ISIS Genocide Victims Do Not Include Christians, the State Department Is Poised to Rule
![]() |
The Arabic letter “N” used by ISIS to brand Christian-populated areas as “Nazarene”
|
NationalReview
by Nina Shea
A report by a renowned journalist states that Christians are to be excluded from an impending official United States government declaration of ISIS genocide.
A report by a renowned journalist states that Christians are to be excluded from an impending official United States government declaration of ISIS genocide.
If true, it would reflect a familiar pattern within
the administration of a politically correct bias that views Christians —
even non-Western congregations such as those in Iraq and Syria — never
as victims but always as Inquisition-style oppressors. (That a State
Department genocide designation for ISIS may be imminent was
acknowledged last week in congressional testimony, by Ambassador Anne
Patterson, the assistant secretary of the State Department’s Near East
Bureau.)
Yazidis, according to the story by investigative reporter Michael
Isikoff, are going to be officially recognized as genocide victims, and
rightly so. Yet Christians, who are also among the most vulnerable
religious minority groups that have been deliberately and mercilessly
targeted for eradication by ISIS, are not. This is not an academic
matter. A genocide designation would have significant policy
implications for American efforts to restore property and lands taken
from the minority groups and for offers of aid, asylum, and other
protections to such victims. Worse, it would mean that, under the
Genocide Convention, the United States and other governments would not
be bound to act to suppress or even prevent the genocide of these
Christians.
An unnamed State Department official was quoted by Isikoff as saying
that only the attacks on Yazidis have made “the high bar” of the
genocide standard and as pointing to the mass killing of 1,000 Yazidi
men and the enslavement of thousands of Yazidi women and girls. To
propose that Christians have been simply driven off their land but not
suffered similar fates is deeply misinformed. In fact, the last
Christians to pray in the language spoken by Jesus are also being
deliberately targeted for extinction through equally brutal measures.
Christians have been executed by the thousands. Christian women and
girls are vulnerable to sexual enslavement. Many of their clergy have
been assassinated and their churches and ancient monasteries demolished
or desecrated. They have been systematically stripped of all their
wealth, and those too elderly or sick to flee ISIS-controlled territory
have been forcibly converted to Islam or killed, such as an 80-year-old
woman who was burned to death for refusing to abide by ISIS religious
rules. Pope Francis pronounced their suffering “genocide” in July. The
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and a broad array of other churches
have done so as well. Analysis from an office of the Holocaust Museum
apparently relied on by the State Department asserts that ISIS protects
Christians in exchange for jizya, an Islamic tax for “People of the
Book,” but the assertion is simply not grounded in fact.
ISIS atrocities against Christians became public in June 2014 when the
jihadists stamped Christian homes in Mosul with the red letter N for
“Nazarene” and began enforcing its “convert or die” policy. The
atrocities continue. Recently the Melkite Catholic bishop of Aleppo
reported that 1,000 Christians, including two Orthodox bishops, have
been kidnapped and murdered in his city alone. In September, ISIS
executed, on videotape, three Assyrian Christian men and threatened to
do the same to 200 more being held captive by the terrorist group.
Recent reports by an American Christian aid group state that several
Christians who refused to renounce their faith were raped, beheaded, or
crucified a few months ago.
Christian women and girls are also enslaved and sexually abused.
Three Christian females sold in ISIS slave markets were profiled in a
New York Times Magazine report last summer. ISIS rules allow Christian
sabaya, that is, their sexual enslavement. Its magazine Dabiq explicitly
approved the enslavement of Christian girls in Nigeria, and the
jihadist group posted prices for Christian, as well as Yazidi, female
slaves in Raqqa.
In recent weeks, the stalwart Knights of Columbus have been placing
emotionally searing ads in Politico and elsewhere advocating the passage
of House Resolution 75:
This bipartisan bill was initiated by Representative Jeff Fortenberry
(R., Neb.) and Representative Anna Eshoo (D., Calif.) to declare that
genocide is being faced by Christians, Yazidis, and other vulnerable
groups.
The ads — depicting a mother and child, who appear as the very
personifications of grief, against a landscape of ISIS destruction —
might strike a nerve within the Obama administration. But as of now, the
administration looks poised to preempt the bill and render a grave
injustice to the suffering Christians of Iraq and Syria.
— Nina Shea is the director of Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious
Freedom.