RUTHFULLY YOURS

This summer, the so-called Islamic State published issue 15 of its online magazine Dabiq. In what has become a standard feature, it ran an interview with an ISIS foreign fighter. “When I was around twenty years old I would come to accept the religion of truth, Islam,” said Abu Sa’d at-Trinidadi, recalling how he had turned away from the Christian faith he was born into.

At-Trinidadi, as his nom de guerre suggests, is from the Caribbean island of Trinidad and Tobago (T&T), a country more readily associated with calypso and carnival than the “caliphate.” Asked if he had a message for “the Muslims of Trinidad,” he condemned his co-religionists at home for remaining in “a place where you have no honor and are forced to live in humiliation, subjugated by the disbelievers.” More chillingly, he urged Muslims in T&T to wage jihad against their fellow citizens: “Terrify the disbelievers in their own homes and make their streets run with their blood.”

For well over a year and a half now, Raqqa, the so-called stronghold of the Islamic State in Syria, has been subjected to sustained aerial bombardment by U.S., French, and Russian war planes. In recent months, the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition has reportedly killed more than 10,000 ISIS fighters, including key figures among ISIS’s leadership, most notably its senior strategist and spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani. It has also launched an offensive, now in its second month, on the group’s Iraqi capital of Mosul. According to estimates by American officials, ISIS has lost about 45 percent of its territory in Syria and 20 percent in Iraq since it rose to prominence in the summer of 2014. At the same time, the flow of foreign fighters to the caliphate has plummeted, from a peak of 2,000 crossing the Turkey-Syria border each month in late 2014 to as few as 50 today. Yet still there are people making the long and precarious 6,000-mile journey from Trinidad to Syria in an effort to live there. Just three days before the release of Dabiq 15, eight were detained in southern Turkey, attempting to cross into ISIS-controlled territory in Syria. All were female, and they included children.

In a recent paper in the journal Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, John McCoy and W. Andy Knight posit that between 89-125 Trinidadians—or Trinis, to use the standard T&T idiom—have joined ISIS. Roodal Moonilal, an opposition Member of Parliament in T&T, insists that the total number is considerably higher, claiming that, according to a leaked security document passed on to him, over 400 have left since 2013. Even the figure of 125 would easily place Trinidad, with a population of 1.3 million, including 104,000 Muslims, top of the list of Western countries with the highest rates of foreign-fighter radicalization; it’s by far the largest recruitment hub in the Western Hemisphere, about a four and a half hour flight from the U.S. capital. How did this happen? CONTINUE AT SITE

I recently met a woman who works with the International Christian Consulate (ICC), an organisation founded in 2015 to provide a “physical consulate” for Christians in the Middle East. As well as telling me about the sexual assaults (assaults, plural) she herself had endured at the hands of migrants on the streets of Athens, she pointed me to a report that the ICC has produced detailing the truly shocking treatment Christians are subjected to by Muslims in refugee camps across Europe.

The report is entitled ‘A Survey of Christian Refugees in Greece to Determine their Condition as a Minority Group within the Refugee Population’ and provides data taken from a sample group consisting of 65 Christian refugees at an un-named camp in Attica, Greece (60% male, 40% female). Respondents were 94% Iranian Christian, 6% Afghan Christian. Many were apostates who had lived covertly as Christians in their home countries. Their primary reason for leaving was persecution as a result of their faith.

This survey revealed many shocking realities, but the most shocking is this: Christians are terrified in refugee camps and try to hide their religion. This is solely due to violent attacks by Muslim refugees.

Conditions in the camps are generally dreadful and one doctor reported an increase in tuberculosis. Reports of ethnic gang-violence were also numerous. The UN, the report claims, is “notable by its absence. Not a single respondent .. had received any aid or support from the UN and laughed when asked how the UN had helped them since they left their home countries. One respondent answered by genuinely asking “what’s the UN?””

