This past summer, ISIS took the world by storm, surprising us at every turn. Just when we think we have heard the worst, we are shocked again. In one month alone, ISIS displaced at least 850,000 people. To put that in perspective, the 2010 US Census showed that St Louis County had a population of 998,954. Now imagine the entire St Louis County region being displaced and fleeing for their lives. ISIS came in like an unstoppable flood, killing and plundering along their way. On July 25th, they destroyed the tomb of the prophet Jonah. On August 8th, the Iraqi Parliament passed a resolution accusing ISIS of genocide. On August 26th, the UN Commission urged for UN Peacekeeping troops for the Nineveh Plain in Northern Iraq. ISIS has stated that their mission is to unite the world under one banner and they will not be deterred. Christians have been targeted and told to convert or die. Many have already been slaughtered.
So how does one face these impossible odds? How does one not give in to a spirit of despair and hopelessness when your world is literally being torn apart? We must cling to the Rock of Ages (Isaiah 26:4) and hold unswervingly to the hope we profess (Hebrews 10:23) and believe that the one who is in us is greater than the one who is in the world (1 John 4:4b). Easy to say when we are sitting on our couches half a world away, not so easy to live out; but just because it's not easy does not make it any less true. God is God in America and in ISIS. The same God who allowed Nazi's to take over Germany and perpetrate the Holocaust is the same God who is allowing ISIS to sweep through the Middle East and beyond. Many will question 'why?' and wonder how God can still be good when the darkness over takes us. In the words of one who survived the living hell of the Holocaust, Corrie ten Boom admonishes us that, “When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.” God is good because he is, not because of what happens to us. When evil and darkness descend, we have to trust Him to carry us through. Whether it is to the light at the end of the tunnel, or into His embrace into eternity. As we pray for the Christians this month who have and are suffering immensely because of ISIS, let us pray for their faith to be strengthen and that it would carry them through to the end; whatever that may be.
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The Islamic State
Origin: The IS was preceded by the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). It emerged out of the civil war in Syria and was comprised of various
Objective/Goal: The ISIS's objective is the establishment of a world wide Caliphate, reflected in frequent media reports by means of images of the world united under an ISIS banner. It currently occupies an area as large as the country of Jordan (about the size of Indiana) throughout Syria and Iraq. Their desire to reunite Muslim lands is seen in their zealous destruction of the border stations between Iraq and Syria. Although it has perpetrated many terrorist acts since its formation, especially against Shia and Christian civilians, ISI/ISIS/ISIL has been especially active in late 2102 and 2013, claiming responsibility for killing and wounding hundreds of people through suicide bombings. Its principal targets are U.S. military and Shia and Christian civilians. Among their claims is the belief that they will raise their flag over the White House. Their caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, recently warned: “Our last message is to the Americans: Soon we will be in direct confrontation, and the sons of Islam have prepared for such a day. So watch, for we are with you, watching.”
In establishing a Caliphate, they are enacting Sharia Law as they go. In Syria, the Hisbah are the religious police enforcing sharia. They forbid smoking, alcohol, and drugs; decreed that all women wear full-face veils; and killed any government employee suspected of subterfuge. One member of the group said that they "advise in a nice way, but those who don't will be forced." One member of the group said, "We don't want a happy life and trips, those things take us away from God."
Capacity: The ISIS has extensive financial resources, and according to scholars at the Rand Corporation, it “currently brings in more than $1 million a day in revenue and is now the richest terrorist group on the planet. . . . A conservative calculation suggests that [the Islamic State] may generate a surplus of $100 million to $200 million this year.” (To put this in perspective, al-Qaeda spent about $500,000 to carry out the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.) Most of that is derived from alleged organized crime
IS also has many supporters that enable operations in various
Social Media: IS is expanding its presence on social media, using sophisticated techniques to recruit fighters, spread its propaganda and garner financial support. One of these techniques is a Twitter
The jihadist group has also launched an online magazine to recruit more fighters. The 10-page magazine named “The Islamic State Report” explains how life within its envisioned Islamic state would look like. The magazine says: “Caring for the residents of Wilayat Ar-Raqqah is a goal of the Islamic State, and because of this, the Islamic State sought to open service all over the wilayah through an Islamic services committee comprised of multiple departments, among which is the Consumer Protection Office...Our teams go out every day, split up on the streets of the city and examine the restaurants, wholesale outlets and shopping centers. We also conduct direct medical supervision of the slaughterhouses in order to ensure that they are free of any harmful substances. We will soon be holding a seminar [God willing] to teach the proper Islamic
To promote its propaganda, ISIS is also relying on advanced media production techniques, as shown in some of its high-quality videos. In one of them, a British man identified as Abu Muthanna al-Yemeni appears flanked by two other jihadists, appealing for young Muslims in the West to join their cause in Syria and Iraq. Western Muslims are an important target of ISIS’s social media propaganda. The group ensures most of its media productions are translated into as many Western languages as possible. In another high-quality video, ISIS jihadists are shown implementing their version of sharia law in an unknown town in Iraq or Syria. They go to markets asking people to go pray, conduct anti-drug operations at night, and destroy mausoleums, which they see as idols being worshiped. In Raqqah, a preaching van even goes around spreading their message.
