The Hour of ISIS Power: How Did It Come To This?

Timothy Furnish provides the most helpful and substantive overview of ISIS and the Middle East situation which I have yet seen. This is a 'must read', complete with a series of maps to augment the historical overview, analysis of the theological and eschatological dimensions, and a warning of what is to come.

The Hour of ISIS Power: How Did It Come To This?

by Timothy R. Furnish, PhD.
Mahdi Watch - June 17, 2014

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham [Greater Syria], also known (less accurately) as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, is for all its brutality—beheadings, destroying churches, mass executions—no longer merely a terrorist organization; it has now formed a renegade military theocracy and is in the process of creating a new Sunni territorial state in the Middle East.   ISIS’s current area of control is roughly along these lines: How did it come to this?  Geographically, the Middle East is not just reverting to its more natural pre-World War I Ottoman-era delimitations, but is falling back into something more resembling the geographical layout imposed by the Abbasids in the 8th-13th centuries AD: Baghdad was the imperial center for the Abbasids, and not merely a provincial capital as it was under the Ottomans.  Indeed, it may well be that ISIS aims to take Baghdad in order to cement its self-styled ambition to recreate the caliphate—since the Arab Abbasid Caliphate (not the Turkish Ottoman one) is considered by many Arabs to be the “Golden Age” of Islamic civilization.

ISIS EXPANDS CONTROL, BEGINS PERSECUTING CHRISTIANS IN MOSUL

• Reports of up to 500,000 fleeing Mosul.
• Christian women being forced to wear Islamic veil.
• Churches and monasteries under attack.
• Related: Thousands of Christians Flee as ISIS Militants Burn, Loot Churches in Captured Iraqi City

AINA via Pravoslavie — June 17, 2014

An ISIS flag hangs from a bridge in Mosul. On the left it says "Nineveh Governorate welcomes you" and on the right it says "There is no God but Allah."

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also known asDa'esh and ISIL) yesterday took control of Mosul, Iraq's second largest city. Various agencies are reporting that between 150,000 to 500,000 residents have fled Mosul. Two divisions of the the Iraqi army which were stationed in Mosul abandoned their posts and fled, offering no resistance to the invasion. According to reports, the army personnel donned civilian clothing and left Mosul by blending in with the fleeing residents. Some reports say the Iraqi commanders in Mosul said they were given orders not to fight but to flee, but this has not been confirmed. 

AINA contacted a former member of the Iraqi Parliament, whose identity cannot be revealed for his safety, who said "The Mosul provincial government was in collusion with ISIS. The innocent citizens of Mosul are paying the price of the manipulations of Atheel and Osama al-Nujaifi." 

Atheel al-Nujaifi is the current governor of the Nineveh Governorate and is a hard-line Sunni. It is reported that he fled Mosul ahead of the ISIS attack. 

Today the city of Tikrit, a Sunni stronghold, also fell to ISIS. A source from Tikrit, which AINA contacted via email, said "We are now calling on all international organizations for help because we are terrified by what we are hearing from the street. I wish you could convey our voices to those who can help to end the farce. The people are currently in the hands of a conspiracy between the government and the militias." She added "In Tikrit today, the prisons were opened and looting and pillaging began." 

Christian-hating Jihadists Are Poised to Eliminate the Church in Iraq

By Ed West

Catholic Herald via AINA — June 13, 2014

War in Iraq has returned with dramatic speed, with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, a group extreme even by jihadi standards, having taken Mosul. Just 100 kilometres from Baghdad, ISIS also threatens the major city of Kirkuk and so bringing the Kurds into a wider war.

Aid to the Church in Need is reporting that Mosul's Christian population, which had declined from 30,000 to 3,000 in the years following the 2003 US invasion, is now down to virtually nothing. They fled, along with half a million other people, from a terrorist group who had already carried out multiple beheadings and even crucifixions in the areas of Syria they control. ISIS are also notorious iconoclasts, destroying anything non-Islamic they can get their hands on, so the thought of their controlling the capital of the ancient Assyrians is extremely depressing.

As Nina Shea has reported, it is now the end game for Iraq's Christians, with the second city now free of Christians for the first time in 1,800 years. 

Don’t Turn Turkey’s Iconic Hagia Sophia Back Into A Mosque

"Turkey can’t get enough of the continuous re-conquering of Istanbul. Just such a power play is once again at work over the Hagia Sophia."

