ICC Note: A professor in Pennsylvania spoke at Lafayette College on Tuesday warning of the existential threat Middle Eastern Christians face today. In a world where Islamic terrorist threatens everyone’s security, the minority religious groups of the Middle East are experiencing the “lion’s share” of the atrocities. Citing forced conversions, exile, enslavement and execution, Dr. Habib Malik explained that Christians living in Iraq and Syria are facing the gravest of circumstances.
04/13/16 Easton, Pa. (WFMZ) – Islamic militants are committing genocide against Christians across the Middle East, warned scholar Dr. Habib Malik Tuesday night at Lafayette College.
He also warned those militants have the West squarely in their sights “as the ultimate target.”
“There is much alarming evidence pointing to pervasive persecution of Christians worldwide for no reason other than that they are Christian,” said Malik, who is an associate professor of history and cultural studies at Lebanese American University in Byblos, Lebanon.
“The bulk of this oppression occurs in Islamic majority regions, from Nigeria to Mindanao in the southern Philippines, but it is also documented in parts of India, China and North Korea.
“Middle Eastern Christians who happen to reside in the epicenter of the world of Islam receive the lion’s share of this unsolicited abuse and attention.”
Malik said ISIS is guilty of constant “sub-beastial behavior” and named the atrocities of those Islamic militants: “Public beheadings, mass sexual enslavement of women and children, systematic destruction of places of worship and archeological sites, terror attacks on innocent civilians, instruction of the very young in the art of mass slaughter, deliberate ethnic, religious and cultural cleansing and other outrages.”
“Barbaric” punishments in regions of the Middle East controlled by ISIS include flogging for drinking alcohol, amputation of limbs for theft, stoning for adultery and execution for apostasy, reported Malik.
He said Christians living in Syria and Iraqi have faced choices of forced conversion, humiliation, exile or a horrible death by ISIS. In a number of notorious cases, said Malik, those “ghastly alternatives” were not even an option. “Instead, wholesale destruction, slaughter and enslavement — mainly of the sexual sort — befell the Christians.”
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