Structure: The group is comprised of Sunni Muslims and has a very strict theology where they consider other variants of Islam to be apostates. However, not all of their fighters are from the Middle East. The group is comprised of fighters from Afghanistan, Turkey, Russia, America, Britain, and Australia just to name a few.
IS runs camps where it indoctrinates children to believe that all non-Muslims are sub-human, “apostates” and “infidels” who should be exterminated. Vice News recently interviewed children undergoing such indoctrination by the Islamic State. One young boy looks into the camera and says “In the name of God my name is Daoud and I am 14 years old. I’d like to join the Islamic State and to kill with them, because they fight infidels and apostates.” Another declares: “We promise you car bombs and explosives. . . . I swear to God, we will divide America in two.”
Atrocities: IS has beheaded unbelievers; stuck decapitated heads on posts; buried women and children alive; randomly shot pedestrians and motorists; even crucified its opponents. Islamic State militants tweeted a photo of a decapitated head with this message: “This is our ball. It is made of skin #WorldCup.” Most recently in American news, we saw that they beheaded American Journalist James Wright Foley.
Anyone who does not conform to their ideology is seen as being an apostate. Militants were hunting Shiite Turkmens, who they consider to be apostates, and The Washington Post’s Abigail Hauslohner reported two weeks ago at least 40 Turkmens were believed killed in an attack on four farming villages. One man saw his cousin get shot, then dropped to the ground after he was shot himself. “Pretend to be dead,” he told his wife and four children — but two of the kids had been shot.
The American News also covered the plight of the Yazidi people. The Islamic State had expelled thousands of Yazidi from the northern town of Sinjar. They were stranded on a barren mountain without food or water, and faced extermination.Vian Dakhil, the only Yazidi representative in Iraq's parliament, begged and pleaded for help for her people. Women, she said, were being sold as sexual slaves and children were dying. “We are being slaughtered!” she sobbed. “We are being exterminated! An entire religion is being exterminated from the face of the Earth. In the name of humanity, save us!” Iraqi helicopters dropped supplies, but the Yazidi were eventually extracted in a combined operation in which it was Syrian and Turkish Kurds of the PKK (which the United States and European Union define as a terrorist organization because of its long war against the Turkish government) who played a central role.
Human Rights Watch also reported that 83 people from the Shabaks (a minority group with its own language and customs) were rounded up and disappeared. Later, seven bodies were found. “We cannot describe how these bodies looked when we received them,” one witness said. “They have been killed in a brutal manner…. I don’t know how many bullets, but many. The younger one, he was shot in his back and the back of his head. And it appeared they had smashed his hands with a block.”
Human Rights Watch also reported that 130 Syrian Kurdish children were kidnapped by IS. The Middle East director made this statement: "The Islamic State should immediately halt its vicious campaign against minorities in and around Mosul...being a Turkman, a Shabak, a Yazidi, or a Christian in [Islamic State] territory can cost you your livelihood, your liberty, or even your life.”
Christians: When it takes over Christian neighborhoods, the Islamic State paints the letter “N” on the homes and businesses of Christians (marking them as followers of the Nazarene, a contemptuous reference to Christians in Arabic) before confiscating them and giving them to Muslims. On July 16, Human Rights Watch said the Islamic State presented the Christians of Mosul with three choices: Convert to Islam, pay a tax paid by non-Muslims — or leave. And if not: “Then there is nothing to give them but the sword.” Qaraqosh, formerly home to Iraq’s largest Christian community, was overrun and thousands of Christians fled for their lives. Two of these Christians were the parents of a 5-year-old boy who was cut in half by IS militants. As IS forces are now pressing into regions previously controlled by Kurdish peshmerga fighters, many Christians are fleeing for their lives once more. Many Christians are now trying to seek asylum in the West.
