The Patriot Post® · An Eye for an ISIS
It’s the stuff of Old Testament times: God’s people taken into captivity, sold into slavery, or worse – slaughtered in cold blood. Their villages conquered, their people taxed, the thousands of Assyrian Christians suffering in the Middle East today share more than a language with the people of Jesus’s time. They also share the deep pain of an ancient war now ripping through Syria and northern Iraq.
While U.S. warplanes rain down strikes from above, reports suggest that an estimated 300 Christian hostages sit frightened in an unknown location, prisoners of a primitive hatred. After just two days, their numbers are already dwindling, as Islam’s terrorists are said to have viciously executed another 15 innocents. For its part, the Obama administration finally acknowledged the Christian faith that ISIS is targeting in a statement from his National Security Council, insisting that the world’s leaders stands “united and undeterred” in its resolve to bring an end to the terrorists’ “depravity.” But the same officials still refuse to label what ISIS is doing in Iraq as what it is: genocide.
In a sobering piece from the New York Times, Anne Barnard chronicles the onslaught in these religious communities, which date all the way back to Mesopotamia. No longer content to massacre people, ISIS is systematically killing their culture too. At the crossroads of Syria and Iraq – a land as meaningful for its history as it is strategic for this battle – terrorists are smashing locks into libraries, museums, and churches. Shattering 3,000-year old pieces of art, the militants are exchanging their knives for power drills and hammers, which they take to priceless pieces.
Wielding sledgehammers, men in black masks are intent – not just on mangling populations but erasing every trace of them. It is, says anthropologist Amr al-Azm, “A tragedy and catastrophic loss for Iraqi history and archaeology beyond comprehension.” So now ISIS is systematically destroying the cultural evidence that followers of Jesus Christ have inhabited this land since the founding of the Church.
While they sell art to finance their bloodlust, other believers run for their lives. In the sliver of land that connects Syria and Iraq, only fighters are left behind from the 1,200 families lucky enough to escape without capture. At least 33 villages from the area have been raided in the gruesome march through Iraq – with some radicals even crossing the rivers by night.
The Christians who have survived are still paying a steep price. “Early in February, according to Assyrian groups inside and outside Syria, came a declaration from the Islamic State that Christians in a string of villages… in Syrian Hasaka Province would have to take down their crosses and pay the jizya (a tax for religious minorities), traditionally in gold.” Some say they’re staving off ISIS’s wrath with money.
One of the Christians with hopes of returning to his Ninevah home said, “I made a vow, when I return I want to kiss the soil of my village and pray in the church.” It’s a powerful reminder that ISIS can destroy a lot of things – but the hope of those who follow the risen Savior is not one of them.
The Web’s New Net Minder
The government took over health care, and we all know how that turned out. Now Washington is trying to get its hands on the Internet – another power grab that’s spooking people in every corner of cyberspace. [Thursday], the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) went a long way to accomplishing the Left’s next power grab, voting 3-2 to give their agency the authority to swoop in and regulate one of the few markets still free of government intervention.
Although there are strong feelings on both sides of the debate, one thing Americans should all agree on is that this decision – involving the federal government in one of the most productive areas of our economy – should have come from Congress. Instead, three political appointees have decided to entrust a government agency with control of the Internet. (To see where an overinvolved government can lead, see communist China.) As many have argued, the reason the web has prospered and grown so quickly is because the government isn’t involved. Still, Tom Wheeler, FCC Chairman, insists that we “finally have legally sustainable rules to ensure that the Internet stays fast, fair and open.” Fast, maybe. But “fair” and “open” aren’t exactly watchwords of this administration. Forbes, one of the outlets weighing in, was quick to say that “net neutrality,” as the FCC calls it, is anything but. “It’s not party neutral. It’s not government-branch neutral. It’s not consumer-neutral.”
Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) piled on, refusing to mince words about what he sees as more overreach from an out-of-control and inefficient government. “This unprecedented move by the FCC is not only an egregious seizure of regulatory power and a clear violation of the 1996 Communications Act… It also begins in earnest the slow, suffocating, inevitable demise of the Internet as we know it today – the open and expansive universe and source of information, innovation, entertainment, and communication. What was previously bound only by our imagination and the frontiers of our technology will now be suffocated by Washington bureaucrats…”
“Today, the FCC made clear that it has no interest in governing within the authority given to it by Congress, and that it is eager to discard the objectivity that is expected of an independent, non-partisan agency in favor of rank partisanship carried out on behalf of our imperious President.”
Apple Fritters away Freedom in Arkansas
This Apple doesn’t fall far from the intolerant tree. In Arkansas, tech mogul Apple is jumping in feet-first to a local debate over religious liberty – and it’s not tough to see why. The world’s largest publicly traded company just fired a lobbyist for no other reason than his conservative views – and they don’t want anything to get in the way of doing it again.
A Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) is one of the best weapons Christians have to protect their First Amendment rights to live and work according to their faith. So it stands to reason that Apple would take an active role blocking these laws – especially if they would help stop them from sacking conservatives like Jay Love for their moral views. “At Apple,” a spokesman said, “inclusion inspires innovation.” (Inclusion, apparently, of everyone except Christians who live out their faith.) “Our employees in Little Rock have a right to equal treatment under the law, as do their coworkers… around the world. We join the many voices across Arkansas in opposing HB 1228 and we urge state legislators to vote against the bill.”
Unfortunately for our friends in the Natural State, that seems to have gummed up the works for passing the measure. If you live in Arkansas – or know someone who does – I encourage you to call your state officials and urge them to stop listening to big business and start listening to voters.
Meanwhile, in Indiana, the state senate seems less concerned about Silicon Valley’s input and moved to pass their local RFRA in a landslide 40-10 vote. “You don’t have to look too far to find a growing hostility toward people of faith,” Sen. Scott Schneider told reporters. The good news continued in West Virginia, which passed a ban on abortions after 20 weeks, when science shows that babies feel excruciating pain. Now, if only Congress would follow their example and do the same!
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.