Naast de Sahel en de landen rond het Tsjaadmeer groeit het aantal jihadisten.
De dreiging van ISIS-terreurgroepen in Afrika ten zuiden van de Sahel is
inmiddels opgerukt tot in Zuid-Afrika. De politie in het stadje
Kliprivier heeft met het oppakken van een ‘kidnappingsgroep’ volgens de
Zuid-Afrikaanse autoriteiten ‘een van de grootste doorbraken bereikt in
de onderzoeken naar internationaal terrorisme in Zuid-Afrika’, zo meldt de Daily Maverick.
Map of the Muslim Population by Percentage in the World (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
All places with connection to Christian culture, like St. Elian's tomb, the monastery around it (Mar Elian Monastery), an ancient structure located just outside a Syrian town captured by the group earlier this month, got bulldozed down. What began as demonstrations against the nation's Ba'athist president, Bashar al-Assad, has become a complex fight among the Syrian regime; moderate rebels; Kurds; and Islamists, such as al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State.
Muslims made use of it to convert people to what they call the true Islam and to go and destroy all 'heathen' monuments.
Places where archaeologists have worked excavating and preserving like the site of Palmyra for 40 years are destroyed for being a witness in later centuries. The torture and beheading of leading Syrian archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad had to be again one of the many killings to frighten people and to make them choose for ISIS.
Already hundreds of Christian families have fled central Syrian towns as Islamic State fighters advanced toward them.
But also Muslims are looking for an escape of the terrorist so called Muslim fanatics. More and more Mohammedan people are daring to speak out that it can not be that those ISIS people would be real Muslims. Problem is that some Muslims are finding ways to accuse Israel of infiltrating and funding groups against Muslim groups so that the Muslim world would be destabilised. Some said to me that they had seen video where when zoomed in could be seen fighters wearing a David star. I myself did not see any proof of that yet and consider it propaganda material which is used to set one group of people up against an other group.
The Druze, a centuries-old Arab community and an offshoot of Shia Islam, is the latest religious minority in the Levant to suffer the wrath of Islamic extremists. Jabhat al-Nusra or the Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliated group fighting the Assad regime in Syria, in June of this year killed nearly two dozen members of the Druze community in Syria’s northern region near the town of Idlib. Nusra, like the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) and other radical Sunni groups, views the Druze, much like the Shia, as “apostate” Muslims that should be killed. Islamic militants have already attacked Shia and Christian communities and their places of worship in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain.
In her thoughtful New York Times Magazine article, “The Shadows of Death,” Eliza Griswold has chronicled the plight of Christians in the Middle East and how attacks by radical Islamic groups have led to the Middle East emptying itself of Christians. This is a sad tale for the Christian community, for other religious minorities, and for the region as a whole. The Druze community in Syria is becoming understandably apprehensive about whether it would face a similar fate.
As the intolerance of religious minorities —Christians, Druze, and Shia— bubbles to the surface, the Sunni majority becomes more regressive. The artistic, cultural, economic, religious, and social diversity, which has been part of the multiethnic and multi-religious mosaic in the Levant and across the region, is rapidly disappearing to be replaced by backwardness and retrogression.
In the mean time those looking for a better place to live in Europe are considered by several Europeans a threat to their Judeo-Christian society with a danger of having Muslims infiltrating our Western culture, plus finding people who do not want to adapt to our Western culture, but making stronger groups of people they fear would become 'parasites' in our economy and having them wanting to have mosques build in our regions.
ISIS has released photos of the destruction of St. Elian's tomb, chapel and monastery in Homs, Syria.
The abbot of St. Elian Father Jacques Mouraud was kidnapped in the area on May 21st and is still missing.
On Sunday, Syrian activists reported that the ISIS militants blew up the Baalshamin Temple, which dates back to two thousand years, in the ancient city of Palmyra in central Syria.
Maamoun Abdulkarim, Syria’s antiquities chief, said ISIS placed a large quantity of explosives in the temple of Baalshamin on Sunday and blew it up, causing much damage.
“Our darkest predictions are unfortunately taking place,” Abdulkarim told the AFP news agency.
Another Turkish-based activist, who is originally from Palmyra, told the AP news agency, that sources from the city said the temple was blown up today.
The ancient city, which is a UnescoWorld Heritage site, is famed for its well-preserved Greco-Roman ruins, and the Baalshamin temple, built nearly 2,000 years ago, is one of the city’s best-known buildings.
The Isis militant group continues with its tactics of showing the world how brutal they can be and how they are not afraid to brutally execute 30 Christians. This time they did it in in Libya
and presented it as part of a new video release warning all those in the areas it
controls to convert to Islam.