IS in Iraq: The ISIS stronghold is in the Anbar province, as seen in the operation of training camps coupled with attacks on Government security personnel, a case in point being various suicide bomb attacks in a single day targeting local police in Rawa. In addition, the ISIS gained control in areas of Ramadi and Fallujah, following the withdrawal of the Iraqi army due to widespread Sunni rejection of attempts to dismantle the Ramadi camp protest site. Beyond Anbar, the group has enacted frequent attacks on the Iraqi army in various districts of Mosul as well as target specific bomb attacks in the Baiji area of Salah ad-Din province, Jurf al-Sakhr in northern Babil province (just south of Baghdad), and the Tarmiya area of northern Baghdad province, where assaults have been launched on “Sahwa” forces, resulting in incidents such as the execution of 18 Sunnis suspected of being “Sahwa militia” during November 2013. During 2013, ISIS operations expanded to Iraqi Kurdistan, as seen in the Arbil bombings in September 2013, that the ISIS referred to as retaliation due to the Kurdistan Regional Government’s alleged support for the “PKK” in Syria.
IS in Syria: In April 2013, ISIS attempted to morph into the creation of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS/ISIL) but the formation of a new group was rejected by the al-Nusra Front. ISIS's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, nevertheless pressed ahead with expanding its operations into Syria. In August 2013, US intelligence assessed that he was based in Syria and commanded as many as 5,000 fighters, many of them foreign jihadists. The group is active mostly in northern and eastern provinces of Syria. It has assumed joint control of municipalities in Aleppo, Idlib and Raqqa provinces. In November 2013 Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri ordered the disbanding of the main jihadist faction in Syria, the ISIL, in an audio message aired on Al-Jazeera. The tape appeared to confirm a letter posted by Al-Jazeera in June 2013, claimed to have been written by Zawahiri and addressed to the leaders of Al-Qaeda factions in both countries. The head of Al-Qaeda also stressed that the Al-Nusra Front was the branch of the global jihadist group in Syria. ISIL's extremism has resulted in the deaths of more than 1,000 rebels in the last 3-4 weeks alone.
IS in Lebanon: On 3 January 2014, a leader in the Jordanian Salafi movement said the ISIS has decided officially to infiltrate Lebanon militarily. The ISIS claimed credit for the suicide bombing Haret Hreik in the southern suburb of Beirut on 22 January 2014, which killed 5 people. In the statement released via Twitter, the ISIS stated that the group has the capacity to violate Hezbollah security measures and that the suicide bombing is "a first small payment from the heavy account that is awaiting those criminals." The above announcement was followed by the Lebanon-focused A'isha Media Center announcement of an online campaign to support the ISIS in the conflict with Syrian militant factions. On 25 January 2013 a video recording declared the creation of a Lebanese division for the ISIS. In the recording, Abu Sayyaf al-Ansari swears allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Iraqi leader of ISIS. He also called on Sunnis to abandon the Lebanese crusader army, supportive of continued allegations by Sunni Islamists that the armed forces are "backed by Hezbollah." While the Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah has deployed troops to Syria to back President Bashar al-Assad, many Sunnis are opposed to Assad and any support to his government.
IS in Gaza Strip/West Bank: During February 2014, the ISIS released a video that showed ISIS fighters announcing plans to wage a jihad in Gaza. A spokesperson in the video announced that DAESH (ISIS) now has "lions and armies in the environs of Jerusalem" and called on Muslims to support the group in their jihad against the enemies of Islam and "Arab tyrants." The ISIS regards Hamas as to moderate and not committed in the fight against Israel. The ISIS announcement is the first indication of presence within Gaza Strip/West Bank as well as a direct challenge to the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas. The extent of support for the ISIS from Gaza culminated in the formation of an ISIS Syrian brigade comprised and dedicated to fighters from Gaza, referred to as the “Sheikh Abu al-Nur al-Maqdisi Brigade,” named after the founder of the Jund Ansar Allah group in Gaza- Abdel Latif Moussa, who was killed in clashes with Hamas in 2009.
"How ISIS conquered Social Media" http://english.alarabiya.net/en/media/digital/2014/06/24/How-has-ISIS-conquered-social-media-.html; The Washington Post;
OSWIECIM, Poland; TRAC; persecution.com ICC
----------------------Raw: Thousands Flee Homes in Northern Iraq (Aug 4, 2014)
Iraq: Raw footage of Yazidi s helicopter rescue (Aug 11, 2014)
ISIS Beheading Children in Iraq (Aug 8, 2014)
Inside ISIS and the Iraqi Caliphate
The Islamic State (Aug 14th, 2014) Warning: Some graphic images
Jay Sekulow ISIS Killing Christians (Aug 29, 2014)
