U.S. citizens: Tell U.S. Senate to reject new ‘anti-terrorism’ bill

(The Stream) — One of the world’s oldest Christian communities is facing extermination from jihadists, as Islamic militants linked to Al-Qaeda have seized the Syrian city of Aleppo – home to an estimated 3.5 million people, including more than 50,000 Christians.

While Aleppo has seen a mass exodus of some 200,000 Christians in the past 12 years, the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) took control of large parts of the city on Sunday, prompting warnings from persecution watchers of a fresh “religious cleansing” of Christians.

“It looks like we are now heading for another major crisis for Syrian Christians,” Dr. Martin Parsons, director of The Lindisfarne Centre for the Study of Christian Persecution, told The Stream. “Christian aid agencies need to prepare for a massive relief operation.”

‘Effective and deadly’ Muslim militants

Parsons explained that HTS is a direct affiliate of Al Qaeda set up under the name of the Jabhat al-Nusra Front in 2011 with the help of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group.

The BBC described HTS as “one of the most effective and deadly of the groups” ranged against Syria’s President Bashir al-Assad, driven primarily by “jihadist ideology” rather than “revolutionary zeal.”

The Iraqi Christian Foundation warned on its X account that

Syrian Christians in #Aleppo, #Syria, are in grave danger from the invading demonic #AlQaeda/#ISIS terrorists who have already begun removing all Christmas decorations and beheading captured soldiers.

Western Media are cheering on the terrorists and calling them by the propaganda term ‘rebels.’ Please pray for our fellow Christians and other minorities in harm’s way in Syria.

READ: World War Syria: Why is the US backing ‘rebels’ who butcher Christians?

“Christians of Aleppo have fled to the Kurdish neighbourhoods where the Kurds, even the elderly women, are taking up arms to defend Kurds and Christians,” Middle Eastern researcher and peace advocate Hemdad Mehristani reported.

“Unfortunately, ethnic cleansing of Kurds and religious minorities is currently taking place in Aleppo. Tens of thousands of its Kurdish, Armenian, and Assyrian population are forced out of the city by the Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists of Turkey,” Crisis Watch confirmed.

Targeting Christians

Jihadist groups that are dominant in the Syrian opposition have been specifically targeting Christians nationwide – beginning with the abduction of Bishop Yohanna Ibrahim, head of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Aleppo, and Bishop Boulos Yaziji, head of the Greek Orthodox Church in Syria, who were kidnapped during a humanitarian trip in April 2013.

“No one knows who abducted them, but suspicion fell on the Jabhat al-Nusra Front – who are now HTS – the group [that] just seized large parts of Aleppo,” Parsons, a former aid worker to Afghanistan and an expert on Islamic theology, noted.

“Both Islamic State and other jihadist groups massacred and abducted large numbers of Christians. Churches were systematically destroyed in an attempt to religiously cleanse whole areas of Syria of its non-Muslim population,” he told The Stream.

“Islamic State also reimplemented aspects of shari’a allowing the enslavement of non-Muslims – and produced a slave prince list with different values for different age Yazidi and Christian women.”

Tenth anniversary of ISIS genocide

In August, the U.S. State Department released a statement marking the “10th Anniversary of ISIS’s Genocide Against Yezidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims.”

While the U.S. government estimates that 10 percent of the Syrian population is Christian, of the 2.2 million Christians who lived in the country prior to the civil war, Open Doors USA estimates that only approximately 579,000 remain (2.8 percent of the population).

Reprinted with permission from The Stream.

U.S. citizens: Tell U.S. Senate to reject new ‘anti-terrorism’ bill