Creative Writing: Martyrs In Iraq

"Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?" Saul said, "Who are You, Lord?" And the Lord said, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. It is hard for you to kick against the goads."

The Crusades, a series of wars, are an extremely important part of history in the 12th century, occurring during the Middle Ages. The Middle East or the Holy Land was always a place that Christians traveled to to make pilgrimages. The Seljuk Turks eventually took control of Jerusalem and all Christians were not allowed in the Holy City. As the Turks power grew, they threatened to take over the Byzantine Empire and Constantinople. The Byzantine Emperor, Alexius I, asked Pope Urban II for help and Pope agreed, hoping to strengthen his own power. He He united the Christians in Europe and In 1095, Pope Urban II waged waged war against muslims in order to “reclaim the holy land.”

He became, therefore, all of a sudden, a violent church goer. He prayed loudly and strenuously as if heaven were to be taken by force of lungs. … The quiet christians who had been modestly and steadfastly travelling Zionward, were struck with self reproach at seeing themselves so suddenly outstripped in their career by this new---made convert. (Irving

A report that was released by the United States Justice Department on February 12, 2016, showed that a “Florida man pleads guilty to a hate crime for threatening to firebomb two mosques and shoot worshippers.” The 43-year-old man by the name Martin Alan Schnitzler was arrested by the FBI on November 17, 2015, after he made numerous threats to shoot children in the head and firebomb a mosque in Petersburg, Florida. In his two recorded messages, Schnitzler said that he is watching the news report that covered the terrorist attacks in Paris. In these attacks, 130 lives were lost while more than 300 were seriously injured. Those responsible for these series of attacks were members of a terrorist group known as the Islamic States of Iraq and Levant (ISIL). Since ISIL members claim to be practicing Muslims and also fighting for the cause of Islam (Jihad), Schnitzler showed the same enmity he has for the ISIL terrorists to his non-violence Muslim neighbors. For this reason, he wanted to avenge the death of the victims of the Paris attacks by firebombing and shooting his Muslim neighbors’ two-year-old children in the head.

Considering the hate crimes for American Muslims, 2015 has been the deadliest year on record with about 63 recorded attacks on mosques. The previous high was seen in 2010, with 53 attacks focusing mostly on Islamic worship centers. 17 of those attacks took place in November. Which is as many as four times as many Mosque attacks when taken into comparison to last year. In 2014, Muslims were being targeted of 154 hate crimes. The number for 2015 hasn’t yet been calculated, although this year’s hate crime number is expected to beat the 2014 total. An incident took place whereby Naveed Afzal Haq shot six women at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle in July 2006, killing one of them. He was sentenced to life without liberation in 2009, plus 120 years. Moreover, In April 2014, three people were brutally shot at two Jewish centers in Kansas. (Newton,

Pastor Caleb Kaltenbach contends that Christianity in America is not the same as Christianity in many other parts of the world, especially those places where Christians face life and death persecution. He believes that because these Christians are faced with extreme circumstances they are able to understand much better than we are what Jesus meant by "love your enemies" and "pray for those who persecute you".

With the recent crisis or terrorism in Paris the world has been left reeling in shock and anguish. Many people, myself included, are horrified and angry by the acts of extremists groups that call themselves “Muslims.” Opinions have been circulating freely in response to what we should do. Some say that we should stop helping all immigrants trying to run away from terrorist groups, such as ISIS, while others state that these people that are genuinely Muslim have been hurt just as deeply, if not more so than Parisians have. As people talk and speculate I picked up Stolen Continent by Ronald Write and began reading. My anger grew as I read of accounts of men that called themselves “Christians” going to foreign lands and slaughtering thousands, if not millions of people in the name of God. Was there really a difference between what happened then, and what is happening now?

Saleh Abu-Yousef, a 32-year-old Christian fighter who helped liberate Qaraqosh, said the ISIS militants used their church’s courtyard for target practice. The Islamist fighters also showed no respect for the Christian site and even beheaded a statue of Jesus Christ. The inside walls were burnt and covered with ISIS graffiti.

A Qaraqosh Christian, whose name has been withheld, walked with Clarion Project national security analyst Prof. Ryan Mauro and shared how difficult it was to see his home of 20 years destroyed and his family’s belongings scattered everywhere after it was hit by an airstrike targeting ISIS. Despite the visible destruction all around, Mauro told Breitbart News that there is still hope for Christians in Iraq.

