Barefoot Walk for UN Reforms: What Is The Religion Of A Terrorist?

According to the Holy Bible (Galatians 3:29 NIV), those who belong to Christ are counted as the TRUE SEED of Abraham and heirs of the covenant promises made by God to Abraham.

For centuries Iraq didn’t only shelter Abraham’s birth place Babylon, but was home to one of the largest Christian populations in the Middle East. The place Christians believe God created mankind, pilgrims visited its ancient monasteries, cities like Nineveh and the shrines of prophets like Jonah, Daniel, Ezekiel and Nahum.

Today unfortunately, Christianity is being eliminated from Iraq by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in plain sight of the world. After 2000 years of continuous worship, most of Iraq’s surviving 1.5 million Christians and other religious minorities, have been crucified, bombed, beheaded, raped, kidnapped or forced to flee as refugees 1. According to Sarah Kaplan of the Washington Post, “Iraqi churches stand empty, even on major holidays, because so many congregants have fled” 2.

The sad reality is that Christian blood is not only being splashed in Iraq and neighboring Syria, but the world over 3, 4. Recently Al-Shabab extremists attacked the Garissa University College in eastern Kenya, killing at least 148 people, reportedly singling out non-Muslims 5. In Libya, 21 Egyptian Christians were beheaded by ISIS, meanwhile absurd bloodshed and barbarous acts of violence have claimed the lives of thousands of Christians in Nigeria 6, 7.

Speaking on Good Friday, the pope said “there have been more 'martyrs' for Christianity in recent years than in the early centuries of the faith…..our brothers and our sisters … are persecuted, exiled, slain, beheaded, solely for being Christian……I hope that the international community doesn’t stand mute and inert before such unacceptable crimes, which constitute a worrisome erosion of the most elementary human rights” 8.

The truth is that, although Christian communities are being ravaged, terrorized and decimated in many parts of the Middle East, Africa and Asia, Muslims too are killed every day by their brothers, with Sunnis arrayed against Shiites, radicals against moderates, and the religious against the secular 9.

Today, the Rohingya, a long persecuted Muslim ethnic minority group in Burma is the world’s “least-wanted” population. Since their neighbourhoods were razed by Buddhists in 2012 killing hundreds, more than 100,000 have fled violence and poverty, with many of those who escaped dying in the hands of trafficking gangs 10, 11. In the Central African Republic, Christian anti-Balaka militias killed thousands of Muslims, displacing hundreds of thousands 12.

During the last Israeli – Palestinian conflict, 66 Israeli military personnel, six Israeli civilians and a Thai national were killed by rockets, mortars fired from Gaza and from direct involvement in the conflict.
Though an Israeli government official told the BBC that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) killed 1,000 "terrorists" during their assault on Gaza, the UN said at least 2,104 Palestinians died, including 1,462 civilians, of whom 495 were children and 253 women 13.

The killing of innocent civilians whether by the Israeli government, Hamas, ISIS, Boko Haram, Al-Shabab, anti-Balaka , Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, AQAP or by other extremists groups or government sponsored terrorism, is something that concerns all of us, as thousands of innocent people are routinely killed and millions displaced.

Behind the bombs and bloodshed, beyond the sectarian violence and political posturing, the war that rages against individual lives, whose stories are as heartbreaking as they are numerous, is irrespective of religion.

In spite of growing and concerted calls for peace, war is big money and it’s because of this uncomfortable fact, at least in part, that the defense budgets of world powers have grown increasingly swollen, prompting a mega market for arms manufacturing, and thus, arms exports.

Guns, ammunition, vehicles, missiles, and many other weapons of death, are consistently changing hands on an international scale, finding their way to insurrectionists and jihadists alike, and making them more potent and better equipped.

According to a recent study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), most of the weaponry flooding in international markets, as unfortunate as it may be, is made by the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany. Coupled with huge defense contracts, it only makes sense that world powers are constantly offloading their older weapons to make room for the newer ones 14. These arms are the main ingredients for persistent internal tensions and violent conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Instability creates receptive hub for extremism, terrorism, and a cycle of hate amongst Christians, Muslims and people of all other religions. That is why everybody irrespective of their religion has a moral imperative to act to ensure that the world’s highest security institution – the UN Security Council is reformed.