Pravmir — June 14, 2014

by Karin Karakasli — Worldcrunch

ISTANBUL — In our divided existences, everyone lives their own reality, with their own priorities. Right now, the demand that this city's Hagia Sophia museum be transformed into a mosque has suddenly become the singular issue for a certain segment of the Turkish population.

The Anatolia Youth Association announced a gathering at the iconic location with slogans such as “take your prayer mat and come” and “we meet at the Hagia Sophia Mosque for the morning prayer.” And so the group gathered at the Hagia Sophia Square, coming from all around Istanbul and the surrounding province before disbanding around midnight following a collective prayer.

“Let the chains break,” was their slogan. “Let Hagia Sophia be open.” This organization, which uses prayer for activism, deserves a closer look — for while the association seems to prioritize religion, this issue is actually quite political.

Prayer For Our Enemies

Part of a series on prayer, transcribed from television episodes presented on Russian television in the spring of 1999 by Fr. (now Metropolitan) Hilarion (Alfeyev) with the blessing of His Holiness, the late Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia.

Pravmir — June 10, 2010

Archimandrite Sophrony, in his book about St. Silouan the Athonite, says: “Those that hate and reject their brother are flawed in their being; they cannot find the way to God, Who loves all.” This holds true. When hatred for man settles in our heart, we are not able to approach God. As long as we hold on to this feeling, the path to God is barred to us. This is why it is necessary to pray for our enemies.

The necessity of praying for our enemies stems from the very essence of the moral teaching of Jesus Christ.

In the pre-Christian era there was a rule: Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy (Matthew 5:43). The majority of people continue to live in accordance with this rule. It is natural for us to love our neighbors, those who do us good, and to treat with hostility and even hatred those who pose evil. But Christ says that our attitude should be completely different: Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you (Matthew 5:44).

Christ Himself, during His earthly life, repeatedly set an example both of love for enemies and of prayer for them. When the soldiers nailed the Lord to the Cross, He experienced frightful torments and incredible pain, but He prayed: Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do (Luke 23:34). At that moment He thought not about Himself, not about the fact that these soldiers were causing Him pain, but rather about their salvation; for, by committing evil, they were first of all harming themselves.

'When you see that someone is doing something evil, hate not him, but the devil, who is behind him.'

~ St John Chrysostom

We should remember that people who do us evil or treat us with hostility are not bad in themselves. What is bad is the sin with which they are infected. One needs to hate sin, but not its bearer: man. As St. John Chrysostom put it: “when you see that someone is doing something evil, hate not him, but the devil, who is behind him.”

Mosul now emptied of Christians, says Archbishop

Sharia law imposed in Mosul as Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) conquers vast areas and major cities in Iraq.

See also:

• Decapitated heads of policemen and soldiers line the streets of Mosul as ISIS imposes Sharia.
• Is Baghdad About To Fall To ISIS?

Pravmir — June 12, 2014

(Vatican Radio) Speaking to Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need, Chaldean Archbishop Amel Nona, said he thought Mosul's last remaining Christians had left now a city which until 2003 was home to 35,000 faithful.

The Christians are among 500,000 thought to have fled Mosul whose overthrow yesterday is now followed by news today (Wed, 11 June) of militant attacks on the Iraqi city of Tikrit 95 miles north of the capital, Baghdad.

Describing reports of attacks to four churches and a monastery in Mosul, the archbishop, 46, said: “We received threats… [and] now all the faithful have fled the city. I wonder if they will ever return there.”

CLEANSING OF IRAQ'S CHRISTIANS ENTERING ITS END GAME

"Since 2003, Iraq's Christian community has suffered intense religious persecution on top of the effects of the conflict and, as a result, it's shrunk by well over 50 percent... "

AINA via Pravoslavie — June 11, 2014
by Nina Shea, NRO

Apocalyptic traffic logjam, as Nineveh residents fled to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq on Tuesday.

(Iraq) The government of Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, fell overnight to the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, also called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Mosul's panic-stricken Christians, along with many others, are now fleeing en masse to the rural Nineveh Plain, according to the Vatican publication Fides. The border crossings into Kurdistan, too, are jammed with the cars of the estimated 150,000 desperate escapees. 

The population, particularly its Christian community, has much to fear. The ruthlessness of ISIS, an offshoot of al-Qaeda, has been legendary. Its beheadings, crucifixions and other atrocities toward Christians and everyone else who fails to conform to its vision of a caliphate have been on full display earlier this year, in Syria. 