They also like to take their time to make it a big event. In a 29-minute video bearing the official logo of Isis’s al-Furqan media
arm, and purporting to set out the militant group’s view of Christianity once more the world can witness how this group misuses God to bring terror.
Starting
with a description of the different branches of the church from
Catholicism to Eastern Orthodox, footage includes the destruction of a
number of churches, altars and works of art across a range of
unspecified locations.
A masked fighter brandishing a pistol
delivers a long statement, saying Christians must convert to Islam or
pay a special tax prescribed by the Quran. Apart from the graphic killings, the video showed militants destroying churches and Christian iconographyAn Isis militant smashes a cross on an altar
Conical roofs characteristic of Yazidi sites mark the tomb of Şêx Adî in Lalish (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Yazidi comes from "Azdaim" which means "I was created". They say they follow God and His angels. For them there is only One God Who has good and bad in His Hands. They are not against any religion and are not against any people.
The Yazidi or Ezidis have been oppressed for many years by the Ba'athists, Al Qaeda, and now IS. According to one of the preachers it is because they are a small community of believers, a closed religion of a people of faith, mercy and humanity, which does not have much contact with the world, and by being humble an opportunity is taken by others to oppress them. Others want to annihilate them and not having their own state to defend themselves, not having weapons, they need protection. They just want to live in peace and do not want a specific country for them because according to their faith the world (or globe) is a garden for every one. In a garden are many flowers and they consider them also one of the flowers which can give colour to the garden.
Many
Kurds know the Ezidis as refugees, IDPs, even as devil worshippers -
though mostly through biased media reports. Kawa wants to learn the
truth about the people’s religion and daily life. In a ZLR episode
Kawa goes to a Ezidi community in Lalesh, the main Yazidi temple complex
in the KR. He meets a young man called Zaid, who shows Kawa various
aspects of Ezidi life; from how they eat, to prayer in their temple, to
who is protecting them from IS. Zaid and his family were on Mount Sinjar
and along with others subjected to much horror and deprivation.
Verviers (Belgium), the "Grand'Poste" (1904/1909 - Architect: Van Hoecke). Nederlands: Verviers (België), de "Grand'Poste" (1904/1909 - Architect: Van Hoecke). Walon: Vèrvî (Bèljike), li Grand'Poste (1904/1909 - Âchitèke: Van Hoecke). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The last few days we have seen more pictures of the horror things Abdelhamid Abaaoud did. Already some months ago we could see him driving a car with some bodies hanging on it being carried over the ground when this Belgian-born son of an immigrant shopkeeper from Morocco, was laughing with them in Syria. After one year having been in Syria it seems he is now back in Europe, but nobody seems to know where he went to after he was last seen in Greece. In any case he has earned pages in the international press, cause of his actions and the raid in Verviers last week. He has emerged as a prime suspect in what Belgian authorities say was an imminent terrorist operation thwarted by raids on Jan. 15 on an extremist hideaway in the east of Belgium and nine homes in Molenbeek, after the terrorist attacks in France on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. It is known that about 450 people left Belgium to go to fight in Syria for the Jihad and to support ISIS.
Estimates of the number of foreigners in the Islamic State, or ISIS, vary, but of the more than 31,000 fighters the C.I.A. estimated in September to be active, as many as half came from foreign countries, according to the International Center for the Study of Radicalization in London and the Soufan Group in New York. The overwhelming majority are men from Arab and other Muslim countries, drawn to jihad by religious zeal, a chance to fight the decadent West and the lure of excitement in otherwise dreary lives. But the flow of non-Muslim or non-religious recruits from the West, and their use in some of the most grisly actions, is a new and worrying phenomenon.(NYT)
Two suspects died Thursday as counter-terror police searched a series of locations tied to people they believe were intent on launching terror operations in Belgium, officials said. No police or civilians were hurt after suspects opened fire with automatic weapons at a location in Verviers, Belgium, Magistrate Eric Van der Sypt said. However, besides the two suspects killed, one suspect was injured, he said.
The terror threat level in Belgium has been raised to three - the second highest, Mr Van der Sypt said.
Witnesses in Verviers reported hearing heavy gunfire for several minutes and at least three explosions.
Witness Marylou Fletcher told the BBC: "We were going back from shopping and saw the police cars. We thought there was an accident then we heard something blowing up. There were a lot of gunshots.
"My children cried. They are just terrified."
The area around the train station has been cordoned off and reports on social media say there is a heavy police presence in the town centre.
Apart from the graphic killings, the video showed militants destroying churches and Christian iconography
An Isis militant smashes a cross on an altar
