on the idea that the endeavour to seek the "true" meaning of scripture is an ongoing and fallible human effort. Continue reading

Sources

• An article by historian of Islamic thought Harith Bin Ramli in The Conversation.
• Image: Spero News

Following the collapse of communism in 1989, he argued, conflicts would increasingly involve religion.

Islam, which Huntington claimed had been the opponent of Christianity since the seventh century, would increasingly feature in geopolitical conflict.

So, it wasn't particularly shocking when, after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, the then-US president, George W. Bush, used the term "crusade" to describe the American military response.

Framing the subsequent "war on terror" as a crusade acted as a red flag to journalists and political commentators, who could treat the events as simply the most recent stoush in a centuries-old conflict.

The actual Crusades (1096-1487) themselves evoke a romantic image of medieval knights, chivalry, romance and religious high-mindedness.

But representing them as wars between Christians and Muslims is a gross oversimplification and a misreading of history.

Early Islamic conquests
That there were wars between Muslims and Christians is certainly true. After the death of Abu Bakr (573-634), the Prophet Muhammad's father-in-law and first caliph, the second Caliph Umar (583-644) sent the Islamic armies in three divisions to conquer and spread the religion of Islam.

Whole regions that were Christian fell to Islam.

The Holy Land, which comprised modern-day Palestinian territories, Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, for instance, was defeated. And Egypt was conquered without even a battle in 640.

The ancient and vast Persian Empire, officially Zoroastrian in religion, had been conquered by 642.

Weakened by war with the Christian Byzantine Empire, Persia was no match for the Muslim forces.

Muslim armies marched across north Africa and crossed the Straits of Gibraltar into modern Spain, eventually securing a large territory in the Iberian Peninsula, which was known as Al-Andalus (also known as Muslim Spain or Islamic Iberia). Continue reading

Sources

• The Conversation, from an article by Carole Cusack, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Sydney.
• Image: Mad World News

They also have "allegiance" from different radical Islamic groups around the world (from Afghanistan to Nigeria) who "govern" self-proclaimed provinces.

Within the areas they control they have established a reign of terror second to none.

They have institutionalized slavery and rape (particularly of adherents to the Yazidi religion who they view as devil worshippers) and have carried out genocide and ethnic cleansing of Christians, Alawites, and other Shiites and Yazidis in the territories they control.

They have struck with a vengeance beyond their territories. Suicide attacks in Baghdad, Beirut, and Ankara killed hundreds.

In October 2015, they detonated a bomb aboard a Russian airliner leaving from Sharm el-Sheikh airport in Egypt, killing all 224 people on board.

In November, they orchestrated a multi-suicide attack in Paris, killing 129 people. They have inspired "lone-wolf" terror attacks by sympathizers in places as far away as Ottawa and Sydney.

A bit of nomenclature:

You may have heard about ISIS referred to as IS, ISIL, or Daesh. All of these acronyms describe the group in question.

• ISIS: Islamic State of Iraq and Syria was the name of the group when it captured Mosul in 2014 and became the terrorist juggernaut it is today. They named themselves that to assert their dominance in Syria (more on that later).
• ISIL: Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (aka Greater Syria) is the name that Obama uses to describe the group (pretty much only Obama uses it). Superficially speaking, it is just a translation thing.
• IS: Islamic State is the name the group gave itself after a "rebranding" effort when they wanted to show off their global strategy (they wouldn't be limited to Syria and Iraq anymore). Continue reading

Sources

• The Week
• Image: NBC News

And they provided evidence that five men had been locked in a metal cage and lowered into the water to drown. As we learned last week, 16 men in total were murdered in these brutal ways.

We know this because the executioners with the group calling itself "Islamic State" wanted to film their victims as they were dying.

The films, carefully staged and distributed using all modern channels, seem to be coming directly from hell. The men who see themselves as the new caliphs are performing an unparalleled dance of death, complete with the kinds of horrors once depicted by painter Hieronymus Bosch — only these killers and executioners are anything but fiction.

In Syria and along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Iraq today, where human civilization once began, it is not some nightmarish fictional characters at work, but real players in contemporary history with a megalomaniacal agenda.

And instead of covering up their murders, they are doing the opposite — inviting the rest of the world to look on, proud of a brutality that knows no bounds and is both part of their military strategy and an instrument of oppression.

The Islamic State is both fact and fiction at the same time. It has clearly created a propaganda bubble, but it also represents a new social order in places where it has come into power.

The "caliphate" was proclaimed about a year ago, and the older group ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) has become IS, often referred to as Da'ish in the Arab world.

