ISIS barbarity: How 100,000 Christians fled Mosul in ONE NIGHT

A PRIEST who was captured and tortured by Islamist terrorists has today lifted the lid on Islamic State's (ISIS) horrific persecution of Christians.

by Nick Gutteridge, Express, via Pravmir — October 21, 2015

Fr. Douglas Bazi, modern-day confessor for Jesus Christ

Father Douglas Bazi revealed how 100,000 Christians fled the Iraqi city of Mosul in one night after the jihadi fanatics embarked on a “genocidal” campaign of ethnic cleansing.

Giving a shocking insight into life under ISIS rule, the clergyman told Express.co.uk how the Christian population of Iraq has been decimated from a high of two million in 2003 to just 180,000 today.

He also revealed how jihadi fighters summarily torture and kill the families of those who speak out against them and regularly use girl sex slaves to pay for basic services including medical care.

Mosul’s entire population was given a 24-hour ultimatum to either convert to ISIS’s radical brand of Islam or face beheading when the terror group captured the city in June last year.

Ancient Christian Tahira Church (The Immaculate) in Mosul

As a result 100,000 penniless Christians fled in just one night, leaving behind their homes and possessions to be looted by jihadi fighters.

Those who stayed behind had to pay a Jizya – an Islamist tax levied on non-believers – amounting to an astronomical £5,200, which is more than the yearly salary of the average Iraqi. Those who could not afford the levy were executed.

Father Bazi said: “Before 2003 we were two million Christians in Iraq. Now we are maybe 180,000.

“At least 1,800 Christians have been killed since 2003 in Iraq. That’s why the people are afraid.

“Overnight 100,000 people escaped from Mosul and escaped from ISIS. When they arrived and took over Mosul they told the people we have three conditions according to Sharia.

“Number one was convert.

“The second was to pay Jizya (Islamic taxes) and they asked for each person to pay 4,000 to 8,000 US dollars.

“Third, they said you have to leave or you will be beheaded.”

He revealed how 5,000 Christian families have fled Iraq in the last year alone, and said the few who survived under ISIS rule in Mosul told shocking tales of the depravity of their overlords.

In one case he recalled how a jihadi fighter forced a dentist to accept a girl sex slave as payment for his medical treatment.

Iraqi priest: “There’s no such thing as moderate Islam…ISIS represents Islam one hundred percent”

“Wake up! The cancer is at your door. They will destroy you. We, the Christians of the Middle East are the only group that has seen the face of evil: Islam... 

“Please, if there’s anyone who still thinks ISIS doesn’t represent Islam, know that they are wrong. ISIS represents Islam one hundred percent.”

— Fr. Douglas al-Bazi, Iraqi Catholic Priest and Confessor for Christ,

captured and tortured by Muslim jihadists in 2006.

Let us all try to do something — whatever we can — in the face of the tsunami of evil wiping away our Christian brothers and sisters in the Middle East, Egypt and North Africa, Pakistan, Indonesia, throughout the entire Islamic world. Let us pray for them, even as we start to heed the warnings and cries of the new confessors and martyrs like Fr Douglas al-Bazi, who daily follow Christ to their Golgotha, bearing their unimaginable cross!

Speaking in 1980, Blessed Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose) of Platina had this to say about Golgotha:

It is a law of the spiritual life that where there is Golgotha—if it is genuine suffering for Christ—there will be resurrection. This resurrection first of all occurs in human hearts, and we do not need to be too concerned what outward form it might take by God’s will... 

Our inward, spiritual resurrection is what we should be striving for, and the events in Russia give us hope that there will yet be a resurrection of true, suffering Christianity, not only in Russia, but wherever hearts have not become entirely frozen. But we must be ready for the suffering that must precede this...

Are we in the West ready for this? Golgotha does not mean the incidental sufferings we all go through in this life. It is something immense and deep, which cannot be relieved by taking an aspirin or going to a movie. It is what Russia has gone through and is now trying to communicate to us. Let us not be deaf to this message. By the prayers of all the New Martyrs, may God give us the strength to endure the trials coming upon us and to find in them the resurrection of our souls.

— Fr. Seraphim Rose, The Orthodox Revival in Russia as an Inspiration for American Orthodoxy, The Orthodox Word #138, 1988, p. 51. (From a talk given in 1980.)

  

Obviously, what Fr Seraphim was speaking of regarding the New Martyrs of Russia in the 20th century under Communism is equally true about the New Martyrs of the 21st century under Islam. Let us heed his prophetic voice and rouse ourselves to zeal and perseverance in following our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ!

“‘There’s No Such Thing as Moderate Islam’: An Iraqi Priest Describes the Christian Genocide,” by Matteo Matzuzzi, Il Foglio, August 26, 2015 (translated by Francesca Romana, Rorate Caeli), courtesy of Jihad Watch:

Rome. “Please, if there’s anyone who still thinks ISIS doesn’t represent Islam, know that they are wrong. ISIS represents Islam one hundred percent.” Father Douglas al Bazi, an Iraqi Catholic parish priest in Erbil, raised his voice during an intervention at the Meeting in Rimini, with a choice of words – in a provocative way and in hard tones – that few had ventured use so far.

He carries on his own body the scars of the torture he underwent nine years ago, when a band of Jihadists kidnapped him for nine days, keeping him in chains and blindfolds along with a broken nose from being kneed: “For the first four days they didn’t even give me anything to drink. They would walk past me saying ‘Father, do you want some water?’ All day long they would listen to the reading of the Koran to let the neighbours hear what good believers they were.”…