An American doctor working with Christian refugees said “these people are seriously threatened, because they are forthright about their faith, and that is extraordinarily dangerous in these camps”. He also claimed that the camp at which he worked “would have been fine if you were a Muslim. I wouldn’t even think of going there as a Christian trying to live there…. If you’re a Christian in there, you can forget about it – it would be really dangerous”. He added “unfortunately, they left Iran and showed up in Iran. These camps are like mini Iran or mini Afghanistan, with the same persecution as what they left in their home countries. I can see that even from what I’m looking at medically”.

Another volunteer testified that “Christian women had been raped by Afghan Islamists in the camps”. This anonymous witness also complained that the “use of Muslim Afghan translators by the UN and other agencies [was] making it difficult for Christian refugees to be open about their situations when applying for asylum”.

The report is littered with examples of Muslim violence against Christians, including testimony that Islamists in the camps warn that they will be killed. A staggering 87% of respondents had either witnessed this or experienced it first hand. Threats of death to apostates are common and Christians take these seriously. Gangs of Islamists were reported to have deliberately singled out Christians for violent attack: “We saw fanatic Muslims fighting against Christians. There were so many of them I couldn’t count how many there were – they purposefully came together to attack Christians”.

Two schoolgirls carried out simultaneous suicide bombings in the Nigerian town of Madagali. The attacks on a crowded market left at least 56 people killed and dozens wounded.

The attacks bore the marking of the Islamist terror organization Boko Haram, known for targeting civilians in northeast Nigeria as well as in neighboring Cameroon and Niger.

Although attacks by the group have been less frequent in recent months as the Nigerian army has been attempting a push back to its original stronghold in the enormous Sambia forest, this latest attack shows the group – which pledged its allegiance to Islamic State – is far from defeated.

Attacks by school girls are one of the group’s latest and most sinister operational surprises. The girls, many of them kidnapped by the group, will volunteer for such missions as a way to end their horrific lives under captivity, which include relentless hunger and sexual abuse.

One girl, 16, identified only as Fati, who was kidnapped from her village but managed to escape, told CNN, “They came to us to pick us. They would ask, ‘Who wants to be a suicide bomber?’ The girls would shout, ‘me, me, me.’ They were fighting to do the suicide bombings.

“It was just because they want to run away from Boko Haram. If they give them a suicide bomb, then maybe they would meet soldiers, tell them, ‘I have a bomb on me’ and they could remove the bomb. They can run away.”

ISTANBUL—Turkey declared a day of mourning after two suicide bombers killed at least 38 civilians and police officers deployed to guard a Saturday evening match by Istanbul’s Besiktas soccer team.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts that occurred two hours after the game outside the team’s stadium on one of Istanbul’s major waterfront thoroughfares and urban parks. But Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Sunday that evidence suggested the blasts were the work of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which Turkey, the U.S. and Europe deem a terrorist group.

Turkey has been rocked by several terrorist bombings this year by attackers believed to be members of Islamic State and by splinter groups of the PKK, which has been fighting for decades against Turkish security forces for autonomy in the country’s Kurdish-majority southeastern regions.

The Interior Ministry said early Sunday that at least 13 people had been detained in relation to the weekend bombings that also wounded more than 150.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the nation in a televised address that Turkey would fight “the scourge of terrorism to the end,” and promised that the attackers would pay a “heavy price.”

Most spectators had already left the sleek Vodafone Arena when the blasts occurred around 10:30 local time Saturday night. Large numbers of police routinely assigned to the normally sold-out matches remained in the area, however, as did many die-hard fans enjoying the unusually mild late autumn weather.

The force of the explosions shook buildings almost a half mile away from the stadium along the heavily traveled road that leads from Istanbul’s waterfront road to Taksim Square, and could be heard across the Bosporus, according to witnesses.

The first attacker drove a vehicle packed with explosives into a group of riot police who had assembled on the west side of the stadium to wait for transport back to their barracks.