RUTHFULLY YOURS

Recently in Iraq, 19 Yazidi girls were placed in iron cages and burned alive in front of a crowd of hundreds, for refusing to copulate with jihadis.

“Religious minority women under IS [Islamic State] control are often repeatedly sold from jihadi to jihadi. Once militants get tired of raping and abusing one particular girl, they usually sell them off to one of their militant buddies so they can rape and abuse them at their own pleasure.” — Samuel Smith, The Christian Post.

After their children were abducted by the Islamic State, a couple answered their door to find the body parts of their daughters and a video of them being tortured and raped.

“Christian girls are considered goods to be damaged at leisure. Abusing them is a right. According to the community’s mentality it is not even a crime. Muslims regard them as spoils of war.” — Local residents, Pakistan.

Islamic law, always harsh, is still harsher for women. According to the Koran, men have “authority” over women and may beat them if they are “disobedient” (4:34). According to Mohammad, the prophet of Islam, women are less intelligent than men — two women are needed to equal one man’s testimony — and the majority of hell’s population is made up of women, who are likened to donkeys and dogs in their ability to distract a man from his prayer and thereby annul it.

What, then, is Islam’s view of women who are “infidels”? They are at best “meant for one thing, the pleasure of the Muslim man,” as one Muslim told a group of young Christian girls in Pakistan before terrorizing and murdering one. In the Koran, (see 4:24), non-Muslim women seized in a jihad can be bought and sold as sex slaves for Muslim men, as the Islamic State has been doing.

Emily Fuentes, communications director for Open Doors, a human rights organization that advocates for persecuted Christians, said:

Unfortunately, more and more women are the target of [Muslim] terrorist groups. There are numerous international incidents of women being kidnapped, raped, and forced to convert from Christianity to Islam by radical extremist groups…. Many are also sold on the open market. This brutality is not only occurring in the Middle East but in Africa and in many other places. In many of these countries, women are subject to persecution because they are considered second-class citizens because of their gender. As minorities in both gender and faith, Christian women face double the persecution. Although we don’t have an exact number, we know that millions of women are being persecuted…. In these Muslim-dominated countries, Christian women are systematically deprived of their freedom to live and are denied basic human necessities.

Syria and its Russian allies pressed an assault on Aleppo amid what the United Nations called the most intense bombing in years of warfare there, and residents said hundreds of civilians have been killed since a cease-fire fell apart last week.

The surge in deaths came as a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon over the weekend cited reports of “bunker buster bombs.” The bombs have left large craters in the rebel-held part of the divided city, Aleppo residents said, and caused shock waves felt blocks away from the point of impact.

The U.N. Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, told the Security Council on Sunday that he had seen videos and pictures of incendiary bombs “that create fireballs of such intensity that they light up the pitch darkness in eastern Aleppo, as though it was actually daylight.”

Rebels and opposition leaders blamed Russia, Syria’s key ally, for the bunker-buster bombs. The Russian Defense Ministry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

“The first time one struck, everyone thought there was an earthquake,” said Muhammad al-Zein, who helps oversee hospitals in the rebel-held part of Aleppo. “But the next day another one hit and we realized it was not an earthquake.”

Much of the death toll came in the four days since Thursday when the Syrian regime announced the start of a new offensive against Aleppo’s rebel-controlled neighborhoods.

President Bashar al-Assad has vowed to retake all of Aleppo and the offensive was the latest indication that he aims to win the war militarily despite repeated efforts by the U.S. and Russia to reach a lasting cease-fire and a diplomatic solution. Syrian state media reported that the army on Saturday seized control of an area north of Aleppo city called Handarat Camp. Within hours, rebels said they had retaken the territory.

The U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting on Sunday over the bombardment of Aleppo. The meeting, which lasted about three hours, was called jointly by the U.S., France and the U.K. Ambassadors of all three countries walked out when Syria’s representative began speaking. CONTINUE AT SITE

Plot abandoned; teen says she was shocked at Bastille Day truck killing

PARIS—Two young women suspected of planning an attack in France were detained by police in the southern French city of Nice, a person familiar with the investigation said Sunday, the latest sign that Islamic State is shifting its focus from the battlefield in Syria to orchestrating terror plots in Europe.

The two young women—17 and 19 years old—had been in contact with Rachid Kassim, a French recruiter for Islamic State, on the Telegram Messenger messaging app, the person said. Mr. Kassim, who is believed to be in Islamic State territory, couldn’t be reached for comment.

Mr. Kassim called on the women to attack specific sites in France to avenge the death of Abu Mohammed al Adnani, a founding member and chief spokesman for Islamic State, who was killed on a battlefield in northern Syria last month, the person added, without providing further details.

Even as Islamic State loses territory in Syria and Iraq, the mushrooming of small-scale terror attacks in Europe has allowed the militant group to keep people here on edge, without having to train and equip teams to pull off highly sophisticated operations.

Over the past year, a spate of terror attacks has left more than 200 people dead in France. CONTINUE AT SITE

A prominent Jordanian Christian writer was shot dead outside an Amman courthouse on Sunday, ahead of a scheduled court hearing for posting on social media a cartoon the government charged had offended Islam.

Nahed Hattar was struck by three bullets in front of the Court of Justice, the official Petra news agency said. He was rushed to the hospital and later pronounced dead. Police had captured the assailant and seized a weapon, it said, without releasing further details as to the shooter’s identity.

Mr. Hattar, who was in his 50s, was detained last month after he shared a cartoon on his Facebook page lampooning Islamic extremists’ view of heaven. He was charged with inciting religious tensions and racism, as well as offending religion under Jordanian laws.

The post sparked controversy across the country, with many Muslims accusing him of blasphemy and defaming religion.

The cartoon posted to Facebook depicted a white-bearded God wearing a crown and asking an Islamist, who is in bed with two women, if he needs anything. The man then asks God to get him wine, and for the angel Gabriel to bring cashews.

The depiction of God in any form is forbidden in Islam. The cartoon’s author hasn’t been identified.

Mr. Hattar’s death echoed recent attacks in Europe and the U.S. against journalists and artists for depicting the Prophet Muhammad in cartoons viewed as offensive to Muslims.

In 2015, two men were killed by police in a Dallas suburb after they opened fire outside a building where an exhibit that featured cartoon drawings of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.

It came six months after militants stormed the Paris offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people including some of the publication’s most famous cartoonists. Many Muslims deemed Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad provocative, or even blasphemous. CONTINUE AT SITE