But all of these names refer to the same thing: a militant movement with its origins partly in the Iraqi prison camps run by the Americans, which grew into al-Qaida in Iraq and now, as IS, is claiming territory for a new state, territory captured by former top figures in the regime of dictator Saddam Hussein. Continue reading

Sources

• Spiegel Online
• Image: Post-Conflict Justice

Martyrdom was not new to them or their people. For nearly two thousand years, their Church had prided itself as being the Church of the Martyrs.

If martyrdom was a central feature of the early Church, it had become the hallmark of its identity in Egypt.

Even as early as the third century, a quote attributed to Tertullian declared: "If the martyrs of the whole world were put on one arm of the balance and the martyrs of Egypt on the other, the balance would tilt in favour of the Egyptians."

From the blood of Saint Mark the Evangelist shed in Alexandria in 68 AD, the river continued to flow, each century adding its martyrs.

The names of the persecutors had changed; Romans and Byzantines and Arabs, Emperors and Caliphs and Kings. Each had contributed his share, each had attempted to end their faith, and each in turn had failed.

The horrific murder of twenty Copts and a Ghanaian Christian at the hands of Islamic State militants in Libya in February was followed by swift condemnations from around the world. Most world leaders described the victims the way they identified themselves - as Coptic Christians.

Pope Francis recognised that they had been "killed simply for the fact that they were Christians," and that "their blood confesses Christ."

Their murderers certainly concurred. They had searched the workers' compoundlooking for Copts - "people of the cross" they named them in the video.

Their beheading was in revenge for Kamilia Shehata, the wife of a Coptic priest, who had briefly disappeared in July 2010 before returning to her family.

Soon her cause became a rallying cry for Egyptian Salafis convinced that she had been prevented from converting to Islam and held against her will by the Church. Continue reading

Source & Image:

• ABC Religion & Ethics

But here's what's less visible — the online backlash against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, by young Muslims declaring their opposition to rule by Islamic law, or Shariah, and even proudly avowing their atheism.

Nadia Oweidat, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, who tracks how Arab youths use the Internet, says the phenomenon "is mushrooming — the brutality of the Islamic State is exacerbating the issue and even pushing some young Muslims away from Islam."

On Nov. 24, BBC.com published a piece on what was trending on Twitter.

It began: "A growing social media conversation in Arabic is calling for the implementation of Shariah, or Islamic law, to be abandoned.

"Discussing religious law is a sensitive topic in many Muslim countries.

"But on Twitter, a hashtag which translates as ‘why we reject implementing Shariah' has been used 5,000 times in 24 hours.

"The conversation is mainly taking place in Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

"The debate is about whether religious law is suitable for the needs of Arab countries and modern legal systems. Dr. Alyaa Gad, an Egyptian doctor living in Switzerland, started the hashtag.

" ‘I have nothing against religion,' she tells BBC Trending, but says she is against ‘using it as a political system.' "

The BBC added that "many others joined in the conversation, using the hashtag, listing reasons why Arabs and Muslims should abandon Shariah. ‘Because there's not a single positive example of it bringing justice and equality,' one man tweeted. ... A Saudi woman commented: ‘By adhering to Shariah we are adhering to inhumane laws. Saudi Arabia is saturated with the blood of those executed by Sharia.' " Continue reading

• Thomas L. Friedman in The New York Times

Thomas L. Friedman became the The New York Times' foreign affairs Op-Ed columnist in 1995.

Blair made this observation in November 2002, four months before the invasion of Iraq, when he invited six experts to Downing Street to brief him on the likely consequences of the war.

The experts warned that Iraq was a complicated place, riven by deep communal enmities, which Saddam had dominated for over thirty-five years.

Destroying the regime would leave a vacuum; the country could be shaken by Sunni rebellion and might well descend into civil war.

These dangers left the Prime Minister unmoved.

What mattered was Saddam's moral iniquity.

The divided society over which he ruled was irrelevant. Get rid of the tyrant and his regime, and the forces of good would prevail.

If Saddam was uniquely evil twelve years ago, we have it on the authority of our leaders that ISIS is uniquely evil today.

Until it swept into Iraq a few months ago, the jihadist group was just one of several that had benefited from the campaign being waged by Western governments and their authoritarian allies in the Gulf in support of the Syrian opposition's struggle to overthrow Bashar al-Assad.

Since then ISIS has been denounced continuously and with increasing intensity; but there has been no change in the ruthless ferocity of the group, which has always practised what a radical Islamist theorist writing under the nameAbu Bakr Naji described in an internet handbook in 2006 as "the management of savagery." Continue reading

• John Gray in ABC Religion & Ethics

John Gray is formerly Emeritus Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and the author of many books.