Influential British band Massive Attack dedicated their only Middle East gig to the children of Gaza, openly condemning Israel’s "massacre" of the Palestinians. As the band played in Byblos, in Lebanon, just a few hundred kilometers north of Gaza, swaying music-lovers on Tuesday night held up Palestinian flags as Massive Attack issued a rare, […]

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – It must be noted that Islamists were not spared judgment. Five Muslim men were publicly flogged, each receiving 70 lashes for not fasting during the holy month. Muslims are required to not eat or drink between sunrise and sunset during Ramadan. A spokesman for Iran’s National Council of Resistance […]

Soldier’s heads were hoisted on poles as they were killed in Syria.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – Although Christians have lived in northern Iraq and Syria for nearly two-thousand years, and at least six hundred years before Islam, today they face extinction across the region.  "Our people are disappearing," Canon Andrew White, head of the Anglican Church in Iraq "It looks as though the end could be very near," he told the BBC. A week ago, Christians were warned to either leave the city of Mosul and other areas under Islamic State control, or they would have to pay a tax or be put to death. Today, nobody has heard from those Christians and nobody knows what is happening to them.

Are they being quietly "put to the sword" as this militant strain of Islam asks they be? The Human Rights Watch reported on July 14 that homes in Mosul were painted with red letters to indicate Christian homes. Other homes of Shiite Muslims were also adorned.

Christians who have escaped reported being deprived of all their belongings except their clothes. Jewelry, money, automobiles, even food and water were confiscated on the edge of town as Christians were forced to pass through Islamic State checkpoints.  However, we know a number of Christians remained, for many reasons. Some were too destitute to travel or had weak and infirm family who could not make the desert trek to safety.  Those that left were warned "don’t even dream of returning."

    After Lebanese networks last week aired a unified newscast in solidarity with Palestinians suffering a bloody war in the Gaza Strip, LBCI television launched on Monday a new campaign to condemn the Islamic State’s attacks on Christians in Iraq.   LBCI changed its logo to “Lbن,” and took the initiative after Muslim Iraqi […]

  French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in a joint statement on Monday that they are taking steps to ease the suffering of Christians now fleeing northern Iraq en masse.   “We will aid those who have been displaced following the threats from the Islamic State [formerly known as Islamic […]

  Iraqi Christians who were forced to flee the northern city of Mosul under threat of forced conversion or execution by jihadists have spoken of their terror as churches were turned into mosques and their homes and property confiscated.   The expulsion of one of the world’s oldest Christian communities provoked condemnation and anguish from […]

  Hopes grew Friday that Pope Francis will pay his first-ever papal visit to the United States in 2015 after a senior cleric said he’d be attending a major Catholic event in Philadelphia.   Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput, speaking to Native American Catholics in North Dakota, said the 77-year-old pontiff had personally confirmed to him […]

  في الرابع من الشهرالحالي اصدر رئيس هيئة الصندوق الوطني المركزي للمهجرين قرارا اعطى فيه الاولوية ل "استكمال مصالحة بلدة بريح وتأمين عودة أهاليها إليها". وورد في قراره "حيث أننا نرغب بمعالجة كافة معاملات بلدة بريح بأسرع وقت ممكن وعلى مستوى الصندوق المركزي للمهجرين، وتخفيفاً للروتين الإداري المعمول به بين مختلف المكاتب والأقسام في الصندوق، […]

  Pope Francis has met privately with a Sudanese woman who arrived in Italy after escaping a death sentence in Sudan for refusing to recant her Christian faith.   The Vatican said Pope Francis had "a very affectionate" meeting with Meriam Ibrahim, 27, her husband and their two small children. Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico […]