Islamic State turned Mosul church into base for Islamic religious police
The sign above the door of Um al-Mauna (Our Mother of Perpetual Help) in Iraq’s second city reads “Chaldean Catholic church”, but its terror occupants had other ideas.The Chaldean Catholic Church traces its origins to the Assyrian Church of the East, which traces its origins to the first century, when it was deemed to have been founded by the Apostle Thomas.
“No entry, by order of the ISIS Hesba Division (the religious police)”, they wrote on the outside wall.
Um al-Mauna is one church among many in the Middle East that the jihadis have decimated; nonetheless, even some in the Church itself are indifferent to the sufferings of Christians. Among them is Patriarch Louis Sako, the Baghdad-based head of the Chaldean Catholic Church.
In September 2015, Sako argued against Western countries giving priority to Christian refugees, because he feared a “mass exodus of Christians.” His concern about the dwindling Christian community had nothing to do with their well-being, but the well-being of jihadists: he took active measures to ensure that Christians continued to live in terror in dangerous areas so that they could, in his words, “help their Muslim fellow citizens to free themselves from jihadist ideology.” Sako apparently expected Christians and their families (including infants) to be brutalized, raped and slaughtered: he even “refused to authorize requests to local Christians to help them find flights and visas and welcome centers in foreign countries.”
Although emphasizing that Christians should “help” jihadists, he ironically stated that the “defeat of the jihadist ideology that has spread throughout the Islamic world requires the involvement of Muslim authorities and Arab governments.”
The Christian Churches are filled with so-called leaders who are perhaps benefiting politically and economically from jihadist-promoting regimes; for whatever reason, all too many of them have abandoned innocent Christians to their fate.
When the West Mosul church described in the article below was turned into an Islamic state religious police base, this was its new image:
Above the door of the ochre-coloured church, ISIS members have damaged a stone cross.It’s a shame that Sako will likely never be interviewed in the same room with serious advocates for persecuted Christians. In contrast to Sako, Christian leader Reverend Andrew White (aka the Vicar of Baghdad), who reaches out to both Christians and Muslims, said:
Not a single crucifix, or statue of Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary has survived in the building’s nave, from which all mark of Christianity has been methodically removed.
“I have looked through the Quran trying to find forgiveness… there isn’t any. If you find it, tell me. This makes it very difficult to talk to ISIS because they can show you quite clearly that it is what Allah wants. They can justify their position when Allah says you should combat and fight the infidel and they say, ‘Well, these are infidels.’ So the question is, how can you prove that these are not infidels? And you can’t.”
“ISIS Turned Church In Iraq’s Mosul Into Religious Police Base”, NDTV, March 10, 2017:
MOSUL: The elegant columns of a west Mosul church stand plastered with ISIS propaganda after the terrorists’ infamous religious police took over the Christian place of worship. The sign above the door of Um al-Mauna (Our Mother of Perpetual Help) in Iraq’s second city reads “Chaldean Catholic church”, but its terror occupants had other ideas.
“No entry, by order of the ISIS Hesba Division (the religious police)”, they wrote on the outside wall. Five terrorists lie dead outside, their bodies twisted and one with the top of his skull blown off, after Iraqi forces retook the neighbourhood from ISIS this week.
The church “was an important office for the authorities tasked with making sure (Mosul) residents had a beard, wore short robes and followed their extremist convictions,” says Lieutenant Colonel Abdulamir al-Mohammedawi of the elite Rapid Response Division.
Iraqi forces are pushing an offensive to retake the whole of Mosul, the terror group’s last major urban bastion in the country, after retaking its eastern side in January.
ISIS fighters took control of the city in 2014, imposing their harsh interpretation of Islamic law on its inhabitants.
Above the door of the ochre-coloured church, ISIS members have damaged a stone cross. Not far away, they seem to have tried to rip another from a metal door off its hinges.
Not a single crucifix, or statue of Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary has survived in the building’s nave, from which all mark of Christianity has been methodically removed.
Only the grey marble altar remains. In the church’s empty alcoves lies the base of a statue that was probably also destroyed, decorated with red and yellow flowers.
The posters on the church’s marble columns give an indication of what life was like under ISIS.
Chilling illustrations
One shows religious invocations to repeat in the mornings and evenings, while another explains the benefits of praying in a mosque.
A “town document” lists the 14 rules of life in Mosul under terror rule: “The trade and consumption of alcohol, drugs and cigarettes is banned.”
Women should wear modest attire and only appear in public “when necessary”, it says.
A pamphlet on the rubble-covered ground explains the different forms of corporal punishment prescribed for theft, alcohol consumption, adultery and homosexuality.
It comes complete with chilling illustrations.
Terrorists have scribbled their noms de guerre on the church’s walls, and a large chandelier has been dumped in the yard.
In the church’s small side rooms, artificial flower garlands are draped near posters explaining how to use a Kalashnikov rifle.
Chaldeans make up the majority of Iraq’s Christians. But a community that numbered more than a million before the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein has since dwindled to less than 350,000 in the face of recurring violence.
In June 2014, ISIS seized control of Mosul and ordered the city’s Christian community to convert to Islam, pay a special tax, leave or face execution.
Weeks later, the terror group swept through Qaraqosh and the rest of the Nineveh Plain east of Mosul, where an estimated 120,000 Christians lived, prompting them all to flee….
