DEIR AL-QAMAR, Lebanon: “The view isn’t so great now, but in the morning …” The hotel manager, Nadim Zoghbi, trailed off as he showed us to a duplex suite at Deir al-Oumara, a recently restored 19th-century Ottoman-era villa. Zoghbi pointed into the darkness that surrounded our suite’s long balcony on all sides, toward a […]

  An ice cream man accused of killing two Irish soldiers in 1980 was arrested Tuesday by U.S. authorities at his Dearborn home on an immigration violation that could lead to his deportation. Mahmoud Bazzi, 71, will face a removal proceeding next week, said Khaalid Walls, a spokesman for the Detroit office of U.S. Immigration […]

  "اخرجوا يا مسيحيي دمشق ويبرود ومعلولا من أوطاننا، واخرجوا يا مسيحيي الموصل ونينوى وبغداد من بلداننا، واخرجوا يا مسيحيي لبنان من جبالنا وودياننا، واخرجوا يا مسيحيي فلسطين والجزيرة من شواطئنا وترابنا، اخرجوا جميعا من تحت جلودنا، اخرجوا جميعا فنحن نبغضكم، ولا نريدكم بيننا، اخرجوا فقد سئمنا التقدم والحضارة والانفتاح والتسامح والمحبة والإخاء والتعايش والعفو! […]

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – A massive humanitarian crisis is developing as the newly-formed Islamic State which spans Syria and Iraq, consolidates power. True to their militant, fundamentalist Islamic charter, the state has ordered Christians to convert or die and given them a deadline by which to flee. Those choosing to leave are not allowed any possessions.  Only those who pay a steep, but unspecified fine will be permitted to stay – as long as they keep paying.  Let us pray for our Martyrs, both past and present…

On Friday the loudspeakers blared from every Mosque in Mosul that the Christians had their options. They could leave with nothing, pay an unspecified fine, convert to Islam, or be put to death. The deadline for the decision was on Saturday, just 24 hours.  Many Christians remained as of Saturday evening, saying they could not afford the costs to flee and they had no place to go. Departing Christians who attempted to take belongings said they were robbed of their possessions and forced to take residence in camps for displaced persons.  Phones, money, jewelry were all confiscated. Even the cars in which they have tried to flee have been taken. One woman claimed to be robbed of $15,000. Even wedding rings are being seized.  The Islamic State is serious about its intention to form a new Islamic Caliphate in the Middle East and to export Islam by whatever means necessary. The initial conquest is over, and now the consolidation of power has started. Once the cities and borders are secure, the state will likely cast its hungry gaze on neighboring cities, without respect for borders.

  The last Christians in northern Iraq are fleeing from places where their communities have lived for almost 2,000 years, as a deadline passed for them to either convert to Islam, pay a special tax or be killed.   The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) issued a decree last week offering Christians […]

Nun. The yoke of my iniquities hath watched: they are folded together in his hand, and put upon my neck: my strength is weakened: the Lord hath delivered me into a hand out of which I am not able to rise. (Lamentations, 1)

  The world’s top Islamic body denounced Monday the persecution of Christians in Iraq’s second city Mosul as an "intolerable crime," and offered to help those displaced by a jihadist offensive. Organization of Islamic Cooperation secretary general Iyad Madani said the "forced displacement" of Mosul’s Christians showed the IS’ "practices have nothing to do with Islam […]

  BEIRUT: Palestinian mothers weep over the bodies of children, whose expressionless faces indicate their untimely fate. Israeli rockets strike three-story buildings, turning homes into rubble. These were the images broadcast across all eight Lebanese television channels Monday, in what may be the world’s first unified news bulletin in support of Gaza.   It was […]

By Dominic Evans and Raheem Salman, BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The head of Iraq’s largest church said on Sunday that Islamic State militants who drove Christians out of Mosul were worse than Mongol leader Genghis Khan and his grandson Hulagu who ransacked medieval Baghdad.

Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako led a wave of condemnation for the Sunni Islamists who demanded Christians either convert, submit to their radical rule and pay a religious levy or face death by the sword. At the Vatican, Pope Francis decried what he said was the persecution of Christians in the birthplace of their faith, while U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the Islamic State’s actions could constitute a crime against humanity.

Hundreds of Christian families left Mosul ahead of Saturday’s ultimatum, many of them stripped of their possessions as they fled for safety. They formed the remnants of a community which once numbered in the tens of thousands and traced its presence in Mosul to the earliest years of Christianity.

People of other faiths in the once diverse city, including Shi’ites, Yazidis and Shabaks, have also fled from the ultra-conservative militants, who have blown up mosques and shrines and seized property of fleeing minorities. "The heinous crime of the Islamic State was carried out not just against Christians, but against humanity," Sako told a special church service in east Baghdad where around 200 Muslims joined Christians in solidarity. "How in the 21st century could people be forced from their houses just because they are Christian, or Shi’ite or Sunni or Yazidi?" he asked. "Christian families have been expelled from their houses and their valuables were stolen and …their houses and property expropriated in the name of the Islamic State."

  BEIRUT: Despite reports that the government had renewed its interest in rebuilding the rail line between Beirut and Tabarja, the closest anyone is likely to come to buying a ticket is still an evening drinking $9 vodka tonics at an exclusive bar that opened recently in the historical Mar Mikhael train station. “This is […]