Syrian Christians Confront Growing Hostilities
At least hundreds of thousands of Syrian Christians face growing anti-Christian hostilities in war-ravaged Syria and neighboring Lebanon, aid workers said Friday.
At least hundreds of thousands of Syrian Christians face growing anti-Christian hostilities in war-ravaged Syria and neighboring Lebanon, aid workers said Friday.
More details emerged about a young Christian missionary killed in Syria after U.S. Vice President Mike Pence dedicated Wednesday‘s vice-presidential debate to her.
The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) heard last week that President Donald Trump’s partial withdrawal of American troops from northeast Syria in 2019 created a vacuum in which Turkey and Turkish-backed militia have been able to threaten local vulnerable civilian populations including Christians and Yazidis. Condemning Turkey’s latest airstrikes and ground operations in the region, the USCIRF called for the US government to “utilize all diplomatic and economic leverage to protect vulnerable religious minorities in northern Iraq — as well as neighboring northeastern Syria — from Turkey’s indiscriminate military operations,” the Christian Post reported.
A former “Prince of ISIS” that extremists swear allegiance to and are willing to die for was converted to Christianity after meeting with a Muslim evangelist and receiving a letter dripping with Jesus’ blood in a dream.
Christians in northern Syria are calling on the US government to intervene as signs mount that a new wave of Turkish incursions into the country is imminent.
Many Muslim Kurds disillusioned with Islam are converting to Christianity in the Syrian border town of Kobani.
Many Christians – all of them former Muslims – feared a genocide as they saw radical Islamic groups on their way to the Syrian city of Afrin. CBN News Middle East Bureau Chief Chris Mitchell talked with one humanitarian aid worker who helped these Christians find a safe haven.
A city in Northern Syria, once a refuge for those fleeing the fighting all around them, is now the scene of suffering and death. Afrin is a Kurdish city, but it has welcomed Christian and Yazidi refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war and ISIS militants.
For years, Syrian Christians had been praying for a revival. ‘But never did we imagine it would come because of war,’ said one church leader. Seven years of civil war has left Syria in ruins. Many of those who came from Christian families left early on in the war, a cause of great despair as church leaders watched their congregants slowly disappear.
The United Nations has ‘failed miserably’ when it comes to protecting Christians from genocide, a charity has said, noting that a mere 1.5 percent of Syrian refugees accepted by Western nations in 2016 were followers of Christ.
Syriac Orthodox Christians in the northeastern city of Hasakeh celebrated on Saturday the inauguration of Archbishop Maurice Amseeh, giving the community a bishop for the first time in four years, since the last one left the country.
A persecution watchdog group has shared the story of a Muslim extremist who upon witnessing a church service led by Christians in war-torn Syria decided to abandon his radical lifestyle and turn to Jesus Christ.
The House of Commons in Canada recently voted against a motion declaring that the atrocities committed by the Islamic State against religious minorities in Syria and Iraq were actually acts of genocide.
Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II and other senior leaders of the Syriac Orthodox Church survived an assassination attempt on June 19.
A Syrian has been crucified by the Islamic State for collaborating with what it called a “Crusader coalition.”
After the April liberation of an ancient Syrian town from the Islamic State’s control, many of its churches and Christian buildings were found to have been destroyed, or badly damaged.
Out of a total of 281 refugees, the U.S. State Department has admitted only two Syrian Christians into the U.S. in the first two months of 2016.
The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee has unanimously passed HR 75, a resolution declaring that those who commit or support mass murder against religious minorities are guilty of “genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.”
A coordinated attack on three restaurants owned by Assyrian Christians in Syria killed 16 and injured dozens more during Christmas celebrations.
Members of the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a bipartisan resolution in September that called for the murder of Christians and other religious minority groups in Iraq and Syria to be officially classified as “genocide,” according to Barnabas Aid.