Islamic Prayers at the Vatican an Historic Travesty

Anti-Christian praises to Allah resound in Rome at invitation of Pope Francis.

The utter discord between the contrite prayer (composed by Pope John Paul II) explicitly calling Christians to repent "of the words and attitudes caused by pride, by hatred, by the desire to dominate others, by enmity towards members of other religions," and the Islamic prayer (not sourced, but replete with a definitive Quranic dogmatic statement of tawhid), proclaiming, "...there is no god but You alone and You have no partner," could not be more clear.

The Islamic prayer further asserts that "associating partners" with God is of Satan, as it proclaims, "we seek refuge in You from the evil in ourselves and the evil of Satan, his partners, his godlessness and his whispering, and we seek refuge in You from godlessness."

This is all in keeping with traditional Islamic condemnation of Christianity:

Say not “Trinity”: desist: It will be better for you: For God is One God: Glory be to Him: (Far Exalted is He) above having a son. . . . (Sura 4:173)

In blasphemy indeed are those that say that God is Christ the Son of Mary. (Sura 5:19)

They do blaspheme who say: “God is Christ the son of Mary . . .” They do blaspheme who say: God is one of three in a Trinity: for there is no god except One God. If they desist not from their word (of blasphemy), verily a grievous penalty will befall the blasphemers among them (Sura 5:75,78)

The papacy has long been involved in wielding worldly influence and control, and this travesty is one of the more glaring examples. By inviting Islamic prayer at Rome, which, although thank God it did not include the infamous "Opening" (Al Fatihah) or the Muslim confession of faith (the Shehada), was still explicitly anti-Christian in its orientation, Pope Francis has wrapped his papacy in dark clouds indeed, and given great encouragement to Islamic supremacists who seek to conquer Rome, and who will see this as a sign of the approaching end times, when Islam believes it will destroy Christianity and reign over all the earth.

The complete texts of the three prayers follows below.

via

Three faiths pray for Holy Land peace

Catholic News Agency via Pravmir — June 9, 2014

Vatican City, Jun 8, 2014 / 11:33 am (CNA) - Representatives of Judaism, Christianity and Islam said prayers from their respective religious communities at Sunday’s historic “Invocation for Peace” at the Vatican, praying for peace in the Holy Land and throughout the Middle East.

The meeting gathered in one place Pope Francis, Israeli President Shimon Peres, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and the Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I.

The June 8 meeting in the Vatican gardens featured prayers in Hebrew, Arabic and Italian.

Below are the official English texts of a prayer from each of the three faiths.

Bartholomew: Christians united, real catalysts for peace in the Middle East

We live in interesting times:

The Ecumenical Patriarch arrives today in Rome to take part in the prayer meeting with Pope Francis, Shimon Peres and Mahmoud Abbas. The scope of the prayer meeting goes beyond immediate results.

Pravmir — June 7, 2014

Istanbul (AsiaNews) – The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew arrives tonight in Rome to participate in the prayer for peace tomorrow, at the invitation of Pope Francis.

The pontiff has invited Israeli President Shimon Peres and the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, to pray for peace in the war-torn Middle East where the Christian element is about to disappear.

Ireland: Pastor Under ‘Hate Crime’ Investigation for Sermon Against Islam

The application of sharia law against a Christian speaking about Islam... in a Christian country. 

Christian News Network via Creeping Sharia — June 1, 2014
More here, with links to video and more on creeping sharia in Ireland.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland – A 75-year-old Irish preacher was subjected to a police probe after he condemned Islam in a sermon and was accused of ‘hate mongering.’

James McConnell, pastor of the Whitewell Metropolitan Church in North Belfast, Ireland, discussed the religion of Islam during an evening sermon on Sunday, May 18th. During the sermon, McConnell denounced Islam and said the contrast between it and Christianity is stark.

“The God we worship and serve this evening is not Allah,” he proclaimed, according to a video of his sermon. “The Muslim god—Allah—is a heathen deity. Allah is a cruel deity. Allah is a demon deity.”

McConnell then criticized the “foolish” British government for attempting to appease Muslims financially, saying Islam is “a doctrine spawned in hell.” He also noted that Christians around the world are persecuted for their faith by the “fanatical worshipers” of Allah.

According to the Belfast Telegraph, McConnell’s remarks were inspired by the current plight of Meriam Ibrahim—a professing Orthodox Christian woman in Sudan. As previously reported, Ibrahim was sentenced to hang after she was convicted of apostasy for refusing to deny her faith and convert to Islam.