Summary: In Serte, Libya; more than 50 people were hung, tortured, and murdered by the terror group ISIS. This has been going on since February of 2015 and it has been a constant issue. They say the group even has a kill list with thousands of supposed enemies that they must kill or they will corrupt their group.

Sometime in April 1994, during the Rwandan Genocide, Father Athanase Seromba helped lure 2,000 Tutsi men, women, and children into his church where they thought they would be safe. One day, Seromba began clearing out the Communion chalices. A refugee in the church begged him to leave the Eucharist so that they could hold a final mass. However, Seromba refused, telling the congregation that the building was no longer a church. Another refugee asked the priest if he would pray for them. He answered, “Is the God of the Tutsis still alive?” Later, Seromba would have the church bulldozed and would send the militia in to kill the survivors (Kimani, 2010). In a continent as vast as Africa, it is not uncommon to see the struggles of both Christianity and Islam play out. Just a couple years ago, the world heard about the Boko Haram Islamic extremist group kidnapping schoolgirls in Nigeria, forcing them to convert to Islam and marriage with other members of Boko Haram. Lesser known are the Christian terrorists of the African continent who attack and kill the Muslim community among them. In the last two decades, the Western world has become so fearful after news of Muslim terrorist attacks and genocides, especially after 9/11. So much so that Western citizens have turned on other citizens simply because they are Muslim, look Middle-Eastern, or have an Arabic name. Sometimes we forget that some of the worst genocides in history have been instigated or participated in by Christians –

There was an man named David Haines and he was an British aid worker who was abducted in 2013 and he was 44 years old and had two children(Lavender). David Haines was beheaded by ISIS in September of that year. Steven Sotloff was a Israeli journalist who was 31 years old(Lavender). We're in Syria was kidnapped in 2013 and was executed on September 2. A taxi driver named Alan Henning and went to Syria with a aid convoy then was captured and beheaded in October were a video was released of the beheading(Lavender). In northern Algeria Herve Gourdel was captured hiking and ISIS threatened the French government to stop air strikes or he would be killed and Herve Gourdel was killed on September 24(Lavender). The first American to be beheaded by the Islamic State was James Foley when he was working as a freelance war correspondent in Syria in 2012(Lavender). James was 40 years old when he was beheaded in August of 2014(Lavender). ISIS also captures women and girls in Iraq and Syria to sell the as slaves, abuse them, rape them, and get ransom from them(Young Girl Snatched by ISIS Tells of Her Escape). On November 13, 2015 ISIS attacked six places in Paris, killing 132 people as well as 352 people injured(ISIS Terrorist Attack in Paris). This was the worst terrorist attack on French ground. The locations are The Bataclan theatre, Stade de France a stadium, Rue Alibert

For instance, a Muslim friend who converted to Christianity communicated that it was not the great arguments of traditional “informational” apologetics that finally drew him to examine the claims of Christ. On the contrary, it was the consistent caring actions of a high school friend who lived out a “resurrected” life before him.

On January 20th, 2016, Islamic State terrorists destroyed Iraq’s oldest Christian monastery, St. Elijah’s Monastery of Mosul, which had stood in Mosul for 1,400 years. According to ABC news, one of the gunmen in a dual terror attack in Paris, January 2015, claimed he was part of ISIS. American journalists, James Foley and Steven Sotloff, were killed on camera by the terror group, ISIS, which included a militant telling President Obama that Sotloff’s life was in the President’s hands. The last known American hostage, Kayla Mueller, died in the hands of the terror group, the White House said, in February 2015 (Ferran & Momtaz, 2015). These crimes are only a few of the several committed by ISIS.

“Get back to the car,” a random guy shouted. I ran back with my father to the car, seeing people burning from the car window. It was so hard to see because of the light. My feelings were messed up, I didn’t know what I felt, sadness, anger, dismay.  People they were getting out of Al Karada mall burning. I was in Baghdad, visiting my cousins. It’s hard to see people dying and you can’t help. As my dad was driving, I had a lot of questions in my mind. Who did that? And why did they do it? Why did they kill innocent people?